Why W/Bank loans make minimal impacts –Don

A university don, Professor Joel Babatunde Babalola, has averred that with low investment, there would be low productivity, saying that Nigerians with access to loans should use it to boost investment opportunities.

The Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan, Professor Babalola, disclosed this  during an interview with the Nigerian Tribune in his office recently.

“If you have low income, you will not be able to save. This will lead to low investment, which will also lead to low productivity. This is how poverty continues in life,” Professor Babalola disclosed, adding that most of the loans coming from the World Bank to the country have minimal impacts because of the ways they are spent.

Professor Babalola, who will be delivering an inaugural lecture, entitled, “World Bank support for Nigerian higher education: Pleasure, pains and pathway towards a knowledge economy”, on Thursday, April 21, at the Trenchard Hall, University of Ibadan, said: “We assumed that we are poor. That is one major problem in the country. We take most of these loans because we just want to take them.

“There was a period when we obtained World Bank loan to finance technical education in secondary schools in the country. When the equipment came, instead of taking them to technical schools, they were distributed to normal secondary schools. Most of the equipment ended up in stores. Today, you cannot see any of them in use. If we collect loan from World Bank, we should use the loan wisely,” the varsity don said.

On the challenges of globalisation and the positioning of our higher institutions, Professor Babalola said that low technology capability, electricity, high cost of accessing the internet  were some of the limiting factors, saying that the environment must be technologically and informationally driven to be able to take advantage of the world becoming a global village.

Speaking on the state of education in the country, which is vital to the achievement of Vision 20:2020, Professor Babalola said access and equity in education; relevance of the education provided to the culture, world of work, environment; quality of education;  technology of teaching; wastages;

infrastructural decay; inadequate funding and instructional materials were major issues that needed to be looked into in the country.

“You can imagine a situation where the education plan of a state shows N30 billion while all that the state budgeted for education that year was N3 billion. You can see the gap,” the don said.

On the mass failure in WAEC and NECO, which is a challenge to building a knowledge base economy, the varsity don said: “It is not that the qualities of our training and teachers have reduced. There are certain things we need to know because we are operating in a system. In a system, we talk about the input and the process first before we talk about the output. The WAEC result is an output. There are certain things before that output. We also have to talk about the environment and the feedback mechanism.

“The problem is not that of teachers alone, parents also have a bulk in it. Today, nobody checks what happens in the school again.  The time we spend on teaching and learning in Nigeria is lower compared with what others spend. Students will be at home for months because of strike.

“Motivation is another issue. Students are no longer motivated to go to school. What they are interested in is quick money. Motivation to read and motivation to teach are not there.The way out is to go back to those old professional ethics. We need quality supervision, good value system and feedback mechanism. Parents must have time for their children and wastages must be reduced.”

Source : Tribune