Nigeria News
The Impact Of Lagos Education Reform
By Omotayo Ogunbiyi
The impact of qualitative education as the strongest weapon to fight poverty and a useful pillar for nation building and economic prosperity cannot be over emphasized. Considering the generally acclaimed status of education in the development of the society, the Fashola administration has accorded education the attention it deserves. At a time in the state, the problem was that of access to get an opportunity to get an education. However, in the last few years, the problem has been substantially surmounted with Lagos now having a literacy record of over 84 percent.
Recent improvements recorded in external examinations by pupils in the state are indicative of the fact that the reforms and additional trainings being embarked upon for teachers are yielding results. The rehabilitation and construction of well furnished new blocks of classrooms, distribution of free text books, provision of well equipped laboratories and libraries, provision of buses for teachers and students to ease transportation problems, re-launch of uniformed voluntary organizations in the state’s public schools, implementation of Teachers’ Salary Scale (TSS) for teachers in the state public schools, evolvement of the ‘Adopt a School Initiative’, among others are some of the reforms of the Fashola administration in the education sector. To keep the flag flying, the state government recently hosted the third Lagos State Education Summit with the theme, “Qualitative Education in Lagos State: Raising the Standard” at the Eko Hotels and Towers, Victoria Island.
An integral part of the state’s educational reform is the EKO Education Project which has been a huge success thus far. The way the project has been adapted to suit the Lagos experience has promoted accountability and openness through its approval of discretional grants by schools. The Eko Education Project enjoyed an unprecedented high rating from the World Bank, which is a partner in the project.
One aspect of the Eko Project which is fascinating is the volunteer teachers’ scheme which has injected about 20,520 hours per month into the schools system, an equivalent of 183 full time teachers. The spirit behind the Eko Education Project was to improve the quality of education, compel the Government as regulator to monitor the performances of the students, the schools and the teachers and encourage others to challenge themselves for greater heights.
Another innovation by the Lagos Eko Project is the provision of a Report Card for every school, with the card giving detailed account of how a school has performed in relation to other schools, Local Government Areas, Education Districts and statewide, a programme which is unique to the Nigerian assessment system. In its characteristic innovative style of governance, the state government, with a view to involving other stakeholders in the funding of education in the state, instituted the now popular ‘adopt a school policy’. Trough this policy, well meaning individuals, corporate organisations, and religious bodies among others are encouraged to pick and develop a school in their choice location.
The state government has since received favourable response from several stakeholders across the states that have been making massive contributions in this respect. Presently, the state government operates free education programme in all public primary and secondary schools across the state. It should also be stressed that Lagos, unlike other states, does not limit its free education programme to only the indigenes. Consequently, the state spends more money in running its free education programme as it has to make provision for more pupils and students taking into consideration the cosmopolitan nature of the state.
Aside running free education at these levels, the state government has equally invested heavily in the upgrade of infrastructure in public schools in the state through rehabilitation of classrooms, provision of well equipped libraries and laboratories, provision of free text-books, provision of modern teaching devices and other vital school furniture.
Some of the rehabilitated schools include, Ikotun Senior High School, Alimosho, Girls High School, Agege, Okemagba Junior High School, Mojoda, Amuwo Senior Grammar School, Tomia Community Secondary School, Alagbado, Imota Community Grammar School, Imota, Oke-Ira Grammar School, Oke-Ira, Irepodun Primary School 1, Sari Iganmu , Alapere Comprehensive High School, Ketu, Methodist Junior High School, Badagry, Ajumobi Junior Grammar School, Okota, Majidun Senior Grammar School, Majidun, Iloro Junior Grammar School, Agege, Local Authority Nursery/Primary School, Ago-Hausa among others. Till date, the state government has provided over 2,876 new classrooms in the state. In order to reduce the financial burdens on parents, the Fashola administration has sustained the payment of the West African Examination Council and the National Examination Council (NECO) for all of SS3 students in public secondary schools in the State as part of the support for education of the people. The special intervention programme for 495 trainee- teachers to assist WASCE candidates with extra coaching was also introduced.
Similarly, the State Governor recently presented a cheque of N252 Million to 126 junior and senior secondary schools, who have displayed improved performances over a period of time in the first Governor’s Education Award. With the competitiveness that the award will bring into the educational sector, the result would be for the benefit of all stakeholders in Lagos State. Despite its huge investment in public primary and secondary education, the state government remains committed to creating an enabling environment where indigent students in the tertiary institutions would not in any way be short-changed. This is being done through periodic increase of bursary awards, scholarship and grants. Equally, government is presently working on the overhauling of facilities at all the state owned tertiary institutions in order to guarantee qualitative education. Guests at the 2200 days event of the state government, which took place at LASU few weeks ago, would readily attest to the fact that a new LASU is presently evolving. True democracy cannot exist in a society incapable of supporting the aspirations of its youth, and indeed its people. A truly representative government must be able to create the enabling environment for its citizenry to freely express itself in positive ways so that the diverse potentials of its people could be easily harnessed for growth and development. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his immortal classic ‘Democracy in America’ (1835), insists that building the people is more necessary than creating wealth, for the value of the latter is tied to the existence of the earlier. As it is often said, great minds think alike. Undoubtedly, Governor Fashola was having Tocqueville in mind when he declared recently at a public function that “if this investment matures (the investment in the education sector), Lagos will be a better place because we believe clearly, without any doubt, that the greatest resource this country has is not oil but its people.”With the kind of reforms that has been started by the state government through its steadfast focus on upgrade of school infrastructure and teachers’ improvement; a significant progress has undoubtedly been made. However, considering the peculiar challenges of the state, all hands must be on deck for the current tempo to be sustained and further ground covered.
•Ogunbiyi wrote from Lagos
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Posted in Nigeria News. A DisNaija.Com network.
Source: PM News
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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.
The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.
Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.
Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.
Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.
Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.
In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.
Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.
Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.
However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.
Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria
By Ugochukwu Alaribe
Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The market women, said to be from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.
Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.
A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.
Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.
Sourced From: Vanguard News
Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole
The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.
Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.
He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid in January 2020.
‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.
She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.
He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.
The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.
Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.
He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’
He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.
Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.
Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend.
He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart.
Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.
The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”
The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad, saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”
When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose.
Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them.
Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter.
“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said.
Sourced From: Tribune
Nigeria records 55 new COVID-19 infections, total now 165,110
Military, Police Ring Abuja to Forestall Boko Haram Attack
UFC: Usman gets N584m after beating Masvidal
Insecurity: Lagos bans occupation of abandoned buildings
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