MANPOWER DEVELOPMENT AND UTILIZATION IN ADULT LITERACY EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

PAPER PRESENTED AT THE 1ST NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE FACULTY OGF EDUCATION, NASARAWA STATE UNIVERSITY, HELD AT THE 1000 SEAT AUDITORIUM, NASARAWA STATE UNIVERSITY, KEFFI,

BY

OZOEMENA PATRICIA .O

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT CITYCOLLEGE OF EDUCATION MARARABA, NASARAWA STATE NIGERIA [email protected]

11TH 14TH JUNE 2012

MANPOWER DEVELOPMENT AND UTILIZATION IN ADULT LITERACY EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

Abstract: This paper examines the manpower development and utilization in Adult literacy education in Nigeria. The study indicates the availability of the programme in all the States and almost all the LGA and some communities in Nigeria. The UNDP in collaboration with some State Agencies and NGOs organized relevant manpower development programme for Adult literacy education in Nigeria In respect of manpower utilization, it is discovered that the programme has helped to improve the socioeconomic and living standards of the participants and has led to astronomical rise in enrolments in formal education. There are cases of underutilization in some areas; challenges identified include: withdrawal of participants due to the constraints and lack of interest; lack of incentives for facilitator; lack of mobility for effective monitoring and evaluation; and weak curriculum among others; it is recommended that Literacy should be community driven, and literacy assessment practices to focus on qualitative assessment and not only on quantitative data collection; participatory rural approvable techniques should receive the attention of literacy evaluators to allow for the measurement of the level of involvement of the target groups as well as the community at large; the outcomes and post-literacy achievement and how neo-literates apply the gains of literacy should be given attention also.

MANPOWER DEVELOPMENT AND UTILIZATION

IN ADULT LITERACY EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

Introduction To build a society that is self-sufficient requires the mobilization of the uneducated, the poor and underdeveloped, many of them have untapped potentials; and if they are fully developed will be of immense benefit not only to themselves but to the nation as a whole. The ability of the individual to contribute to the development of the country lies in his ability to read and write. There cannot be meaningful development in modern society where majority of the populace is illiterate. Despite the importance of education, to improve standard of living, Nigeria has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. This is shown in Table 1 that follows. Table 1: RATIO OF ADULT LITERACY IN NIGERIA AND OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRIES 1997 Countries Nigeria Japan France UK USA Switzerland West Germany 98. Adult Literacy Rate % 67% 97.2 96.4 97 99.5 97.2

