REPOSITIONING FORESTRY EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

The concept of forestry education cuts across all its facets, that is the professional, technical and vocational. In view of continuous technological changes, forestry education must not be static. It must be versatile in order to be able to meet evolving contemporary challenges. This can be attested to by the great transformation in curriculum development between 1963 and 1986. Though there are presently 20 Universities in Nigeria offering forestry and allied courses, this has not actually impacted on students enrolment. Enrolment figures are still on the low side. For instance, figures of students enrolment for technical forestry education showed an average of 74 per year between 1940 and 1999, while that of M.Sc and PhD stood at 11 and 17 between 1994/95 and 2003/2004 academic sessions respectively. This scenario poses enormous challenges to forestry education. Therefore, in order to reposition forestry education in Nigeria, this paper suggested among other factors that forestry curricula should be well positioned, flexible and adaptable; forestry teachers should be made to undertake pedagogical studies for effective teaching delivery; establishment of forestry education at secondary school level and funding, which is very crucial to an effective delivery of forestry education should be made readily available.