Peter Obi: Education Key Driver of Devt, Seeks Improved Funding for Sector

*Katagum LGA offers scholarship to candidate who scored 347 in JAMB

Chuks Okocha in Abuja and Segun Awofadeji in Bauchi

The presidential candidate of the Labour party in the 2023 general election, Peter Obi, has canvassed the need for aggressive investment in education, stressing that education remains the key to development in Nigeria.
This was just as the Caretaker Committee Chairman of Katagum Local Government Area of Bauchi State, Musa Azare, announced that he has taken full responsibility of paying the school fees of Abdullahi Aliyu Garba, who scored a total of 347 marks in the recent Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination.

However, Obi who was reacting to the recent JAMB results, lamented the low scores among the students when compared with others in developing countries.
In a statement he signed, Obi said, “We must prioritise education as a key driver of development by aggressively investing in education, enhancing teacher training programmes, and implementing inclusive policies.”
Stressing further, Obi said, “The recent revelation regarding the JAMB UTME 2024 results and percentages has sparked deep concern about the state of education in our country.

“These statistics paint a troubling picture that demands urgent national attention and discussion.
“The distribution of scores is alarming, with only 0.5 per cent of candidates reportedly scoring 300 (75 per cent) and above, while a staggering 76 per cent scored below 200 (below 50 per cent).
“This highlights a systemic issue within our education sector indicating a significant lack of attention to this very critical contributor to national development. This brings to limelight an obvious gap in the quality of education provided nationwide. Education remains a critical determinant of a nation’s progress on the Human Development Index (HDI).”

The former Anambra State governor said these are within medium and high HDI.
According to Obi, “Though we claim as a nation that our literacy rate is above 50 per cent, which is far below the global average of about 80 per cent and continues to lag behind other comparable countries like Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines with literacy rates of above 70 per cent.
“This again, underscores the systemic challenge in access to quality education, particularly in rural areas,” Obi stressed.
He said, “One of the consequences of the reported general poor performance in UTME is that with our population of over 200 million, Nigeria can only boast of about two million full-time students in different universities.

“While Iran with a population of over 89 million has over 8.2 million students in one university alone, Islamic Azad University, Bangladesh with a population of about 173 million boasts of over two million enrolled undergraduates in the National University of Bangladesh.
“This underscores the urgency of the attention needed in our education sector. In solving this challenge, we must prioritise education as a key driver of development by aggressively investing in education, enhancing teacher training programmes, and implementing inclusive policies.
“A new Nigeria is indeed POssible!,” Obi stated.

Meanwhile, the Caretaker Committee Chairman of Katagum LGA, Azare has taken full responsibility for paying the school fees of Garba who scored a total of 347 marks in the recent JAMB examination.
A visibly elated Azare expressed happiness that the boy has written the name of the LGA in gold in the history books of not only the area but the state and the country.
Speaking on the development, the Caretaker Chairman said that, “I saw the name in the social media and because he is from my local government, my attention was drawn to the news and I traced the boy through my people in Azare, we identified him and asked them to bring him to my office.

“He was brought to my office and we sat down and talked for a few moments after which I promised to settle all his school fees for four years whenever he got admitted into the university, he chose BUK to read Software Engineering. His school fees is about N500,000, it is not really much.

According to him,”His father will be left with only buying biscuits, sweets, cornflakes and other things for him while going to school. I am impressed with the results and according to the available records, there is no record that is like his, he has beaten all the JAMB records in the LGA.

“For now, he remains the overall best student in Katagum LGA JAMB history as far as we know. My advice to students in Katagum LGA and Bauch State at large is that they should pay attention to their studies because success can only be achieved through hard work,” he stressed.

He added that, “This boy has really worked hard, Abdullahi Aliyu Garba has really worked hard. His father told me how the boy will wake up late in the night, middle of the night reading his books, denying his eyes of sleep so that he will pass his exams.”

According to him,”His father is a well to do man but the boy did not see that as anything like others will do because of wealth and that even if he did not go to school, his father will provide for him. He determined in his heart to read hard to become someone in the society. Let other students copy from Abdullahi, good morales and dedication.”

The proud father said that,”I am the father of the boy, Abdullahi Aliyu Garba who scored a total of 347 marks in the recent JAMB examination. He wrote Chemistry, Physics including Mathematics and English.”

According to him, “He scored 95 in Chemistry, 95 in Physics, 95 in Mathematics and 62 in English. When you accumulate the marks, it will amount to 347 out of the total of 400.

He has applied for the course of Civil Engineering at Bayero University, Kano (BUK).”