From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has identified traditional, religious and other community leaders as key partners to reducing the menace of out-of-school children in Nigeria.
Executive Secretary of UBEC, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, stated this in Abuja, on Thursday, at the one-day consultative meeting of the national planning committee on the 2022 National Personnel Audit (NPA), with religious leaders on the modalities for the conduct of NPA in all basic education institutions in Nigeria.
He appealed to the religious and traditional leaders whom, he noted, have many schools across the country to support the NPA exercise, saying dearth of data on basic education has remained a major challenge to its implementation in Nigeria, as education planners and decision-makers had to make do with data that is not up-to-date or outrightly falsified.
He said: “It was against this backdrop that the Commission with the State and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Universal Basic Education Boards conducted national personal audits in 2006, 2010 and 2018. The 2018 exercise was more comprehensive as it covered all categories of public and private education institutions unlike the previous exercises that were limited to public schools only.
“We are in the process of conducting another personnel audit of all educational institutions in the country offering full or elements of basic education. This is for the purpose of collecting school data on enrolment, personnel, and facilities, among others.
“The importance of up-to-date, accurate and reliable data in the planning and implementation of educational programmes cannot be overemphasized. Data enables us to plan effectively towards systematic achievement of the educational objectives, track progress made, identify the strengths and weaknesses of implementation strategies, and form the basis for making informed decisions.”
Deputy Executive Secretary (Technical) UBEC, and Chairman of 2022 NPA National Planning Committee, Prof. Bala Zakari, in his remarks, solicited for the cooperation of religious leaders, especially in the area of mass mobilization and sensitization of the heads of their various schools nationwide in readiness for the exercise.
Meanwhile, the Secretary General of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Joseph Daramola, said that gradual erosion of the nation’s values and morals in schools with examination malpractices is becoming a norm in many schools across the country.
He said it was unfortunate that it is no longer only students that are involved in examination malpractices but parents and teachers are also culprits in this, urging goverment and regulatory authorities to be firm on issues of discipline.
“We commend the states that have given back the mission schools to the original owners. Government has failed to properly run the schools that is why everyone is yearning to have the schools back. We appeal to the Goverment to return the mission schools both Christian and Muslims to the original owners to bring back morals.
“If morals are being taught in schools, armed robbery, terrorism, and banditry would be a thing of the past. Parents too should stop rushing to schools for any slightest correction being made on their children.
On strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Daramola called on the Federal Government and ASUU to, without further delay, agree to end the strike.
He urged the Federal Government to look into the plight of ASUU and accede to their demands, while also urging ASUU to take it easy with the Goverment in view of the current economic condition all over the world.
He noted it is the parents and students that bear the brunt of the prolonged strike, adding that many of the students who are idle have taken to crimes and criminality including banditry “because an idle hand is the devil’s workshop”.
