Abstract
The early economists, long in the past, saw land as the chief source of the wealth of a nation, but with time it was discovered that countries with rich gifts of nature like fertile land and abundant mineral deposits were not doing better in development. Emphasis then shifted to manpower development, level of technology and capacity utilization. Nigeria today, among other third world countries, is facing serious developmental problem of capacity underutilization as a result of serious unemployment, despite the fact that a reasonable proportion of the national income is spent to expand educational institutions in Nigeria – a striking economic paradox. This paper therefore examined the manpower need and capacity building in Nigeria, the role of education in manpower development, the curricular problem of the Nigerian education system and how to adjust the curriculum to boost capacity building in Nigeria. It however recommended the measures that can improve the situation in Nigeria.
Highlights
Long in the past, the early economists saw land as the chief source of a nation’s wealth and the expectation was that nation’s endowed with national resources such as fertile land and abundant mineral deposits would be wealthy enough and achieve high level of development
Rather it was discovered that meaningful development, where it was achieved, was associated with such variables as manpower development, level of technology and capacity utilization in terms of effective exploitation of natural resources, emphasis shifted to such variables as pre-requisites for meaningful development
Various independent estimates put the unemployment rate at more than 15 percent of the labour force, with very high rate of unemployment among university graduates. This historical presentation of changing manpower needs in Nigeria from independence period to present and the attendant responses to the changes, in quest for capacity building tend to suggest that the real problems were not being identified and such problems were not eliciting the appropriate responses from the education system
Summary
The early economists saw land as the chief source of a nation’s wealth and the expectation was that nation’s endowed with national resources such as fertile land and abundant mineral deposits would be wealthy enough and achieve high level of development. With time experience showed that some countries with such natural endowment as fertile land and abundant mineral deposits never achieved meaningful level of development. Nigeria today like other less developed countries is facing serious problem of unemployment which is tantamount to capacity underutilization. This problem of unemployment is supposed to be solved by providing employable skills in our education system, the expansion of our educational institutions.
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