Essential Ndubuisi
By Ekwi Ajide
A recent UNICEF report says ten point five million Nigeria school children are out of school owing to banditry, kidnaping and COVID-19 pandemic.
In an effort to curb the menace, a three year U.S and UK governments funded activity to significantly increase safe and relevant educational opportunities for children and youth in crisis environments in Nigeria- Addressing Education in Northeast Nigeria, AENN, was launched in 2018.
Speaking at the closing ceremony of the project that had benefitted nearly two hundred thousand out of school children in Borno and Yobe States, USAID Mission Director Dr. Anne Patterson, expressed pleasure at the success of the project, saying a better educated Nigeria is a stronger, more prosperous, and ultimately resilient Nigeria.
She said the activity provided two thousand learning facilities and as such, improved literacy, numeracy, and social emotional skills of the two hundred thousand out-of-school children in formal and non-formal settings, who more than half of them were girls.
According to the Mission Director, it is promising to see that of those girls and boys who participated in the new instruction throughout Borno and Yobe, nine out of ten were able to later transition successfully back into mainstream education despite missing school time because of conflict.
Dr. Patterson, disclosed that utilizing a research conducted by USAID and its partners, the activity was designed to create a sense of safety for young people, and produced in local languages to increase children’s ability to learn and build resiliency from the surrounding conflict hence the conflict-sensitive curricula were supplied in the Hausa and Kanuri languages in more than nine hundred accelerated education centers supported by AENN.
A representative of the federal Ministry of Education, Dr. Folake Davies who is the Director Basic and Secondary , said the project assisted the Federal Government in no small measures to create more certified and safe educational environments for girls and boys in the states in collaboration with major local, federal, and international education establishments.
She said the project will be sustained and replicated to other states of the federation with similar problems and encouraged the benefitting states to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the organisers so as to further develop the capacity of the facilitators.
According to the Deputy Director UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Alex Stevens, the essence of the project was to improve education through genuine partnership and rebuilding the devastated school system also included addressing the gap left by the thousands of teachers who were forced to abandon their jobs in the Northeast.
He stressed that AENN provided conflict-sensitive training to more than two thousand learning facilitators and another six hundred school administrators who can continue to advance the learning opportunities in their respective communities.
Others who spoke at the event including, FHI360 Country Director, Hadiza Khamofu, USAID Deputy Education Office Director, Elice Elegbe, Chief of party AENN, Ayo Oladini, among others said in an effort to further AENN’s success and sustainability, materials from the activity have been adapted as part of the national Accelerated Basic Education Program curriculum package by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council and other partners in the region; promising that as Nigeria continues to accelerate the priority of education, the U.S. government and its partners will continue to support them in their efforts to create equitable, safe, and quality learning opportunities for future generations.
