From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
The Federal Government, through the National Universities Commission (NUC), is planning to introduce a new gender course in the Nigerian universities.
The course, Gender and Transformative Leadership (GTL) which will be a General Studies (GS) Course for all students, is expected to be implemented by the 2017/2018 academic year. Universities which have the capacity and meet the criteria can begin the implementation of programme as soon as it is approved by the NUC.
The curriculum, according to NUC, will be a corrective step to the acclaimed gender imbalances in not only Nigeria educational system but in other affairs of Nigeria .
At a workshop on Development of Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards for the Course in Abuja yesterday the NUC Executive Secretary, Professor Julius Okogie explained that the workshop was organised by NUC in partnership with some international organizations to sensitize the stakeholders on the content of the curriculum, and as well, harvest their inputs that would enable the course achieve its objective of eliminating issues of gender imbalance in Nigerian schools. He urged the stakeholders to offer their expertise and experiences for a clean and widely accepted document.
Represented by Mr. Chinedu Mafiana, the NUC boss who was said to be on official assignment abroad explained that the process of the realisation of the project, which has support of some international organizations like UNESCO, UN women and host of others has been on since 2014, and the final document is expected to be out before the end of 2016.
Dr. Sessou said that Gender and Transformative Leadership curriculum was developed and contextualize for Nigeria by forty (40) experts in 2014, with the inclusion of some Nigerian professors and lecturers of gender related courses.
He added that the modules have already been used to train over 200 facilitators prior to the 2015 general elections to advocate the importance of women participation in elections.