Transforming Yobe’s education sector
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- Category: Comments
- Written by Abdullahi Bego
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This is the reason that the administration is currently disbursing N200 million to over 14, 000 students as bursary allowances for the 2009/2010 session (bringing the total to over N1 billion spent in four years). It is also the reason that the governor approved the implementation of the Consolidated Polytechnics and Colleges of Education Academic Staff Salary Structure (CONPCASS) in order to ensure that teachers in institutions of higher learning across the State not only remain active in the classroom but also become transformative.
And because the approach is a bottom-to-top one, the Gaidam administration is working to revive and improve basic education as well. Part of this drive is to get primary school teachers enrolled in a Special Teacher Upgrading Programme (STUP) to horn their skills in a climate of constant technological change. STUP will also enable teachers who did not have the minimum teaching qualification to acquire one under the tutoring of the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI). Currently, 3, 000 teachers have so far benefitted from the scheme. Over 500 maths and science teachers have also been trained at the National Mathematical Center Abuja.
Increasing numbers of secondary schools, including at least eight female schools in Potiskum, Dapchi, Gadaka, Buni-Yadi, Ngelzarma, Dagona, etc have also been renovated or are undergoing renovation to bring an incentivizing teaching and learning environment back within the reach of staff and students.
To be fair, nothing in all this is particularly extraordinary. All of these steps and many others in the pipeline are measures that should be taken by any State which desires to place its education sector on a sound footing. Except that in Yobe State; the story wasn’t a straight boulevard strewn with roses. It was no secret that from 1991 when the State was created to 2007 before the inception of the Gaidam administration, the State had seen not a few opportunities missed. For example, despite whatever was done to stem the slide, we used to have one of the highest SSCE failures and one of the lowest school enrolment rates in this part of the country.
A measure of the challenges faced was also that the State-owned University, called Bukar Abba Ibrahim University, had its degree programmes suspended in early 2007 by the late Governor Mamman Ali because it lacked the basic infrastructure – classrooms, lecture halls, faculty buildings, laboratories equipped with the basic tools of scientific research, etc – that even the lowest ranked Universities elsewhere have.
This appalling back story to the sector’s dysfunction was the impetus to Gaidam’s singular attention to education in Yobe – the springboard to turning around the State-owned University into the ‘fastest growing’ in the North, as acknowledged by Professor Abdullahi Mahdi of Gombe State University, and all the modest progress being made so far.
The efforts also ensured that more parents were enrolling and keeping their children in school. Yobe is now ahead of many States in the North in terms of school enrolment - according to the head of the Universal Basic Education Commission who said this on a recent visit to the State - and competes favorably in school completion rates. WAEC and NECO performance is also steadily improving.
Of course, all this is work in progress. Given the tipping point that education has reached throughout the country, it will take even more effort and even more resources to get things working again. It will also take parents keeping track of, and getting actively involved in, their children’s education. It would take teachers taking pride in the performance of their students and simply keeping the hard work going on. But more significant, it will take the students, on whose behalf the Yobe State Government and their parents and teachers are doing much, realizing that their future is what they make of it.
There is no question, however, that Governor Gaidam’s desire to transform the State is showing in measurable terms not just in Yobe’s education sector but in other sectors as well.
Bego is Special Adviser on Media to the Yobe state governor. He can be reached on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Aminiya
Transforming Yobe’s education sector
Category: Comments Written by Abdullahi Bego Hits: 488
Recently, Governor Ibrahim Gaidam approved scholarships for 12 Yobe students – eight males and four females – to study medicine in Russian, Egyptian and Sudanese universities. They will join at least 200 others that the Gaidam administration had sponsored earlier to acquire engineering and medical degrees in Turkey, UK, U.S and Malaysia. Along with thousands of others enrolled in various Nigerian universities and institutions of higher learning and funded by the government, these students are the future that Yobe will need to remain productive and competitive. Over the last two years, Governor Gaidam has given the education sector significant attention. He knows that for the state to grow – for Yobe to fulfill the promise of basic service delivery to its people – it must have a stream of technical and skilled manpower needed to impact life as it is actually lived. Hospitals, for instance, need qualified doctors and personnel and schools qualified teachers – and farmers, who are the major occupational group in the State, need a steady supply of extension agents to learn to refine and imbibe new farming techniques.This is the reason that the administration is currently disbursing N200 million to over 14, 000 students as bursary allowances for the 2009/2010 session (bringing the total to over N1 billion spent in four years). It is also the reason that the governor approved the implementation of the Consolidated Polytechnics and Colleges of Education Academic Staff Salary Structure (CONPCASS) in order to ensure that teachers in institutions of higher learning across the State not only remain active in the classroom but also become transformative.
And because the approach is a bottom-to-top one, the Gaidam administration is working to revive and improve basic education as well. Part of this drive is to get primary school teachers enrolled in a Special Teacher Upgrading Programme (STUP) to horn their skills in a climate of constant technological change. STUP will also enable teachers who did not have the minimum teaching qualification to acquire one under the tutoring of the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI). Currently, 3, 000 teachers have so far benefitted from the scheme. Over 500 maths and science teachers have also been trained at the National Mathematical Center Abuja.
Increasing numbers of secondary schools, including at least eight female schools in Potiskum, Dapchi, Gadaka, Buni-Yadi, Ngelzarma, Dagona, etc have also been renovated or are undergoing renovation to bring an incentivizing teaching and learning environment back within the reach of staff and students.
To be fair, nothing in all this is particularly extraordinary. All of these steps and many others in the pipeline are measures that should be taken by any State which desires to place its education sector on a sound footing. Except that in Yobe State; the story wasn’t a straight boulevard strewn with roses. It was no secret that from 1991 when the State was created to 2007 before the inception of the Gaidam administration, the State had seen not a few opportunities missed. For example, despite whatever was done to stem the slide, we used to have one of the highest SSCE failures and one of the lowest school enrolment rates in this part of the country.
A measure of the challenges faced was also that the State-owned University, called Bukar Abba Ibrahim University, had its degree programmes suspended in early 2007 by the late Governor Mamman Ali because it lacked the basic infrastructure – classrooms, lecture halls, faculty buildings, laboratories equipped with the basic tools of scientific research, etc – that even the lowest ranked Universities elsewhere have.
This appalling back story to the sector’s dysfunction was the impetus to Gaidam’s singular attention to education in Yobe – the springboard to turning around the State-owned University into the ‘fastest growing’ in the North, as acknowledged by Professor Abdullahi Mahdi of Gombe State University, and all the modest progress being made so far.
The efforts also ensured that more parents were enrolling and keeping their children in school. Yobe is now ahead of many States in the North in terms of school enrolment - according to the head of the Universal Basic Education Commission who said this on a recent visit to the State - and competes favorably in school completion rates. WAEC and NECO performance is also steadily improving.
Of course, all this is work in progress. Given the tipping point that education has reached throughout the country, it will take even more effort and even more resources to get things working again. It will also take parents keeping track of, and getting actively involved in, their children’s education. It would take teachers taking pride in the performance of their students and simply keeping the hard work going on. But more significant, it will take the students, on whose behalf the Yobe State Government and their parents and teachers are doing much, realizing that their future is what they make of it.
There is no question, however, that Governor Gaidam’s desire to transform the State is showing in measurable terms not just in Yobe’s education sector but in other sectors as well.
Bego is Special Adviser on Media to the Yobe state governor. He can be reached on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.