Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, and the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, have agreed to collaborate on upgrading basic education in Nigeria and building capacities of young Nigerians for the oil and gas industry and its linkage sectors.
The partnership opportunities were explored when the Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe, hosted his counterpart from UBEC, Dr Hamid Bobboyi, who aims to address the challenges facing basic education, including dilapidated schools, inadequate facilities, and a lack of qualified teachers.
Ogbe and Bobboyi agreed to set up a joint committee that would finalize details of their agencies’ collaboration, with the overall goal of contributing meaningfully to the future of the Nigerian economy.The meeting attended by the top management of both organizations centered on how NCDMB could partner with UBEC to upgrade some dilapidated primary and junior secondary schools dotted across the country, train teachers, and upgrade critical facilities to meet the demands of the present age.
Discussions also centered around making basic education work sustainably, developing digital resource centres and smart school systems as well as synergizing efforts of stakeholders in the education sector for maximum impact.
The Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Engr Ogbe, introduced a capacity-building project tagged “Back to the Creeks/Villages” – an initiative to revamp dilapidated primary schools, especially in the creeks of the Niger Delta and other parts of the country, develop their infrastructure, teaching personnel and curriculum to world-class standards and make the interventions sustainable.
Ogbe revealed his passion for contributing to the development of remote parts of Nigeria and mentioned that he had started engaging some international oil-producing companies.
He expressed optimism that the oil companies will embrace the initiative and channel their human capacity development budgets to the new program for symbiotic benefits, emphasizing the need to begin at the basic education level to develop the capacities of young Nigerians, rather than intervening at the senior secondary or tertiary levels.
Ogbe assured the UBEC boss that NCDMB would partner with the agency, beginning with the training of teachers, harping that the success of the collaboration would attract other entities to partner with UBEC.
Earlier, the Executive Secretary of UBEC, Dr Hamid Bobboyi, urged NCDMB to partner with the agency to develop, equip, and operate Digital Resources Centres and Smart School Solutions in states of the federation.
The UBEC boss bemoaned the embarrassing state of basic educational institutions across the country and remarked that a nation that neglected the first level of education had invariably embraced a bleak economic future and dysfunctional society.
Bobboyi rued several challenges that impact the development of basic education in the country, such as insufficient budget, and lack of interest by some state governors, while highlighting the need for collaboration with stakeholders, to leverage extra resources for the sub-sector.
For his part, NCDMB Director, Corporate Services, Dr. Ama Ikuru, said the Board’s interventions in schools and other centres of learning in the past 14 years were in furtherance of its mandate of building requisite capacities for the Nigerian oil and gas industry and linkage sectors.
Ikuru added that NCDMB before now had developed over 150 ICT centres in secondary schools across the country and upgraded select technical colleges as well as intervened in some universities as part of its institutional strengthening program, supported by international and indigenous oil-producing companies.
