Promoting Nigeria’s Science and Technology

No doubt, technology is solely dependent on science, hence the former requires the latter towards its uplift or growth.

There has been a tremendous decline in the rate of seriousness among most science students in various levels of learning on the African continent, particularly Nigeria. Such a scenario has over the years served as a nuisance in the field of science and technology.

However, some of the students who are truly ready to acquire the needed knowledge and experience are not privileged to find themselves in the required learning environment or to get acquainted with the needed facilities.

It’s noteworthy that development is required in every individual to every nation, in every aspect of human endeavour. And for development to take place, science and tech must go hand in hand.

Science is fundamentally noted as the study of knowledge, which is made into a system, and depends on analyzing facts. Tech is the outright application of this scientific knowledge. In other words, tech transforms knowledge from science into reality.

The fact is, for any successful economy – especially in today’s quest for knowledge based economies – science and tech are the primary requisites. If any nation relegates the two recipes to the background, the chances of getting itself developed becomes far-fetched, thus stands to be classified as an undeveloped nation.

A country or society that’s not able to prosper on these grounds would not be able to sustain the lives in it, and might have to depend on other societies for survival alongside other life’s requirements.

Taking a close view of the above exegesis, it’s therefore needless to reiterate that any country is supposed to take sciences very seriously as if its whole life depends on it. It, therefore, becomes so pathetic and mind-boggling when realized that Nigeria as a nation is taken aback regarding acquiring science knowledge, or its implementation.

The lingering anomaly, which calls for great concern, can be observed in virtually all existing citadels of learning across the federation regardless of level, ranging from primary to tertiary.

In our primary schools, the pupils are now invariably preoccupied with the notion that science subjects, such as Mathematics and Basic Science, are very difficult to understand owing to the orientation they met in the system.  Such an appalling circumstance is usually occasioned by the mode of teaching of the class teacher.

Sometimes, fear would be inculcated into the pupils’ mindset by their teacher who would, rather than participate in the actual teaching as expected, take much time to lay uncalled emphasis on why the pupils should see science subjects as tough and different from others. By doing so, the affected pupils would live to consider sciences as monsters, thus would prefer to pay more attention to arts.

In the secondary schools, only a few students see subjects like Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry as friendly. Those who detest these subjects have nurtured their mentality or psyche with the view that sciences generally are only meant for a certain group of select individuals. Those who mistakenly chose to be in the science department, in the long run, tend to lose interest in the field and would want to dissociate themselves from the circle.

Funnily enough, in most cases, students would choose to be in the science department when they get to the senior section simply because some of their intimate friends or classmates had chosen to be in that field.

This aspect of influence remains one of the major attributes of apathy noticed among various science students in most Nigerian secondary schools. This set of learners often become dropouts as a result of inability to cope with the studies.

Nowadays, virtually none pay good attention to the teachings of Pure Mathematics let alone Additional/Further Mathematics. And virtually most existing science-oriented disciplines, such as Engineering, in the tertiary institutions, basically depend on the knowledge of Further Mathematics on their day-to-day thrive.

This has caused an enormous decline in the number of persons seeking to study engineering and other related courses. The few that managed to secure admission to read these courses, perhaps due to their background, usually fumble as the journey progresses.

The way out from this conundrum entails three prime approaches. One, the various primary and secondary schools ought to endeavour to engage qualified teachers that would imbibe the required mindset and knowledge into the pupils and students, as the case may be.

Guidance and counseling that has almost gone into extinction ought to equally be revived in these schools. A functional and viable mentorship mechanism would enable the learners to go for only the needful as well as what would be suitable for their future.

Parents and guardians, on their part, are expected to pay more attention to whatever their wards do as regards academics. Learning begins from home, thus the needed parental support mustn’t be overlooked.

Inter alia, governments at all levels among other relevant stakeholders should endeavour to provide the required facilities that would enable the affected people to appreciate science teachings. The management of the private learning citadels must also be mandated to follow suit.

For this growing apathy and lack of the needed parameters to become a thing of the past, every concerned stakeholder as mentioned above must note that science is the only tool that can fast track the anticipated economic diversification.

At this juncture, Nigeria is enjoined to henceforth endeavour to improve the country’s technological worth by inculcating the required scientific knowledge among our young ones via apt education. This ought to be seen as the only way forward.

The concerned authorities must, therefore, revisit the existing policies to ensure holistic review of the existing curricula in a bid to make amends where need be.