Benjamin Babine, Abuja

The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr Kashifu Abdullahi, has said that the schooling system in Nigeria will be improved through technological advancements, stressing that tech is key to improving learning productivity.

The DG, who was represented by NITDA’s Director of Corporate Strategy, Dr Collins Agu, made this remark at the 2020 EdTech summit which was held virtually.

He stressed that the COVID-19 pandemic has created a global learning crisis and caused all sectors, including traditional schooling, to change.

‘Without bold reforms in education through the introduction of education technology and clear policies to guide us through, many people will lack the necessary skills to fill the new positions in the future economies and societies that are anticipating to be fundamentally different,’ he stated.

‘Our educators have a responsibility to prepare students, providing them, not only with the knowledge and understanding of the technologies but also the skills needed to make them work-ready and succeed in a fast-changing world.’

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He went further to stress that the NITDA has introduced an award-winning EdTech solution, “The Unity Board”, with an IoT/AI STEAM Education Platform, through the help and leadership of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Pantami.

According to the DG, ‘The Unity Board’ will drive learning and teaching of emerging technologies, local content development, and to indigenise technology for human capital development.

‘The Unity Board is a hands-on tools that will help students to build their skills through critical thinking, communications, problem-solving and invention and will ignite great things in them,’ he added.

Abdullahi further explained that the educational tools, techniques and curriculum used for decades by the sector may no longer be of use, hence, the need for these skills, like the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence(AI), Robotics, Virtual Reality, Cloud Computing, 3D printing, and many more be put in place.

He, however, implored for collaborations with various stakeholders and MDAs to utilize our indigenous education technology solution, ‘the Unity Board,’ to enable our educational sectors to measure up with the fast-changing world and diminish deficiency in all our sectors.