Geography is one subject which many people mostly non-geographers claim to know about almost everything. Such claims seem to arise from certain exposures to geographical knowledge and teaching at early education at the primary and secondary schools.
The creation of a happy society is one of the aims of any government, and has indeed been the aim of successive Nigerian governments who since 1970 have expressly stated this in the development plans (National Policy on Education).
The role of the geographers and the geographical knowledge in national development has sometimes been nationally appreciated by government. According to Okafor et al (1983), in recent years, the federal government set up experts panel that includes geographers to advice them on such issues as food production and moral development.
In all countries of the world, the crucial problem of development is that it must take place in space even a defined territory. The geographer is better equipped to produce descriptions of the distributions of people of his country and identify desirable social and economic links between them, at a time when Nigeria is on the threshold of determining a new political arrangement for its people. Geography and geographers had a unique opportunity for making their voices heard and presence felt. Okafor et al (1983).
There are many other areas in which geography may be used to effectively solve problems of the society. Many departments of geography in Nigeria have developed such specialist programmes such as urban and regional planning, land development, and land use management rural area development e.t.c. many of these programmes were actually designed to meet the challenges of economic development in various parts of the country. Also then there is the need to provide requisite models and explanations of these. Also future problems are relatively unknown and for this reasons, they are also difficult. Societal change is also difficult but geography and geographers are very useful tools in developing requisite methodologies for tackling these problems.
Consequent upon this, the need therefore exits for the education of geographers and non-geographers alike not only in what constitute the subject of geography but also in what ways the subjects is useful for the articulation and the solution of the problems of national development in a society such as ours.
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