Paul Orude, Bauchi

Special Adviser to Governor Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi State on Education and Public Enlightenment, Comrade Sabo Mohammed, has explained that  the declaration of a state of emergency in the sector was to overhaul the system.

Sabo said that education in the state had suffered prolonged and persistent neglect by successive administrations. Hence, the governor’s determined to overhaul the sector and put education in the front burner by providing both human and material resources to meet up with the challenge of educating its citizenry.

“The emergency in practical sense is to improve the facilities, restore the confidence of parents to bring back their children to public school and more importantly by providing the needful in terms of materials, in terms of capable and licensed and trained teachers to implement the education of the citizenry as enshrined in the National Policy on education.

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“Governor MA Abubakar, believes that when the citizenry are functionally educated, then you will have a very dynamic, very robust and very productive citizenry, taking into cognizance that we are in the north east that is being ravaged by these ungodly people of insurgency, there is influx of people from Borno, Yobe and some parts of Adamawa State,” he said.

Sabo recalled that in the governor’s maiden broadcast to the people of the state on June 2, 2015, “He was asked by the media what was his priority and he answered education, education, education and that is why immediately he assumed the mantle of leadership he constituted a high-powered committee under the leadership of the deputy governor Nuhu Gidado with prolific and erudite scholars  across all the diverse fields of various fields of  knowledge with the view to overhauling the education system of education so as  to come out with a road map of addressing the prolonged neglect of the  sector by successive administrations.

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“They came up with a very fantastic and far-reaching commendation and the government is painstaking implementing the recommendations as it affects the various levels of education in the state.”

He  explained that in the 2016, 2017 and 2018  budget,  “the education sector took the  Lion share of about 20 percent with corresponding releases, not only that, the world is moving towards technical education, so the governor allocated over 100 million for the procurement and provision and distribution  of technical material in eight technical colleges in education.”

He said further that, “Due to over-explosion of students in urban and semi-urban places in the state, the ministry of education provided over 10, 000 desks for pupils and students in both the urban and semi-urban cities, organises series of capacity building for teachers at primary, secondary and  tertiary education in the area of new pedagogy and methodology of teaching, classroom management , teacher-student relationship and  effective school  management.

Reacting to the state of emergency declaration on education, the Academic Sstaff Union OF Colleges of Agriculture (ASUCA) College of Agriculture, Bauchi branch, Mallam Ahmed Bello, said the college lacked infrastructural development.

Bello said: “It is a welcome development because most of the important structures are not in place, the classrooms are grossly inadequate, we don’t even have a single lecture theatre at the Bauchi College of Agriculture and the existing laboratories are virtually empty, without equipment” he said.

Bello lamented that the school had a big and befitting Green House that is now in a dilapidated state and needs rehabilitation.

“This is a very important structure in the college that can help in the process of teaching and learning and research,” he stated.