The low level literacy partly accounts for the low level of development in Nigeria. Thus, a nation which undermines the contributions of the some of her citizens makes slow progress towards national development. The realization of organizational objectives depends largely on the quantity and quality of personnel (manpower) available in the organization and the degree of effectiveness in the utilization of manpower available. In addition, Imhabekhai (1998) advocates that it is imperative that management of any organization makes sufficient efforts in procuring and developing the needed manpower resources and pay attention to how well they are utilized. However, experience has shown that in most public agencies, greater interest is shown on the areas of manpower development and procurement or recruitment than on how effectively utilized are the available manpower resources. Concept of adult education
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An adult is a person who is physically and psychologically mature and is socially, economically and politically responsible. Physically, maturity implies that the adult is capable of being a parent, picking a life partner, raising family and managing a home. The National Policy in Education (2004:32) lists seven components of Adult and non formal education. These are functional literacy, remedial continuing, vocational, aesthetic, cultural and civic education for youths and adults outside the formal school system. Adult education is planned to serve as a creative response to those who neither have ever benefited from formal education or those who for some strange circumstances dropped from the formal school system. Adult education also guarantees education of some sort to different categories of completers of the formal education system in order to improve their basic knowledge and skills while pledging to assist working men and women with the constant renewal of their professional skills and competencies. The Adult literacy education program could be seen as three dimensional Egbe (1991).These are discussed below a. Education for Living: Education in the rural areas needs, among everything else, education general to living that is education geared towards what is worth knowing in the environment and the self. This concerns family life, gardening or poultry farming, food, preservation habits, and home economics. The adult needs to know personal financial management, spending wisely and contributing to the development of his immediate environment. Such education should provide understanding of changes and use of technology and equipment. Unless the rural dweller is taught to understand the fast changing technology as it relates to individuals daily living, he would be in a perpetual disadvantage as his country enters the modern world governed by accelerated technological development Anyanwu (1987). b. Education for Skill Upgrading: Adult education for the rural populace is bedrock for strong economic development because it is a strong potential tool for the retraining of adults who are already in the mainstream of life. Those individuals who already have skills need adult education to help them retrain along the advancement of appropriate technology. In the country those craftsmen who are known for weaving, pot molding, basket weaving, et cetera, could learn new designs and techniques that will give their products the beauty required in artifact. c. Education for Career: A 50 year old man or woman can learn to be a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher or a nurse. Adult in the developing world should have the opportunity of attending remedial school for professional development or mobility to higher educational institution. In this case, literate adults may want to acquire a new skill, one different from that which they had acquired. Strategies for manpower development
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In the 1950s, regional governments launched a free primary education programme to enable mass access to primary education and in 1976, the central government introduced a compulsory, free Universal Primary Education (UPE) scheme. The UPE scheme ushered in an era of expanded growth of primary schools and education as a whole. Many teachers were trained through distance learning by National Teachers Institute (NTI). In 1982, the government of Shehu Shagari launched a ten-year mass literacy campaign which introduced the establishment of State agencies whose main objective was to combat illiteracy in Nigeria. In 1996, the UNDP began to assist the literacy programmes with equipment, technical and financial resources. This enabled the government to transform the UPE into the Universal Basic Education Scheme (UBE, 1999). Unlike UPE, which endeavored to promote access to primary education, the UBE sought to promote access to education for all including adults, out of school youths children and people living in a special circumstances such as nomads. During the period 1995-2004, these programme raised the national literacy rate to 84% and 69% for youths and Adult respectively, Saint (2005). Other efforts are currently underway to use the media, especially radio and TV, conferences, workshops, to reach the countrys more than 60 million illiterates. Previously, theres been no much attention paid to non-formal education across the country. However, the situation has improved tremendously through Federal Governments intervention that makes Adult and Non formal education part of UBE Scheme. At present, Nigeria has over 60 million illiterates. These are people without the basic literacy skills to contribute their quota meaningfully to national development. Available statistics indicate that 47 percent of the nations adult population remains illiterate, while 22 million children are out of school, with majority of them being women, SunPublisher, (2012). Keeping such a large percentage of the population outside the radiance of literacy and education makes the task of national development more complex and burdensome. If something drastic is not done to accelerate literacy and education for all Nigerians, the country may not attain the 2015 Education for All goals and the MDGs. It may also fail to achieve the significant milestones of its developmental targets under Vision 20:20:20. Fundamentally, the Federal Ministry of Education seeks to ensure that 10 million Nigerian illiterates are reached through the non-formal education format annually. The target is to reach out to 40 million illiterates to ensure that they have functional literacy skills within the next four years that will terminate in 2015. The remaining percentage of the illiterates will be covered in the years after 2015, using clearcut principles that have been laid out for the attainment of Education For All (EFA).

