A Review of Open & Distance Education and Human Development in Nigeria

Distance Education have a lot of potential gains – such as meeting the education needs of the teeming population of qualified students who could not gain admission to tertiary institution; some of these are indigent students who could hardly afford formal tertiary education and so need to work and learn simultaneously. More so, the higher institutions in Nigeria are hardly able to absorb 30% of applicants on a yearly basis. With population increase, the situation is becoming aggravated with each passing year. The current state of the study centres needs urgent attention. This study, therefore, focused on empirically ascertaining the state of Open and Distance Education (ODE) in Nigeria and strives to evolve a pragmatic solution to the challenge of ODE in Africa. The research designs adopted for the first phase of this study is the case study design. The second phase of the study is devoted to test-running the proposed Information and Computer Technology (ICT) based solution. From findings in this study, the speculation that there are pertinent challenges in the current ODE practices in Nigeria has been confirmed. Thus, providing information required for improved platform for ODE implementation in Covenant University and hence the proposed recommendations.