CAPACITY BUILDING NEEDS OF STATE AGENCY DIRECTORS IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN ADULT EDUCATION IN NORTH CENTRAL ZONE OF NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

Education is indispensable to national development. The Federal Government of Nigeria in her national Policy on Education (FRN, 2004), highlighted this. The policy states that education is an instrument for national development and that it fosters the worth and development of the individual, for each individual’s sake and for the general development of the society. The Federal Government made provisions for education at the pre-primary, primary, secondary, tertiary levels and adult literacy and non-formal education.

In 1975, the Federal Ministry of Education created an adult and non-formal education branch of the Ministry and in 1977 the first National Policy on Education (NPE) was published. In the document, Adult Education was recognized for the first time, as a driving force for development and the objectives stated as follows:

(i)                to provide functional literacy education for adults who have never had the advantage of any formal education;

(ii)             to provide functional and remedial education for young people who prematurely dropped out of the formal school system;

(iii)           to provide further education for different categories of completers of the formal education system in order to improve their basic knowledge and skills; and

(iv)           to give the adult citizens of the country necessary aesthetic,

cultural and civil education for public enlightenment.

In order to achieve these objectives, it is necessary that adult education must be effectively managed. Effective management of adult education implies a situation where the stated objectives of the adult education are achieved. It is a situation in which personnel resources are utilized effectively for the achievement of the goals of adult education. Effective management of adult education therefore depends, to a large extent, on effective utilization of resources, especially personnel resources. As Ernest Boyer (in Sparks, 1984:89) observed: