The Executive Secretary, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr Hamid Bobboyi has revealed that the report of the 2022 National Personnel Audit (NPA) on basic education institutions in the country will soon be released to guide the government and other stakeholders in the efforts to fix the sub-sector.
This came as friends, academia and top government functionaries on Monday paid glowing tribute and eulogy on the late Professor Gidado Tahir, the pioneer Executive Secretary of UBEC.
UBEC Executive Secretary, Bobboyi and others spoke at a one-day colloquium, organised by UBEC in honour of the late Gidado Tahir, with the theme, “The Nigerian Child: Dynamics of Educational Opportunities.”
Bobboyi said the Commission chose the topic given the role Prof Gidado played as one of the key promoters of basic education in Nigeria.
Bobboyi said that the idea of the colloquium was to project the kind of dynamics and challenges within the basic education sub-sector in the area of funding, school attendance and teacher development within the context of the legacies of Tahir.
He said the late Tahir through his giant stride in the sector was able to bring a minimum of 5 million children back to school.
According to him, Tahir has been one of the key promoters of basic education in the country as he founded the National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE) and UBEC.
Speaking on the number of out-of-school children in the country, he said that the Commission was relying on the proposed conduct of the census by the National Population Commission (NPC) to be able to get the correct number of out-of-school children in the country.
The 2018 National Personnel Audit of both private and public basic education Institutions in Nigeria put the number of out-of-school children at 10.2 million.
Bobboyi said: “There is a need for us to strategies and get involved in projects, we need to engage, discuss and strategies in the project that can help us understand these challenges and how best to address them.
“We have just finished the report for the 2022 National Personnel Audit (NPA)- the schools’ census and assessment of learning in the education sector that will give us an idea of the extent the children are learning and areas of difficulties.
“The report is almost ready but we need the population figure of the different age groups to ascertain the actual number of out-of-school children because the estimate they are making is no longer reliable.
“It is the population commission that can give us the accurate figure of the out-of-school children in the country based on the population of the various local government.
“The whole idea is trying to see how we can address those issues within the context of the legacies that have been left behind by Gidado,” he stated.
The Director of Basic Education, Federal Ministry of Education, Dr Folake Olatunji-David, said there was a need to tap into the potential of the Nigerian child for local and global opportunities.
Olatunji-David said that the dynamics of these opportunities if harnessed would expose the multidimensional goals of the Nigerian child.
“There are dimensional challenges facing basic education ranging from a high level of poverty, a high number of out-of-school children and others.
“The Nigerian government established the commission to tackle some of these challenges and over the years the commission has been working to address these problems.
“It is therefore the responsibility of stakeholders to have a proper study and information in order to understand the challenges and opportunities that we still have,” she said.
Until his death on Jan.13, 2022, the deceased was the Chairman Board, National Commission for Nomadic (NCNE) and the pioneer Executive Secretary, UBEC.
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