Sunday 27: Emeritus Prof Omolewa, Tola Adeniyi “Abba Saheed” Set for 6-3-3-4 Discourse

Four decades ago, Nigeria staked its future on a formula: 6-3-3-4. Six years to lay a foundation, three to discover a vocation, three more to sharpen it, and four to crown the journey with a degree meant to put skilled hands and trained minds to work rebuilding the nation.

Today, that formula reads less like a policy and more like an obituary, graduates without jobs, technical education hollowed out, and industries still starved of the skills the system was built to supply.

It is against that uncomfortable arithmetic that ValidViewNetwork convenes the fourth edition of its Monthly Global Discourse, asking the question the country has dodged for forty years: was 6-3-3-4 ever truly given a chance to work, or has Nigeria spent four decades grieving a policy it never actually implemented?

Why the Discourse Matters

The conversation lands at a moment when youth unemployment has become impossible to ignore and the gap between Nigeria’s technological ambitions and its educational output keeps widening.

This edition will weigh whether the original 6-3-3-4 blueprint still holds value, or whether Nigeria now needs an entirely new architecture connecting classrooms to industry, including the familiar culprits of inconsistent implementation, weak funding, and poor institutional follow-through, alongside the deepening mismatch between what schools teach and what employers actually need.

Distinguished Discussants

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Chief Tola Adeniyi, also known as Abba Saheed brings more than five decades of journalism, national commentary and public intellectual engagement to the table.

From his early years in broadcast media to his enduring voice as a columnist and cultural thinker, he has consistently pushed conversations on education, culture, identity and national development, a perspective well suited to a system meant to shape not just certificate holders, but the kind of society Nigeria hoped to build.

Emeritus Professor Michael Abiola Omolewa, OON, brings the complementary weight of a global diplomat and education historian.

A former President of the UNESCO General Conference and Nigeria’s Ambassador/Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, he sits on international education boards and holds leadership roles within RCCG, including the Boards of Governors of Christ the Redeemer’s College (Nigeria & UK) and the Board of Trustees of Babcock University.

His decades spent tracking Nigeria’s educational evolution against global best practice make him uniquely placed to judge where 6-3-3-4 succeeded, where it failed, and what recovering it would actually take.

Together, the two offer a rare pairing: the journalist’s long view of Nigeria’s national journey alongside the scholar-diplomat’s grounding in how education systems are built, judged and reformed elsewhere in the world.

The question in front of them is simple to ask and hard to answer, can a promise made forty years ago still be redeemed?

Stakeholders Invited

The discourse is open to stakeholders across education, government, industry, academia, civil society and youth organisations, with Nigerians at home and abroad encouraged to join, engage the discussants directly, and share their own experience of an education system that has shaped, or failed to shape their working lives.

The Monthly Global Discourse takes place every last Sunday of the month from 6pm -8pm WAT.

ValidViewNetwork reports that the September edition will place Nigeria’s technological future squarely under the spotlight, asking whether a forty-year-old promise can still be redeemed, or whether it is time for the country to write itself a new one.

ValidViewNetwork Limited, founded by Dr. Kayode Ogunjobi, FHEA, FFAN, operates on three strategic pillars — Media, Consultancy, and Advocacy, through which it drives credible news reporting, environmental and academic advisory services, and public-interest advocacy.

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