Education researcher advocates same school for rich and poor man's kid

In a bid to promote social inclusion in Nigeria, a development and education researcher, Roman Osaghale says rich and poor mans kids should attend the same school.

Speaking on how to fix the education sector on a Channels TV program, Sunrise, Osaghale says the establishment of private and public schools have divided Nigeria into two classes of the rich and the poor.

He therefor called for the promotion of public school education to promote social inclusion in the society, adding that the establishment of private schools which has now become the schools for the rich is a colossal disaster for the economy.

"Public education is what binds the country together. It is what holds and promotes social inclusion. I will give you an example. I have a friend he told me that his biggest problem is that his kids don't have poor friends.

"I went to a public primary and secondary school, there were poor people, there were middle class and there were rich kids. What we have succeeded in doing in this society now is creating a class. Education is meant to promote social inclusion.

"If I put a poor child next to a middle-class child in the school, there is that incentive that the poor child will want to work hard to be like the rich kids.

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"But what we have done now is private schools are for the rich and the public schools are for the extremely poor, and it is the colossal disaster for the economy. We are not seeing the disaster coming and we are not planning ahead to address the repercussion of what is going to happen in the next 20 or 30 years. We have killed social inclusions and that is the truth."