The development in Nigeria resulting in people wanting to live a better life through the acquisition of knowledge either for occupation or for understanding the environments around them has led to the increase in the number of participants in the non-formal education sector. In recognition of the importance of non-formal literacy education, proprietors of non-formal literacy education have included assorted types of non-governmental organizations such as youth groups, womens associations, business and professional organizations, labour unions, peasant societies and farmer cooperatives. Non governmental agencies: The efforts of the government in the promotion of Adult literacy education in Nigeria have been complemented by Non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In a study carried out by Imhabekaih (1998), on Edo State Agency for Adult and non formal education, he identified that the Agency was expected to provide the following programmes, basic literacy, post literacy, functional literacy, women education, vocational improvement programmes, continuing education, public enlightenment, and women education programmes. To address these programmes, each Local Government Area has an Adult Literacy Supervisor who is responsible for the supervision of literacy programmes in the Local Government. The supervisor is assisted by a member of adult literacy organizers who are in charge of adult literacy programme and ward levels. Literacy instructions were available to provide actual instructions at the literacy centres/classes. To adequately develop the available manpower for their functions, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), provided series of training and retraining courses for all categories of adult literacy personnel. The seminar/workshops for organizers and instructors are intended to enable (the participants) update their knowledge, and keep abreast with changes in methods of instruction. More significantly the University Village Association (UNIVA) Functional Literacy Programme (UFLP) was initiated and formulated within the context of UNESCOS Literacy Initiative For Empowerment (LIFE) and is being implemented by UNIVA, a registered NGO based at the University of Ibadan (Department of Adult Education). UNIVA began as the Community Development and Health Project (CDLHP) in 1989 with support from the International Foundation for Education and Self-help (IFESHI). In order to ensure the sustainability of the project, CDLHP was transformed to UNIVA in early 1995 and was officially registered as an NGO in 1996. UNIVA primarily endeavored to complement government efforts in promoting literacy and development among rural and peri-urban communities through:
a.

Building bridges between the University and the Community and between theory and practice in Adult Education; and

b.

Promoting the co-operation of the University academic Community and the Village Communities for development purposes.

UNIVA succeeded in empowering many rural and peri-urban people through work-related literacy skills training. UNIVA has trained over 5,000 learners in functional literacy skills. These beneficences have been empowered to use these skills to improve their living standard as well as viability of their business and income generating activities. In Anambra State, apart from the launching of the literacy campaign in 1989, an International State Literacy Task Force was set up to supervise the campaign on literacy and generate enough enthusiasm among the populace. This function was taken over by the Advisory Committee on Adult Education in 1985. About 22,573, traders and businessmen were enrolled in adult Literacy courses in 485 centers. Kano State took the greatest leap of all the States by establishing an agency for mass education that instituted three categories of activities for learners as follows:
a.

General literacy programme in which students were taught basic Hausa, Arabic, Numeracy, hygiene, and civic. Workers literate programme: Voluntary literacy centers club organized activities general towards literacy;

b.
c.

Almost all the States of the Federation designed and established Agencies for adult literacy education for mass literacy and post-literacy programme although with different operational strategies. Okedara 1986, prepared appraisal reports of research findings on Adult Literacy Education Programmes in almost all the States of the Federation. His report showed that the States established many centers in their LGA to run vocational training remedial classes in continuing education centers for different categories of completers and aimed at the improvement of their basic knowledge and skills. Adult functional literacy programmes for farmers, traders, market women, security guards, rice growers works and post literacy programmes for drop-outs from the primary school system were all initiated by the various Agencies. Recently, the National Mass Education Commission NMEC and other technocrats in the Federal Ministry of Education have started the concerted implementation of the President Goodluck Jonathans commitment to eradicate illiteracy in the country. In the last eight months, the Federal Government has deliberately targeted the marginalized, the deprived and the excluded from the formal education system for access to basic education in order to improve their literacy skills. The NMEC and Ministry officials have ensured that a critical percentage of the less privileged in urban slums and rural communities progressively come under tutelage through the non-formal education. The unwavering commitment of the
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Federal Government to the realization of mass-literacy for all Nigerians, irrespective of the circumstance of their birth is underscored by the release of N1 billion self-benefitting fund to UNESCO, one of its development partners in this regard, to help drive the process of eradicating illiteracy in the country. The girl-child that is the most affected by the scourge of illiteracy in the country has received the attention of the Federal Government in the last eight months. After the success of the pilot schemes targeted at women and children in selected States to improve their literacy level, the Federal Ministry of Education is partnering with development partners and State governments to scale up the coverage of these gender-specific programmes. Indeed, modern day realities which have expanded literacy beyond reading and writing has led to the review of the scope of mass literacy programmes by the Federal Ministry of Education to meet the new policy objective and development challenge of producing educated men and women with appropriate skills and competences for job creation and self-employment. Through the NMEC, the Minister of State for Education has effectively connected with States to improve the quality of non-formal education available to adults and out-of-school children in the six geo-political zones of the federation. States like Anambra, Zamfara, Ondo, Kano, Niger and Benue have developed effective partnerships to improve mass literacy and non-formal education. Several other States have already keyed into the new initiatives introduced by the Federal Ministry of Education and their investments will soon come to fruition like the mention States. One other area of adult and non formal education that has scaled up is the Literacy by Radio and the distance learning aspect of the NMEC activities. More than 30,000 Nigerians are directly participating in the Literacy by Radio programmes being run across the country in English and 21 indigenous languages. Another key initiative by NMEC is the establishment of National Literacy Centres across the country. At present, the Centre in Minna is nearing completion. The National Literacy Centres are meant to serve as models for States to join in tackling the illiteracy challenge in the country. Aside functional literacy and numeracy skills, the National Literacy Centres would help in the development of vocational skills for the illiterate population. This project is expected to effectively kick off before the end of the 2012.The aim is to achieve the Presidents Transformation Agenda of eradicating ignorance and illiteracy, which have done unquantifiable damage to our nation in the recent past Nwakaudu (2012). Manpower utilization in adult literacy programmes Manpower utilization relates to how the developed manpower of an organization is used in the performance of the functions for which it has been developed. Manpower utilization is a major
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component of human resources development; its development is both an input to and a result of utilization. Human resources in any organization are developed so as to utilize them effectively to achieve organizational objectives. Similarly, the area in which developed manpower will be utilized determined the nature, form, timing and funds invested in developing it (Taive, 1992). In addition, Imhabekhai (1998) viewed adult literacy instructors roles as significant, and how well they perform these roles influences to a great deal the level of performance of the Agency. He suggested the need for an appraisal of adult literacy enrolments, vis--vis the number of available instructors for the various programmes in order to ensure efficient and effective utilization of manpower. The appraisal of the Mass literacy education programme and its human resource development revealed its utilization in the following areas:

