Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State affirmed that Nigeria’s educational model is the major cause of the underdevelopment and the high rate of unemployment in the country.

The Governor, who revealed while delivering the first Enugu State University of Science and Technology’s Distinguished Personalities Lecture Series entitled “Experiential Learning: Building the Wealth of the Nation,” on Tuesday called for a paradigm shift in the current education model.

Upholding that it cannot deliver the much-needed speedy advancement and economic transformation, Mbah supported a shift from rote or memorization to experiential learning, which he described as the missing link between education, industrialization, and Gross Domestic Product growth.

“Why do Nigerian universities rarely feature on the global ranking list of the world’s best universities? Why have they seemed perennially unable to become the ideas factory which universities ought to be? Why are our universities not producing inventive graduates?

“The answers to these questions lie in many awkward truths, amongst which is the fact that the learning in our schools, from basic to tertiary, has for years did not imbue our young people with productive skills and competencies. This is the root cause of our underdevelopment,” he added.

He hinted that knowledge has always been the best lever for progress throughout human history, the reason he said countries like the US, Germany, China, and the Netherlands, which invest the most in building a qualitative and experiential education ecosystem, are the world’s leading economies.

The governor, who is currently constructing 260 Smart Green Schools to power experiential learning in the 260 wards of Enugu State, emphasized that by embedding the model from the basic to tertiary levels of education, Enugu was creating a seamless pipeline where students progress from foundational learning to practical innovation.

He also instructed all state-owned tertiary institutions to deliver experiential learning going forward.

“So, we hereby announce as a policy that all state-owned tertiary institutions in Enugu State must henceforth deliver experiential learning to our children. We want to see this change reflected in planning, budgeting, curriculum reform, assessment, promotions, and research.