Nigeria: Adamu – Tackling Corruption in Education Sector, My Core Mandate
Abuja — The Minister of Education, Adamu
Adamu, in his assumption of duties yesterday at
the Federal Ministry of Education, he said the
Presidency has mandated him to tackle pervasive
corruption bedeviling the educational system in
the country.
Adamu also attributed corruption, under
funding, dearth of regulatory frameworks and
several other challenges to reasons why there
have been rot in the education sector, he
observed that these factors had impacted
negatively on the entire economy.
At the meeting with top management staff of
the ministry, including the newly deployed
Permanent Secretary, Dr. Shade Yemi-Esan, the
minister explained that his priority areas
included revamping the school feeding programme
at the basic level, boosting quality assurance
and enacting laws through a bill to make it
mandatory for all school age children to get
enrolled in schools.
Adamu said: “The core problems of education in
the country,while inter-related,vary from one
level of education to another. It is the crisis of
underfunding which gave birth to a whole series
of other problems such as poor infrastructure
for teaching and learning.
“It is also the cause of absence of laboratory
equipment for teaching and research, poor
condition of service for teachers and the
menance of brain drain from our tertiary
institutions of learning to the so called greener
pastures.
“The crisis of poor enrollment and access which
leave millions of school age children roaming the
streets and millions of others competing for
some thousands of places in our tertiary
institutions and the crisis of regulation which
has turned the entire education system into a
jungle where everything goes.
“The ministry of education under my
stewardship,will confront these problems with all
the seriousness,commitment and strong political
will they desrve to ensure that we address them
once and for all,allowing these problems to
persist is akin to surrendering the fate of our
country to ignorance,something we cannot
afford to do.”
The minister stated that part of his immediate
objectives will be to reform primary education
through regulation and incentives,review and
enforce regulations relating to staffing,capacity
building and quality assurance.
“We will create incentives for enrolment into
primary education by working with states and
local governments to work out modalities for
offering free meals to the pupils as well as
working together with states to enact laws that
will make it mandatory for all school age children
to enrol,” Adamu stressed.
The minister said his administration would take
a comprehensive look at the needs assessment
reports conducted separately for public
universities,colleges of education and
polytechnics with a view to implementing some of
the far reaching recommendations.
“The new action plan that will guide my
stewardship as minister of education will present
practical steps geared towards addressing these
burning issues.
“I must recognise that the reports of the
committees on needs assessment conducted
separately for public universities,colleges of
education and polytechnics contain far reaching
recommendations that,if judiciously
implemented,will go a long way in repositioning
our tertiary education sector,” he stated.
Also, the permanent secretary assured the
minister of the readiness of staff to put in their
best, and contribute their quota to the change
agenda of the government.