The programme has helped to improve the socio-economic status and living standards of the participants: The UFLP integrated participants literacy needs into their existing income generation or livelihoods activities; this enables the participants to appreciate the value and relevance of literacy skills training as an important instrument of socio-economic development.

In Nigeria, there is a plethora of NGOs and CBOs operating in many communities. These associations are viable avenues for disseminating literacy programme in a cost-effective and relevant manner. Aderinoye (2002) indicated that the increase in primary school enrolments in three States of Kwara, Niger, and Oyo is as the result of large number of women graduating from literacy classes; these women organized themselves into mobilization group when it was time for the registration of children and wards in school.

The two way approaches of each-one teach-one and pay- for -the-teaching-of-one adopted by the National Mass Education Commission (NMEC) have raised the consciousness of the population in general, leading to the effective participation of both literate and illiterate in the drive for literacy for all.

Neo-literates in some communities, particularly rural ones, emerged as facilitators in the developmental process, serving as Secretaries of cultural and social groups, Secretaries of butchers association in some LGA and some were appointed customary court judges, (Laoye 1999).

The literacy programmes led to the discovery of common ailment which for years had gone undiagnosed, in the UNIVA literacy programmes some participants could not read or see because

they had river blindness, this led to the invitation of Health Experts that discovered Onchocerciasis disease, more than one hundred thousand people were cured of blindness;

The integration of life skills and credit facilities into the UNIVA women literacy programme afforded participants the opportunity to acquire skills in dyeing, tie, and candle, and pomade making. The womens group after graduating pursued small scale business which has empowered them as the controller of the future.

In the prison literacy experience, some discharged prisoners were found integrating into society without fear as a result of skills acquired through the functional literacy programme of the Baptist convention; carpenters, as well as cloth weavers emerged from the prison programme considerably better off than their counterparts who never went to prison but failed to pursue education.

Another major impact of the literacy programme on the participants was the innovative practice of appointing exceptionally capable neo-literate as instructors under the programme trained- them- to teach their peers. In the process, the outstanding students will be exposed to a four week orientation programme leading to the understanding of characteristics of adult learners and adult teaching methods; the programme has been found to be very successful, as other participants were always working hard to be selected for future programmes.

