Adult education more accurately defined begins where vocational education leaves off. Its purpose is to put meaning into the whole of life.

Adult education is a multi-disciplinary field that is all-embracing. It’s all-embracing in that up till now, we have not even got a precise definition of adult education. A layman sees adult education as a kind of education for elderly people, forgetting that the constitutional definition of adult education in Nigeria starts from the age of 18. However, there are different definitions of who an adult is from country to country, region to region, state to state.

Yes, I agree! Adult education in our environment is a very necessary complement for education. Adult education as an institution has to be re-energised and reorganised by reminding the public of its importance. In a society like ours with so many adults literally having had no formal education, adult education should be dynamic so that it helps fill some of these gaps. The fact that adult education seems to have declined so drastically is also a symptom of what has happened to us as a people and as a country, both in terms of education itself and in the application of knowledge generally.

In conventional education the student is required to adjust himself to an established curriculum; in adult education the curriculum is built around the student's needs and interests.

Adult Education is the key to the 21th century country.

Vocational education is designed to equip students with the proper means for arriving at their selected goals. Adult education goes beyond the means and demands new sanctions, new vindications of ends.

Up till now, majority of our people in Nigerian do not know what adult education has for them – even some of the students we lecture here. Each year, we set aside a week for them, which we tag the ‘Orientation Week’, to enlighten them on what adult education stands for. And then, they begin to ask questions on what they could do as an adult educator; and I say to them that it’s a kind of discipline that could make them function in any society. An Adult Educator could get appointment at various ministries. We have agencies for Adult and Non-Formal Education all over the country; and of course, recently, there was an edict passed by the Nigerian National Association of Adult Education (NNAAE) which made the federal government give a statement that every existing university in Nigeria must have an Adult Education Department; and that all colleges of education must also have a Department of Adult Education.

It’s that it’s high time all the nations of the world had a precise concept of adult education; and that each government of all nations and countries of the world should be conscious of the fact that without adult education, no nation can develop.

People think of education as something that they can finish. And what’s more, when they finish, it’s a rite of passage. You’re finished with school. You’re no more a child, and therefore anything that reminds you of school - reading books, having ideas, asking questions - that’s kid’s stuff. Now you’re an adult, you don’t do that sort of thing any more.

You have everybody looking forward to no longer learning, and you make them ashamed afterward of going back to learning. If you have a system of education using computers, then anyone, any age, can learn by himself, can continue to be interested. If you enjoy learning, there’s no reason why you should stop at a given age. People don’t stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age.

What’s exciting is the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there’s now a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it’s time to die, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There’s only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it.

The new education has as its purpose the development of a new kind of person, one who — as a result of internalizing a different series of concepts — is an actively inquiring, flexible, creative, innovative, tolerant, liberal personality who can face uncertainty and ambiguity without disorientation, who can formulate viable new meanings to meet changes in the environment which threaten individual and mutual survival. The new education, in sum, is new because it consists of having students use the concepts most appropriate to the world in which we all must live. All of these concepts constitute the dynamics of the quest-questioning, meaning-making process that can be called "learning how to learn."

It depends on individuals; you know what you want. If you want to get a certificate within the university setting, fine. There are various departments and various areas of specialisation in the university system; but the fact remains that once you come for Adult Education, you have varieties of choices to make and you end up like most of the students we have produced within the system who are now successful people all over the place. Whatever any student in the system of Adult Education has chosen to do career-wise in future, we get him\her integrated and perfected.

Our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range. There is need of a broader scope, a higher aim. True education means more than the pursual of a certain course of study. It means more than a preparation for the life that now is. It has to do with the whole being, and with the whole period of existence possible to man. It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers. It prepares the student for the joy of service in this world and for the higher joy of wider service in the world to come.

People think of education as something that they can finish. And what's more, when they finish, it's a rite of passage. You're finished with school. You're no more a child, and therefore anything that reminds you of school - reading books, having ideas, asking questions - that's kid's stuff. Now you're an adult, you don't do that sort of thing any more.

You have everybody looking forward to no longer learning, and you make them ashamed afterward of going back to learning. If you have a system of education using computers, then anyone, any age, can learn by himself, can continue to be interested. If you enjoy learning, there's no reason why you should stop at a given age. People don't stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age.

What's exciting is the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there's now a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it's time to die, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There's only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it.

Education conceived as preparation for life locks the learning process within a vicious circle. Youth educated in terms of adult ideas and taught to think of learning as a process which ends when real life begins will make no better use of intelligence than the elders who prescribe the system. Brief and rebellious moments occur when youth sees this fallacy clearly, but alas, the pressure of adult civilization is too great; in the end young people fit into the pattern, succumb to the tradition of their elders—indeed, become elderly-minded before their time.