Akpan Umoh, Uyo
The Akwa Ibom State Government has commenced training of technical group and council members on human capital development to address poverty and other socio-economic issues to spur sustainable growth and improve life expectancy in the state.
In his opening remarks, the State Focal Person, Mr Uduak Isaac said that the government would continue to invest in the three thematic areas of human capital development.
Isaac said that the state government must improve its investment in the three thematic areas of health and nutrition, education and labour force participation.
In his presentation, Dr Olusoji Adeniyi, South-South Regional Consultant, Human Capital Development Programme said that the State Government need to re-emphasize Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that are involved in human capital development to take it very seriously.
Adeniyi said that human capital development has been neglected over the years due to poor understanding, adding that human capital development is not human capacity development.
“That misconception is what we need to clear. Human capacity development is a component of human capital development.
“Human capital development has three major pillars as enumerated by the WHO and the World Bank which include; health & nutrition, education and labour force participation,” Adeniyi said.
Adeniyi added that the world no longer wants to measure development by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rather, they want to see real development.
He said that there must be real development in the lifestyle of the people, on longevity in terms of the extended life span of citizens.
“It is also the concept around that a child is born today has a good chance of survival in tne infancy from 0 to 5 and not dying from childhood diseases.
“As the child is growing up, the nutritional status of the child is also very important such that the child develops all his mental capacity to be able to read and study in school.
“And when he gets to tertiary institutions because the nutritional value is balanced, the child is able to perform creditably well and the quality of output when he gets to the labour force will be much better.
“These kinds of children will become good citizens of the country because they had good nutrition from infancy and good education and training.
“The longevity of life is almost guaranteed because health, nutrition and capacity building of the child has been taken care of,” he said.
He added that human capital development also involves improving teaching and learning, especially for basic education to enhance the quality of citizens.
According to him, it is not only the quality of the learning environment that is important but also the quality of teachers and learning outcomes.
He emphasized the need for the government to recruit more teachers to improve the teacher pupils ratio in line with international standards.
“In schools, we need to have good teachers, so that is not only the quality of learning environment that is important, while that is important, the quality of teachers and learning outcome is also very important
“We need to get more teachers into public school so that teacher pupils’ ratio is reduced and children can learn more.
“As the children grow on to the level of work, we need to provide opportunities for them to work by building enterprise that they can work in and that would have to change the narratives,” said.
One of the participants, Prof. Comfort Ekpo, said that good nutrition is essential for a child’s mental development. Ekpo, who is a former Vice Chancellor, University of Uyo charged parents to bring up children they could cater for, to enhance their mental development.