Minister to Reps: Education facing lots of challenges

ABUJA-Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, yesterday told the House of Representatives Committee on University Education that education was facing a lot of problem in the country, saying people excelling in their academic pursuits were doing so on personal attributes and not because of the system.

Mamman,who said the challenges included learning crisis, out-of-school children, insecurity, unemployability of graduates who lacked the required skills, lamented that the nation’s polytechnics, which were meant to provide needed skills, lacked basic equipment.

This came as the House committee invited the heads of National University Commission,NUC, Council of Legal Education,Law School, Board of Benchers and the Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria,NOUN, for a meeting over the abolition of NOUN’s law programme.

The Vice Chancellor of NOUN, Prof. Olufemi Peters and some aggrieved final-year law students had appeared before the committee, headed by Abubakar Fulata, APC Jigawa, over the law crisis in NOUN.

Recall that NOUN Senate had terminated the the law programme, saying the action was based on the directive of the Council of Legal Education.

Speaking during the meeting, committee chairman, Fulata, appealed to the minister of education and heads of other relevant agencies to work towards eliminating issues impeding the standard of education in the country.

According to him, insecurity, inadequate funding, and infrastructural facilities, among others, can be tackled with the commitment and cooperation of stakeholders, including NASS.

Fulata said this was possible through evolving new but effective methods, while also enforcing the existing ones. This, according to him, involved re-strategising, in addition to providing adequate appropriation for the maintenance of infrastructure.

The lawmaker assured that he would successfully bring improvement to both the nation’s basic and tertiary education sub-sectors.