Education must provide ideas, needs of the century, says Odugbemi

Odugbemi

Provost of Orange Academy, Africa’s first practical School of Integrated Brand Experience and Idea Management (IBX), Femi Odugbemi, has called on education managers across the country to ensure that the teaching and learning in their various schools is capable of addressing the contemporary societal needs.

Speaking at the 2018 immersion ceremony of the academy, Odugbemi stated that ideas that are capable of driving the needed development are lacking in most Nigerian schools, even as the country needs human capital that will bring new developmental concepts.

He said, “Our goal in the academy is to create an army of human capital for the Nigerian economy. The whole idea of the academy is to get them to be destructive in a positive way. Nigeria needs human capital, not the human capital that is unemployed, but the ones that want to employ. But our educational system needs to be fit for purpose. The system needs to address the need of the century that we are in, not just to provide employment, but also to provide development and ideas to move Nigeria forward. This is lacking in the system.

“At the academy we are grooming youths that can stimulate fresh thinking on new ideas, create values, build assets or brands. People that can rethink assumptions where development, education and technology is concerned. Our graduands are all graduates already from universities. It should be the responsibility of educationists to mentor this next generation into a space where their energy, creativity and talent are harnessed in such a way as to focus not just on them earning a salary, but on them building things that contribute to the growth of the country.”

At the ceremony where the class of 17th and 18th session of the school’s IBX programme were inducted, creative works of the graduands on dyslexia and election violence, as part of the 2018 Art of Positive Thinking (APT) initiative were also showcased.

Also, a board member, Tunde Owoeye, said the core essence of the academy is to nurture change agents that will revolutionise the business of telling Africa’s story within and beyond. “In line with this notion, we have introduced what we call the Orange Xchange, as part of this year’s immersion.