Why Nigeria Recorded Zero School Kidnappings In 12 Months —Education Minister
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, said there have been no school abductions in the country over the past 12 months.
Alausa spoke on Arise TV on Wednesday while reviewing the mid-term performance of the government on education and attributed the achievement to the current government’s focused policies and increased security spending.
Alausa stated that the government has implemented a safe school initiative with a central command centre in Abuja, manned by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.
“I am the chief education officer of Nigeria now and I would tell you that no abduction has occurred in schools in the last 12 months. This is not coincidence This is due to the clear, focused government policies of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu.
“The president has spent much on security like no government has done in the last 20 years. We are using both kinetic and non-kinetic strategies. I will leave the other details for the NSA to discuss. But what we have done to make our schools safer…we have a safe school initiative that is in place,” he said.
The minister called for collaboration with state governments, urging them to establish safe school departments headed by deputy director-level officials.
“We have a safe school pathway that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) worked with the Federal Ministry of Education to develop. We are sending that to them: each state should look at that safe school pathway and make changes the way they want to suit the peculiarities of their state so that they can maintain the safety in their schools,” he said.
Alausa also stressed the efforts to tackle the issue of out-of-school children, citing a recent initiative that returned almost 22,000 students to school in the Federal Capital Territory.
He added that the government has launched the Nigeria Education Data Initiative to aggregate data and track student outcomes.
This initiative, he said, aims to monitor every child’s journey from pre-primary to tertiary education and intervene in real-time when students drop out.
Alausa added that the government has also engaged one of the top five consulting companies in the world to help deploy the technology.
Additionally, he noted that the government plans to rehabilitate 197,000 classrooms and has already rehabilitated 3,000 schools.
He added that the ministry is also working on a new curriculum that includes digital skills and Nigerian history, which will be deployed in primary and junior secondary schools in September.
Alausa emphasised the government’s commitment to ensuring every child receives quality education, citing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s allocation of the highest amount of money to the education sector.
“If you improve the quality of your teachers, you get kids that will get a high-quality education. Kids will have better thinking and navigate the world better and they will contribute to society. They are already being implemented and we are already seeing results,” he said.
Why Nigeria Recorded Zero School Kidnappings In 12 Months —Education Minister is first published on The Whistler Newspaper
