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Nigerians have stressed the need for government to embrace new applications in Information Technology (IT) and ensure they are embedded and implemented in school curriculum at the primary, secondary and tertiary institutions.
The call became important, following new developments in the IT sector in developed economies.
A large audience who attended a one day forum last week in Lagos on the migration from Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), said new technologies were evolving by the day and that government needed to integrate them into the school system in order to boost capacity building among Nigerians with latest technology deployment.
According to them, "the school is the best place to teach technology and we can achieve this by implementing new technologies in our school curriculum."
They lamented the situation whereby new and evolving technologies like the various versions of Internet Protocol (IPvs), Domain Name, Cloud Computing, Collocation of telecom infrastructure, Number Portability et cetera, were not infused into school curriculum. They were of the view that the country's school curriculum only contain basic and introductory aspects of IT, insisting that today's development in IT has gone beyond basics and introduction. Most of them who spoke at the event were bold to say they had never had anything like IPv4 and IPv6, while thanking the organisers of the forum for enlightening the public with current development in the world of IT. The one day forum was organised by DigitalSENSE Africa, in collaboration with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
Before now, technology experts have frowned at the nation's IT curriculum, saying the curriculum is far behind modern trends. They have severally called on government to update IT curriculum in the country.
Former Minister of Communication, Olawale Ige who chaired the forum, agreed with the audience on the need to update IT curriculum in the country. He called on NITDA to come up with new development on IT that should be relevant to the needs of the present day Nigeria.
According to him, "today's IT curriculum is no longer relevant to current IT development in the country."
Others who joined in Ige's views said it was out of fashion for science students to graduate from the university without sound practical skills. A situation where employers of labour retrain young school graduates in the area of new technologies, before fully integrating them into their workforce, does not speak well of the nation's school system, the audience said.
Supporting the views of majority of Nigerians on the need to adopt new IT applications in the nation's IT curriculum, President of Nigeria Computer Society, Prof. Charles Uwadia said, "several things need to be put in place in order to build the human capacity base for software development and get people who are interested in software programming. People need to be trained on software development. Training from primary school level is very necessary. A child ought to be trained on programming languages right from the primary school and before such child gets to secondary school and the university, programming becomes part of the child, and that is what the Indian government is currently doing. In India , there is so much emphasis on Science and Technology and that include Mathematics, Basic Sciences and Software Development."
The need to update IT curriculum in line with modern trends, prompted the Federal Ministry of Education to organise a one day forum on school curriculum early this year. The Ministry collaborated with Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN) and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) in bringing together all technology and science teachers at the forum to brainstorm on the way forward. The forum attracted science teachers and curriculum developers from selected tertiary institutions. The gathering identified weaknesses in today's school curriculum, and called for update in the nation's school curriculum.
Responding to the needs for update in IT curriculum in schools, CPN Registrar, Mr. Sikiru Shehu said government is aware of the need for the nation's IT curriculum to be in line with latest IT development, and that government is already putting some structures in place to address the issue. According to him, National Committee on Curriculum Review has been set up by the Federal Ministry of Education and that the committee has all the necessary support from government to achieve its task of reviewing and fine-tuning IT curriculum in the country.
Now that Nigerians know the importance new IT applications in curriculum development as well as the need for imbibe IT education at all levels of education, it therefore behoves on government to act fast in updating IT curriculum at all levels of education, a situation many believed, would help Nigeria attain vision 20:2020.
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