Wednesday, May 22, 2002

National Open U. of Nigeria Plans to Start Operations in October By KATE GALBRAITH Lisbon National Open University of Nigeria, which ran aground two decades ago, is finally scheduled to open for business in October and plans to rely little on the Internet for course delivery. Instead, the distance-learning institution will emphasize traditional media, particularly television and radio, that already reach a wide audience in Nigeria, said Olugbemiro Jegede, director general of the university. "Even the most mobile Nigerians will never switch [the radio] off," he said Tuesday during the World Education Market conference here. Print materials, audio and videocassettes, and CD-ROM's also will be used. First conceived of in 1983, National Open University of Nigeria was aborted two years later after a military coup. Now the university is back, and its backers hope that it will ease the strain on the overburdened state university system. The university will make a priority, Mr. Jegede said, of ensuring that course content will have a local flavor, with any courses taken from the West explicitly customized to fit with Nigeria's linguistic and cultural needs. "By developing materials ourselves, we are also developing capacity," he said. Rather than waiting for Western distance-learning programs to scoop up Nigerian students first, it is important to develop education "from an African perspective," Mr. Jegede said. "Every year, one million students [hope to matriculate], but every year the universities can only take 20 percent of these people. Where do you keep the remaining 800,000?" Mr. Jegede said. The university, he said, is a partial solution, starting with 60,000 students. The university is not the only feature of the democratically elected Nigerian government's push for distance education. It dovetails with a Virtual Library Project established in February among universities in the country. National Open University of Nigeria would not be the first such institution in Africa. Egypt, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe are among others with programs. "There are a lot of them springing up," said Mr. Jegede. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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