18 FCT Residents Get Empowerment Starter Packs as FG Moves to Improve Adult Literacy in Nigeria
- The federal government has adopted new strategies to help its approach to reduce adult illiteracy across the country
- Through the Literacy through Economic Empowerment Scheme, the Nigerian government delivered a starter pack each to 18 residents of the Federal Capital Territory
- According to the minister of education, the government will continue to adopt strategies that would lead to the improvement of literacy among children and adults in the country
Following efforts by the Nigerian government to ensure that no one is left out in the drive to improve literacy among citizens, 18 graduates from the six area councils in the Federal Capital Territory have received starter packs for self-development.
The graduates who won competitions in different categories including cosmetology, cooking, fashion designing and hair salons were given items like industrial sewing machines, industrial weaving machines, embroidery machines, generators, deep freezers, hair salon kits, and fashion designing equipment.
Source: UGC
Speaking at a two-day workshop which took place in Auta Balefi in Karu local government area of Nasarawa state, the minister of education, Adamu Adamu, admitted that a reduction in adult illiteracy will lead to economic self-reliance and a boost to the country's economy.
The workshop focused on reviewed programmes of the Commission, including the use of the Rural Facilitators Scheme (RFS), Literacy-by-Radio (LBR), the establishment of learning centres, Advocacy, Pedagogy and the newly-introduced Literacy through Economic Empowerment Scheme (LEES), among others.
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At the event organised to review adult and non-formal education delivery strategies in Nigeria, Adamu represented by Joy Onoja commended the management team of the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education led by the executive secretary, Simon Akpama, for aggressively tackling illiteracy in Nigeria.
Government interested in improve adult education literacy
Onjoa also pledged the government's continuous interventions to ensure illiteracy is reduced to the barest minimum across the country.
In his address, Akpama observed that despite the existing programmes and efforts at various levels over the years, illiteracy in Nigeria does not seem to be receding.
According to him, this led to the decision of the commission to introduce a pet project known as the LEES program as a new strategy with a practical response to President Buhari's National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy - aimed at lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty with 10 years.
His words:
“The commission took the decision to create LEES as a major poverty eradication strategy among the non-literate adult population and out-of-school children who, otherwise, would be cut off from this all-important poverty reduction programme of the current administration.
"The LEES seeks to juxtapose acquisition of basic and post-literacy skills with vocational skills acquisition for the attainment of economic self-reliance”.
He noted that records at the UNESCO Institute for Statistics in 2018, put Nigeria's adult literacy rate at a combined total average of 62 per cent while UNICEF estimates Nigeria's out-of-school children to be 10.5 million.
The executive secretary added that this gives Nigeria the unenviable record of having the highest number of out-of-school children in the world and the country with one of the lowest literacy rates in the world.
For the commission, the literacy through the strategy was structured to provide graduates from both the basic and post-literacy programmes with relevant kits and starter packs to establish their own businesses such as salons, fashion designing shops and the like.
Akpama said:
“This will change their status and make them creators of wealth and even employers of labour. It goes without saying that this, in turn, will lead to a reduction in unemployment and increase in income generation."
Teachers who can't write their names end up spreading ignorance to school children, Adams Oshiomhole warns
Nigerians across the country had been urged to prevail on their governors to prioritise education in their states.
This advice was given to Nigerians by a former governor of Edo state, Adams Oshiomhole during an event in Abuja on Wednesday, March 30.
According to the former governor, there is a need to train, educate and skill up Nigerian youths for possible development.
Dele Momodu, Sowore to pay for Nigerian students' NECO, JAMB fees? Shehu Sani speaks
Weeks after Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a 2023 presidential aspirant, had promised to pay for the West African Secondary School Certificate Examination fees for Nigerian students, Shehu Sani made some requests.
The former senator from Kaduna Central via Twitter on Sunday, January 30, called on Dele Momodu of Ovation Magazine and Omoyele Sowore to take up the responsibility of paying the JAMB and NECO fees of students.
He wrote on Twitter:
"We have a Presidential candidate who promised to pay WAEC fees when elected; my brothers Momodu and Sowore take up JAMB and NECO."
Source: Legit.ng
