TETFUND scribe makes case for education as priority
http://www.gatewaymail.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Prof.-Suleiman-Bogoro...Executive-Secretary-TETFUND..jpg
NIGERIA: FROM the Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), Professor Suleiman Elias Bogoro, has come a charge to state governments in the country.
The executive secretary wants the second level of government to prioritise education and make it a first line charge in their budgets.
Bogoro, while delivering the 10th anniversary lecture of the Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), in Ijagun recently, lamented the funding inadequacies confronting education at all levels, especially at the senior secondary school level.
“In the circumstance of reality that education must be lifted to the priority ranking that it deserves, there is need for state governments to get their state assemblies to make laws that compel education budgets to be in the first line charge, but more importantly, that it is monitored patriotically by persons of impeccable integrity,” he said in a statement made available to GatewayMail by the university.
The erudite scholar also made strident case for the improvement of primary and secondary school education in Nigeria, drawing from the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the 2004 National policy on Education.
He said: “Primary and secondary educations are a vital aspect of the education sector, with implications for a country’s effort to improve the quality of life of its people. Primary and secondary education holds a key to development, which is why society insists that these levels of education must be job-oriented, providing school leavers who are functionally ready for work, as well as preparing students for higher learning.”
According to him, without primary and secondary education, the country cannot have the critical higher level skills and knowledge needed for economic growth, including further learning and training of professional.
In addition, primary and secondary education also plays a crucial role in socializing young people to become responsible members of the Nigerian society, the TETFUND scribe stressed.
Bogoro stated that economic factor, especially in terms of grinding poverty and hunger, was probably the most influential in adversely affecting participation in education.
He urged stakeholders to ensure that education must be for all, saying “this may not be achievable until all stakeholders and this includes the universities, are seen to be fully participating that education would truly be for all.”
“Universities cannot be on the sideline in the drive towards broadening access and ensuring quality basic education delivery for the sustenance of democracy and good governance, poverty eradication, economic empowerment, social justice and national development,” Bogoro maintained.
While stressing that secondary school education is critical, he said that “research has shown those vulnerable groups belong primarily to the secondary education age where there is the greatest ability for behavioral change, for fostering positive social attitudes, civic values and such other social engineering.`
“It is believed that basic education yield considerable public returns while secondary education provides opportunities to acquire desirable attitudes and job-oriented skills and competencies that are not likely to be developed while the pupils are in primary school,” Bogoro stated.
“With the exiting of primary and secondary education in the funding arrangement of TETFUND, however, the fate of secondary schools is problematic due largely, to states’ inability or unwillingness to fund this sub-sector,” he said.
“At least, primary and junior secondary schools are somewhat being supported by the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Programme. It is therefore necessary to either create a new agency to support senior secondary education, or the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) can be expanded to support this vital sub-sector,” Bogoro also emphasized.
