Slum2School founder urges single, national curriculum
The Founder, Slum2School Africa, Mr Orondaam Otto, has urged the federal and state governments to establish a single, national curriculum that will guarantee that every child in Nigeria learns the same core skills, values, and competencies, regardless of location.
Otto made the call while delivering the 56th Convocation Lecture of the University of Lagos (UNILAG).
Supreme news reports that the lecture had the theme: ‘Maximising Nigeria’s Demographic Dividend through Urgent Education Reforms For Global Competitiveness in the 21st Century’.
“What a child learns in Zamfara differs sharply from Anambra, creating inequity and confusion.
“Over the years, there has been no fully enforced national curriculum standard anchored to the Nigeria we are deliberately building.
“We need to ensure that a child born in Sokoto, Bayelsa, Enugu or Lagos should leave school with the same core capabilities: the ability to read fluently, reason clearly, solve problems, use digital tools, and think independently.
“Location must never determine destiny, and we should never accept lower cutoff scores for certain states or lower standards for others,” he said.
Otto also urged preservation of indigenous languages.
“Preserving indigenous languages is essential because they carry our identity, memory and cultural heritage, and they must be taught, protected and celebrated.
“However, Nigeria’s extreme linguistic diversity also makes education policy uniquely sensitive and complex.
“While the debate around mother-tongue instruction is valid and important, education policy must ultimately be guided by practicality, affordability, equity and future opportunity, not emotion or symbolism.
“Indigenous languages should be strengthened, taught in schools as subjects of culture, while English Language serves as the common language of instruction that ensures inclusion, and national cohesion,” he said.
He noted that Nigeria had over 500 indigenous languages.
“With over 500 indigenous languages, implementing exclusive mother-tongue instruction nationwide as the primary language of schooling is structurally unworkable.
“It would require hundreds of parallel curricula, textbooks, assessments, and teacher training systems, overwhelming an already strained and weak education sector.
“In most classrooms, especially in several cities such as Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, children come from many linguistic backgrounds, making it impossible to choose a single “mother tongue” without excluding others,” he said.
He added that Nigeria must establish a single, national curriculum standard that would guarantee every child in Nigeria learn the same core skills, values, and competencies, regardless of location.
He said that Nigeria’s greatest weakness in education was not lack of efforts but continuity and coordination.
“Nigeria’s greatest weakness in education is not lack of effort or policy documents; it is lack of continuity, coordination and legally -protected national direction.
“We plan education in four-to-eight-year political cycles, while education itself unfolds over generations.
“That contradiction quietly sabotages every reform attempt. A nation cannot reset its future with every new administration.
“Every new education minister introduces new frameworks and policies, often abolishing previous ones, only for the next minister to do the exact same thing,” he said.
Otto urged that Nigeria should define a clear long-term national vision.
“The first and most radical reform Nigeria must make is to define a clear, compelling, long-term national vision for education.
“A vision that is not owned by a government, a party or a minister but by the nation itself.
“A vision so clear that it is recited in school assemblies, pasted on classroom walls, printed in textbooks, translated into local languages, and taught in elementary schools.
“The vision must be encoded into law, anchored by an Education Vision Act, and given constitutional protection so it cannot be altered by political cycles,” he said.
On the teaching profession, he said that colleges of education and faculties of education had often been treated as occupying the lowest rungs of Nigeria’s higher education hierarchy.
“In many years, the cut-off marks for colleges of education have been significantly lower than for other professional programmes, sometimes as low as 100 out of 400.
“Whatever the justification for this decision may be, it acknowledges that it silently communicates that teaching is a profession of last resort, not first choice.
“When the least academically prepared are encouraged to teach, weak foundations in literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking become inevitable,” he said.
He recommended that Nigeria should standardise and decolonise the National curriculum.
“Before asking whether Nigerian children are learning enough, we must confront a deeper question, which is, what are we teaching children to imagine, to value, and to aspire to?
“Because a curriculum is never neutral. It is the greatest form of indoctrination that quietly shapes identity, frames perception, sets ambition, and defines belonging long before a child can articulate them.
“Nigeria should elevate teaching to a four-year professional degree aligned with global best practices that include strong pedagogy, high entry requirements, supervised classroom residency, licensing, and above-average pay,” he said.
He advised that Nigeria should gradually phase out the National Certificate of Education by transitioning all colleges of education into degree-awarding universities of education.
“This transition will offer bachelor’s degrees in education and bachelor’s degrees in teaching as the minimum qualification for entry into the profession.
“Government should also raise the reputation of the teaching profession by giving teachers the maximum social respect, with long-serving and outstanding teachers receiving national honours and professional recognition.
“Finally, it should standardise teaching across the country by establishing a national teacher salary structure benchmarked against other professional careers, with entry-level pay set at no less than 50 per cent above the national minimum wage,” he said.
