The Director of Studies, Centre for
International and Advanced Professional Studies, Prof. Anthony Kila,
speaks about the link between professional training and economic
development among other issues in this interview with IFE OGUNFUWA
What is the place of professional development?
It is very essential; without continuous
learning, a professional dies. That is why a lot of people and
organisations are lagging behind. The world moves quickly and things
change. When you use your computer, it is always telling you of updates.
The only way to catch up is to continue to develop oneself. In other
places, continuous professional development is very mandatory whether as
a lawyer, banker or even a doctor. But for every profession, you are
supposed to have a minimum number of hours for professional development
in a year, that is if you have the common sense to see the need. That is
why we do three programmes: postgraduate studies, professional courses
and some open programmes targeted at some sectors or professionals for a
few days.
If you want to be competitive, you have
to keep upgrading your skills because the system changes, people change
and the consumer who was able to afford your products three years ago
may change today. For instance, people who spend so much money on phone
are so young that you have to speak their language.
Is there a link between professional development and the state of the country’s economy?
There is a link because we have talked
so much in this country about various kinds of development but we have
not really acted on human development. I was talking to the
manufacturers’ association some weeks ago, and one thing I said to them
was that if we look at the new mantra, ‘Made in Nigeria’ ‘Buy made in
Nigeria,’ it is because of the dwindling revenue from oil and the
challenges with access to foreign exchange. We tend to change our
attitude to buy made-in-Nigeria products. Although people are talking
about this, nobody has thought about how to train producers.
Even when we talk about farming, nobody
has said let us train 1,000 producers. We talk about entrepreneurship,
but we don’t talk about the technology and science of production
management that people should know, whether they produce fish or
ceramics or electronics. There should be a manager that understands
production and operation but no one is talking about that.
Based on that, we are starting a
professional certificate in production and operation management. That is
in response to the needs of a developing country. The problem is that
we haven’t been able to train people to do things. We should know that
when we say we want to achieve something, our people are involved and
the first step is to train them. We admire the Asian countries as an
example and what we don’t know is that it didn’t happen by chance. They
decided that every year, they were going to train 1,000 people in a
specific area and it was continuous. Unfortunately, good things don’t
happen naturally, it is bad things that happen naturally.
Good things have to be planned,
sustained and monitored. It is a shame that it does not happen in the
public sector and states; in reality, it is the individual that takes
care of themselves. People have to wake up to it.
What informed the establishment of this centre?
I was in Cambridge and the idea of CIAPS
was an international idea rather than a Nigerian idea. There was a lot
of problems for international education for non-United Kingdom-based
people. We thought about it and we said instead of getting thousands of
people to go to foreign countries because they could not get some kind
of education in their country, why don’t we get foreigners to go to
their country. Hence, centres like this came up in Asia, Africa and in
the far East. It is a kind of commonwealth project.
In Nigeria, what we thought about is to
try and establish an academic and research centre that goes beyond
certification. It is a graduate school because you have to be a graduate
to come here. Our idea is to be a factory of professionals; a place
where we take people and train them for specific types of professions.
What we try to do is to mix the best of theory and practice. We have
adopted various kinds of approach. We have a unique method of learning
and teaching called OBE, which stands for Outcome-Based Education. The
idea is to track how to do things. When we plan our curriculum, we speak
to businesses and employers to look at what they want in the next set
of people they will employ. Our curriculum is shaped around that so that
people who come to us will be job-ready wherever they go.
Whether they are starting their own
business, which we encourage a lot, or they are going to work somewhere,
they are trained to solve those problems and they gain experience by
learning through the curriculum and executing projects.
Do you have international affiliation?
We have international affiliation with
the European Academy of Higher Education and other ones. Something makes
me laugh about affiliation in Nigeria; the way we are fixated about it.
Presenting yourself as affiliated to an international institution means
that you live in the boys’ quarters of a big mansion. But we don’t see
it that way. We are just very proud of it. We have gone directly to get
the centre accredited. We have accredited each programme because we see
ourselves (maybe because I have taught in Cambridge and because some of
our people are part of faculties from Havard, Cambridge and Oxford) as
partners. We relate and do programmes with them. And also, because the
things we try to do are based on this environment but can compete with
international world. If you take business studies, there is no textbook
that teaches business plan and factor in necessity for a generator
because things are done in theory, not practical.
What informed the choice of courses you offer?
We looked at the areas which we call
essentials for developing countries. We look at courses in education
which we think a lot of good practitioners need. We look at courses in
business management which we think the country need. We look at areas of
project management, finance, stockbroking, Information and
Communications Technology and many more.
No comments:
Post a Comment