Governor Adamu restates commitment to enhance quality of education

Governor Abdullahi Adamu has restated his administrations strong commitment to enhance the quality of education being provided for the children of Nasarawa state. Governor Adamu made this commitment while receiving officials of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Literacy Enhancement Assistance Project (LEAP) who paid him a courtesy call.

Governor Adamu noted that one of the cardinal programmes of his administration was to ensure that education was adequately and properly provided for the young people because that was the cradle upon which development indices in the state could be measured. He said that on assumption in office, a tour of most schools in the state was undertaken to assess their level of preparedness for the new policy. What was discovered during the tour was an abysmal state of decay, a situation that cannot be tolerated by any government.

In order to breathe a new lease of life into educational provision, the government immediately embarked on a three-pronged programme of educational improvements involving infrastructural improvements; recruitment of additional teachers and the provision of incentives for the faculty. In addition to this, the state also became the first state in the country to deliberately commit 28% of its annual budget to the education sector.

The result of all these efforts, according to Governor Adamu was that there has been massive improvement in the number of passes recorded in all national examinations. From a situation in which only five students passed the secondary school examinations in 1998, the state produced the second highest number of passes in the year 2000, nationwide.

Governor Adamu therefore urged the officials of USAID and LEAP to feel free to work in the state as the government considered their work as a partnership in the development of the education sector.

Speaking earlier, the leader of the delegation and Deputy Country Director of USAID in Nigeria, Sherry Suggs, stated that the work of USAID had been resumed in Nigeria with a new focus on Democracy and Governance; Education; Health; Economic Policy and Reform and Agriculture. She said the Education programme will focus on literacy and numeracy, which they have found, was very low among Nigerian pupils. It was on this basis that they developed the LEAP project which will focus of the improvement of these skills at the primary school level.

Expounding on the LEAP project, the Director of the project, Ian Smith, said that three states have been chosen to serve as pioneers in the project. Of the three states, Nasarawa was going to have the benefit of being the first state where work would commence.

Mr. Smith stated that the project would have a double benefit in the sense that the Interactive Radio Instruction programme will broadcast lessons which will support content and teacher training. He informed the Governor that at the initial stage of the project, 110 schools in three local government areas would be involved.

The eight-man delegation included Dr. Sandy Oleksy-Ojikutu, USAID education advisor and Melinda Taylor, USAID basic education advisor.