THE Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr Hamid Bobboyi has disclosed that more than N2.5 billion was spent to support the state governments in the implementation of e-learning initiative during the closure of schools occasioned by COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking in an interview with select journalists during the weekend in Abuja, Bobboyi said the pandemic exposed the underlining weakness in the Nigeria educational system.
He said it was unfortunate that the country was lagging behind in deployment of technology for teaching and learning, stressing that while some countries of the world fell back on e-learning during the pandemic because of availability of computers within schools and other digital platforms, noting that exploring this was a huge challenge in Nigeria.
He, however, noted that while quite a number of private schools in Nigeria were able to introduce online learning, most public schools have no infrastructure to support the e-learning learning initiative of the Federal Government.
The Federal Government through the Ministry of Education with collaboration from the international development partners had launched e-learning portal to facilitate teaching and learning at homes during the lockdown.
Bobboyi said open education resources were also made available by some development partners in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Education and UBEC.
He lamented that only two states, Lagos and Edo were able to explore the e-learning platforms provided by the government during, while some other states resorted to radio and television to deliver lessons to the students and pupils.
He said: “Edo had been experimenting on e-learning and digital platforms for some times. The majority now have to fall back on television and radio and UBEC had to quickly look at the situation and asked them what they require from us?
“A lot of the radio stations were owned by the state governments, so, it was easy for them to link up quickly with them to mount some lessons during the COVID-19 lockdown.
“Yes, almost all the states have radio and television stations but the issue now becomes how to generate content that would be relevant to various classes and learners within a particular school system. When we discussed with them to reprioritize, because for UBEC, we can’t produce new money; every Kobo is in an envelope.
“We have to ask them to reprioritize, there is the Teacher Professional Development Fund, funds for water and sanitation, tell us how much you need to use for that particular purpose. At the end of the day, there was a consensus that they needed about N70 million, which we asked them to go ahead to quickly do that. This enables them to have necessary resources to implement the online learning programmes and when you calculate it, N70 million multiplied by 37, you have over N2.5 billion,” he said.
Bobboyi added that COVID-19 raised issues that were very fundamental to the nation’s educational system, saying the issue of how to build digital technology in schools remains critical.
According to him, apart from the absence of stable electricity, computers and other gadgets, he said the digital literacy required by teachers to ensure the teaching and learning was going was also a major a challenge.
“Unfortunately, Nigeria has been lagging behind, you supply computers to schools, the schools cannot afford the electricity bills to power the computers, you provide computers to schools, they are locked up because there are no teachers who know how to operate them.
“This is part of the challenge that we looked at and say how do we reprioritize and refocus that, we don’t pray for another pandemic, but in such a situation how do we respond appropriately.
“The issue of trying to build digital technology is very important to us and we are going to get the necessary approvals and engage the State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) on this so as to safeguard the future of the Nigerian children,” he said.
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