ADULT EDUCATION AS A TOOL FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Adult education which is often used interchangeably with other notions such as literacy, adult basic education, lifelong learning, continuing education, fall under the umbrella of non-formal education provided as a second chance or opportunity to those that have earlier missed schooling. Apart from being a right of everyone to be educated, adult education paves way for people to contribute to the development of themselves and their society. It is on record that the present level of illiteracy is very high in Nigeria; this makes it difficult for Nigeria to achieve sustainable development. This paper therefore looks at various aspects of sustainable development and how adult education can serve as a tool for all the goals attainment. Using secondary instrument such as various documents and various scholars view, the paper established that there is high number of population of illiterates in Nigeria and the need to drastically reduce the challenges such as poor budgetary allocation, societal perception of adult education, unqualified facilitators among others so that multi-dimensional nature of sustainable development which includes changes in social structures, attitude and all conditions of life from undesirable to the desirable be achieved. The paper therefore recommended that a systematic adult education policy be adopted and compressive education and training opportunities for adults that would expose them to various professional, vocational and other programmes of interest be embraced in order to achieve SDGs and Agenda 2030 in Nigeria.