THE chairman, Senate Committee on Basic and Secondary Education, Senator Ibrahim Gaidam, has advocated for more funding to the education sector in order to address the multiple challenges confronting the sector, including infrastructure decay, insecurity and strikes by staff unions.
Gaidam, who was represented by the vice chairman, Senate Committee on Basic and Secondary Education, Senator Akon Eyakenyi, spoke in Abuja while leading other members of the committee on the monitoring of the ongoing 2022 National Personnel Audit of both private and public schools being conducted nationwide by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).
He commended the UBEC for conducting the exercise, which he noted would help to generate an accurate data bank that would help policy-makers and the implementation of government‘s policies aimed at improving the quality of education in Nigeria.
The former Yobe State governor, earlier led his colleagues on courtesy visit to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Universal Basic Education Board, where he empathised with the chairman of the board, Alhasan Sule, who was one of the victims of the Kaduna train kidnap.
Sule regained his freedom after about three months in the den of the kidnappers.
Gaidam noted that the essence of the personnel audit was to help planners to gather information about teachers in schools, students, infrastructure and other challenges that would guide in policy formulation and implementation.
He said it was unfortunate that some children sat on bare floors to learn in some schools and the teachers were seen standing while marking the examination papers because they had no place to sit.
He added that with the rising security challenges in the country, there is a need to provide security in all the schools nationwide while ensuring that schools are properly fenced to prevent invasion by attackers.
He noted that all of these required adequate funding to be able to address them.
He said that “the education sector needs more funding and we have been crying about that in the red chamber. If we ignore that the country will have issues to face.”
He appealed to private schools to cooperate with the UBEC officials and participate fully in the personnel audit exercise, expressing concern that the impression he had was that some private schools had refused to allow enumerators into their schools.
He noted that the foundation of education is very important, which the UBEC is responsible for, from the primary to junior secondary schools before turning the the learners into the senior secondary and further into tertiary institutions.
Chairman, FCT SUBEB, Sule, in his remarks, called on the governments at all levels and stakeholders to ensure that access to quality education is provided to every Nigerian children as this is critical towards addressing the spate of insecurity and other challenges besetting the nation.
He described as awful his experience in the hands of the terrorists, saying, Boko Haram members are those who lack quality or access to quality education.
“You will not appreciate freedom until you are taken out of your comfort zone and restricted from your daily routines but so far, I’m happy that I’m talking to the right people now.
“My little observation of these Boko Haram militants is that they lack quality education. Therefore, we need to ensure the introduction of free basic education; emphasise and ensure that every child is given equal opportunity to education,” he said.
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