Minister of State for Education, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, believes that the administration of President Jonathan will surmount the current security challenges even as it works towards transforming the country.WHAT hope do we have for the overall development of the nation this year' The administration of President Goodluck Jonathan is heading towards ensuring that Nigerians from all walks of life completely benefit from the transformation agenda. All the plans of the government are geared towards developing a nation that all Nigerians will be proud of. The President is providing the right leadership and all the ministers and key government officials are providing the needed support for the goals of the administration to be attained. One thing is absolutely clear, the government of the day has commenced the total revival of the nation and this is a known fact.Sir, the nation is experiencing security challenges and there was the recent strike on fuel subsidy removal.You will agree with me that all nations of the world have different levels of security challenges and Nigeria cannot be an exception. However, in our case, the government is on top of the situation and concrete steps have been taken to resolve the security challenges that now face the nation. With the steps that President Jonathan and the security agencies have taken, these security issues will be totally resolved in a no distant future. Our advantage as a nation is that the President has the capacity to drive the process towards the return to peace in the nation. He has proven to be a calm and calculative leader with the instinct for the right and futuristic leadership needed by the nation at this critical period in its history. For the complete deregulation of the downstream petroleum sector, it has been agreed by all that it is the right thing to do. Nobody has spoken against the need for this policy shift because of the benefits that will accrue to the nation's economy. What people have talked about is the methodology. That being the case, it is in the best interest of the nation that this policy is implemented to its conclusion so that all sections of the population will benefit from the investments of government that will arise from the complete deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum sector. Indeed, key sectors of the economy like education and infrastructure will benefit, leading to the overall development of the nation. The deregulation of the downstream sector of the economy will help the nation far better than the present state of affairs.For education, what are specific areas that you think Nigerians will benefit'The administration is working towards making education very functional and a means of empowering the people, especially the less privileged. You will agree that education is the best way to empower a large percentage of the population. The government of President Jonathan is concerned with the creation of jobs and that is what we intend to do with education. The government has started the process of developing technical and vocational education in a manner to create millions of jobs for Nigerian youths. What we are doing is to ensure that the curriculum of the vocational and technical colleges is aligned with the respective industries and realities of the economy to create the needed jobs for graduands of these schools. The government has deliberately worked out a scheme to depart from the past when technical and vocational schools did not serve the purpose for which they were set up. We are moving towards a well trained workforce skilled in different trades who will be self reliant and also in position to work in industries, medium scale organisations and factories to earn a respectable living for themselves. The government is de-emphasising the over reliance on certificates, rather than the capabilities of skilled tradesmen. Technical and Vocational Centres will be established across all the six geo-political zones, while the existing technical colleges will be fully strengthened this year to provide functional technical and vocational education to Nigerian youths.Sir, how can these colleges that have failed to deliver quality education in the past start to develop now'Like I said earlier, we are taking a fundamental look at the curriculum of these schools and ensure that the curriculum is in a state that graduands of these schools can be employable and employers of labour. Furthermore, the government will work in the coming months to build the capacity of teachers in vocational and technical schools to make them deliver the kind of education needed to generate the nature of employment that the administration is interested in. Also, we will have a fundamental shift in the quality of teachers in these vocational and technical colleges. We intend to attract teachers with industry and practical experience to help in training the students to be practical oriented against the current situation where training is theoretical in nature. Some of our technical colleges are not equipped with the right equipment to train our students, but we will remedy that in selected schools in the course of this year.You visited Highbury College, Portsmouth, a renowned technical and vocational institution in United Kingdom, what is responsible for this'My visit to this reputable institution is at the instance of the school's management. They wrote to the ministry seeking partnership to help in developing the nation's technical and vocational education. After necessary investigation, we accepted the invitation. I visited the school with the Executive Secretary of National Educational Research Development Council, the Executive Secretary of UBEC, the chairman of the Forum of State Education Commissioners, the director of Basic and Secondary Education and two principals of technical colleges. The aim was to drive home the complete transformation of the nation's technical and vocational education. Our desire is to build a strong international network which will assist us make our vocational and technical education truly functional. We have involved the states, the schools and different implementing agencies to ensure that we get it right. We are interested in creating millions of jobs by providing the right training to our youths and this we will drive to its logical conclusion. At Highbury College, Portsmouth, which incidentally is administered by a Nigerian, we saw a down to earth system of vocational and technical education that helps to uplift less privileged members of their community, without robbing them of their dignity. We will tap from the positives of the programmes of this school as we have started to build areas of possible collaboration, especially in the capacity building of our vocational and technical teachers. We are also reaching our to different schools and experts in Asia and Europe to ensure that our technical education becomes functional in all ramifications.Beyond this renewed drive on vocational and technical education, what next for basic education generally'Remember that at the close of last year, I met with all the major stakeholders driving the nation's basic education. I received the different action plans for 2012, which I demanded from them in the fourth quarter of 2011 and we extensively discussed the implementation of these plans. We have set in motion the implementation of aspects of the distilled plans with the intention to ensure that all Nigerian children of school age have access to quality education. This is the dream of President Goodluck Jonathan that Nigerian children should have access to quality education and he has already made the situation right with the budget of 2012 geared towards that direction. This year, we also hope that we will uplift a reasonable number of Federal Unity Colleges to centres of excellence to be emulated by states, private owners and non governmental organizations. Before the end of the first quarter, all stakeholders of universal basic education at the federal, state and local councils will meet to chart a better way to improve access to basic education, especially by encouraging the states and local councils to play their respective roles.
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