Challenges The major weakness with some of these literacy campaigns is that they are not closely linked to adults working life, or their basic needs for economic and social development and empowerment; rather than provide adults with functional literary skills, which would have stimulated positive future perspectives, the programmes are reduced to basic literacy which failed to provide them with knowledge for self-fulfillment and improved living standards; Not withstanding its strength and successes over the years UNIVA and other agencies for Adult literacy education faced a number of challenges; the withdrawal of participants due to time constraints; furthermore, some agencies have been unable to conduct a baseline study of what works and what does not; what livelihood activities most people are engaged in and what they wish to learn in order to enhance their livelihoods. The position and mandate of the National Commission for Mass Literacy (NMCL) is to eradicate illiteracy in Nigeria, the issue of teacher preparation, recruitment, motivation and retention are vital to the success of its mission at the basic and post-basic literacy levels. Its continuing education, vocational education and women education programmes are faced with problems of
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inadequate personnel, facilities and non-payment of stipends to facilitators by some LGA Administrators among others. Most of the adult education classes especially in post literacy programmes do not have instructors with skills and experience. In some situations an instructor handles too many learners in a class in some State assisted literacy programmes and in all the LGA, this makes the instructor less effective. Again, large percentage of the people are not mobilized for the programme, Community mobilization is at the level of leaders who do nothing to involve the Community, this negative attitude affects the provision of some materials that could be easily provided by members of the community and NGOs as well as the Community Based Organizations (CBOs). The level of participants is a function of the level of awareness created in the people. Other challenges identified include the following: Public apathy towards adult and non-formal education as a route for acquiring basic literacy. Weak curriculum as it does not sufficiently link literacy and numeracy to life skills and incomegeneration. Severe dearth of baseline data and information of non-governmental private initiatives in NFE; No mechanism for determining equivalence between formal education and non-formal adult training i.e. no competent technique was used in comparing levels of qualifications in formal education and non-formal training

Inadequate funding by State and Local governments to run adult literacy programmes. Lack of incentives for facilitators. Lack of mobility for effective monitoring and evaluation. Lack of teaching/learning materials and facilities. Inappropriate learning centres. Suspicion and skepticism on the part of religious leaders. Lack of electricity and inadequate infrastructure.

These challenges have increased over the years as enrolment figures have expanded across the Country Recommendation:

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Government agencies as well as NGOs should ensure continuity of literacy programmes by according non-formal education the recognition accorded formal schooling, so that the six objectives of the Education for All adopted in Dakar (2000) may not be a mirage but rather a reality.

The continual reliance on self-reporting enumeration of literate citizens without a realistic literacy assessment survey will not augur well for the countrys development as it will be difficult to know the actual number of people that are literate, their level of literacy and what language they are able to read and write.

Community involvement motivates communitys participation, in essence adult literacy programmes should be Community driven and not donor or external Agent driven. Literacy assessment practices should not be limited to quantitative data collection; it should also be focusing on qualitative assessment as that is the only means of measuring impact of literacy on literates and their immediate communities.

The LGA and Communities where enrolment is high need to open more literacy centers to decongest the existing ones, where enrolment is low mobilization of illiterate adults for participation in adult literacy classes should be embarked upon.

There is need for national assessment of literacy practices with particular attention on adult literacy if the Country is to present a realistic account of its Universal Basic Education achievement by year 2015 when the mid-term assessment of Education For All (EFA) goals will be conducted.

Conclusion The poor attitudes of the society towards adult and non formal education as well as the government policies over the years neglected the Adult and Non formal education contributions towards National development. Government has been in the forefront of championing the eradication of illiteracy in the Country through various mass literacy campaigns. The non governmental organizations and some other committed individuals as well have to a certain extent complemented the efforts of the government towards eradication of mass illiteracy. Proper appraisal technique should be developed for the measurement of the level of involvement of the targeted group, the outcome and post literacy achievement, particularly how neo-literates apply the gains of literacy and how they utilize the skills developed in all their endeavours for job creation and self employment.
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References

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