Akwa Ibom Education Development Plan Can’t Be Faulted, Says Commissioner
Okon Bassey
Ini Ememobong, Commissioner of Information and Strategic in Akwa Ibom, says the state’s education policy cannot be faulted due to the government’s 10-year development plan.
“In 2019, the government of the day convened an education summit and set up a think tank whose duty was to draw up a 10-year road map for education because the problem in Nigeria is policy inconsistency. Every policy takes colouration and the complexion of the person who makes it. We don’t want to have distorted development in education. For us here, we decided to have a 10-year education road map,” said Ememobong. “To make sure it is non-partisan, we made sure that members of the opposition were there. Education stakeholders were there also. We later realised there were issues in education.”
The commissioner stated this while conducting journalists around facilities initiated by the government. According to him, Governor Udom Emmanuel declared an emergency in the sector and held an education summit in an attempt not to have a distorted development in education.
“We were having issues in personnel, in infrastructure and in the curriculum. The 10-year-plan included that we did research to the point that the ratio gap of students-teachers was alarming,” added the commissioner.
Ememobong explained that having discovered the deficit in the educational sector in Akwa Ibom, the governor called for the recruitment of both primary and secondary teachers and the building of infrastructures in schools across the state.
“His Excellency directed that the deficit should be reduced by recruiting teachers: 1000 teachers were taken for primary school and 1,000 for the secondary school because the teachers, students’ ratio was unbelievable remembering the fact most of the teachers were retiring,” explained Ememobong. “In terms of infrastructure, he declared an emergency in education, WAEC fees are free, and it runs into over N800 million every year. The focus on education has been consistent, and we have been following that plan, but the challenge with that plan is that the determination of curriculum is not the business of the state government.”
In a related development, the commissioner disclosed that the Akwa Ibom State University “has full accreditation” and a fully digitised studio for the communications department.
“All our schools of nursing and health technology before lost their accreditation but now have regained their accreditation and are prepared to produce their graduates,” stated Ememobong.
