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Mallam
Ibrahim Shekarau (Photo: theleaderassumpta.com)
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THE Minister of Education, Malam
Ibrahim Shekarau, yesterday said the National Universities Commission (NUC) has
discovered 55 illegal universities operating in the country.
Based on reports from Vanguard/The Guardian Shekarau
stated this yesterday, in his keynote address at the 60th National Council of
Education meeting held at June 12 Cultural Centre, Kuto, Abeokuta. Shekarau spoke at the occasion held in Abeokuta,
the Ogun State capital, stated that the relevant law enforcement agencies had
already been informed to take necessary action against the operators.
The minister said the government
would do everything to ensure that operators of such illegal universities are
“stopped from further ruining the future of the nation’s youths.”
He called on state governments to
complement the efforts of the tertiary education regulatory bodies by creating
more awareness on the existence of unapproved universities, polytechnics and
colleges of education by “explaining clearly the damage such institutions can
cause individual victims and society generally.”
The
Minister also explained that Nigeria recorded
mass failure of secondary school pupils in the 2014 Senior Secondary
Certificate Examinations in Mathematics and English language due to lack of
skilled teachers of the subjects .
According
to the minister, the 2014 West African Senior Secondary Certificate
Examinations indicated that only 529,425 candidates out of the 1.7million
candidates who sat for the examination obtained credits in five subjects and
above, including English Language and Mathematics.
Speaking on insecurity in some parts
of the country, which he said had disrupted academic life in a number of public
schools, Shekarau stated: “We can no longer afford to underestimate the need to
map out co-ordinated action plan for our institutions to always be on security
alert.
“There is the need for us to
continuously review security issues in our institutions so as to protect our
children”
On his part, the Ogun State
governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, stated that on my assumption of office in
May 2011, his first mission was to carry out critical assessment of the
education sector with a view to determining appropriate interventions.
“This exercise revealed confounding
challenges which included dilapidated classrooms, acute shortage of
instructional materials and textbooks, insufficient classrooms and furniture
for both students and their teachers, lack of regular training for teachers,
poor commitment by teachers due to lack of incentives and motivation resulting
in poor teaching habits, collapse of supervision and monitoring, poor
governance structures in the schools resulting in indiscipline and outright
gangsterism, insufficient funding and poor remuneration of the workforce”,
Amosun said.
According to the governor: “Our
approach to these myriad of problems was multi-dimensional. Our position was
that no Ogun State child must be denied access to qualitative education for
whatever reason, and this stand is not negotiable. We believe our children must
be adequately prepared for their future roles as leaders of the society.
“Three years, four months down
the line, I am pleased to inform this gathering that we have tackled these
challenges head-on. The first step we took was to provide, sustain and
safeguard unbridled access and equity in education through the introduction of
free, qualitative and compulsory primary and secondary education.”
“We organized massive enlightenment
programmes (even in local dialects) at all levels to ensure the willingness and
eagerness of parents to release and take interest in the educational
development of their children. A state task force was established to comb the
nooks and crannies of the state on regular basis to pick up children loitering
or hawking items during school hours. Such children and their parents/guardians
were counselled in the first instance while subsequent deviance attracted
appropriate sanctions.”
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