FG to increase education funding by 25% – Minister

The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, has expressed the commitment of President Bola Tinubu to improve budget meant for education by 25 per cent with the right policies in place.

Mamman said this while declaring open the 2021 and 2022 Nigeria Annual Education Conference (NAEC) in Abuja on Monday.

The theme of the conference is tagged: “Implementation of Education 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Nigeria”.

The minister also pledged his commitment to bridge the gaps between education policy statements and its actualisation outcomes.

He noted that the country had a lot of good policies on what was required to do in the best interest of the nation but that those policies were not bringing values to the sector.

”President Tinubu has directed the return of the 10.5million out-of-school children to school at the expiration of his tenure.

”We still have a long way to go. We are not matching the children in the country with the desired education and this is because our policies are not producing the values we need.

“What we need is the action on ground and not the policy declaration. This is where I can tell you we intend to come in.

“We want to bridge the gaps between policy statements and actualisation of outcomes.

“This is to give them future training that will enable them to live their lives and make them employers of labour. Everybody deserves to live a life of dignity for the well-being of their family,” he said.

He said that the responsibilities of government was to provide opportunities for Nigerians to be empowered adding that now is the time to make the policies reality.

He also said that the basic and secondary schools must be equipped by developing appropriate skills template for creativity and research.

“We know that society that had benefitted from education are known for nurturing of creativity and research which starts from the lower levels,” he said.

He said there was need for implementation strategies to provide mechanisms for constant monitoring and evaluation of policies, to ensure the SDG goals were achieved.

The minister expressed concern over the state of insecurity in the schools and nation at large, lamenting the recent killing of one Miss Deborah Atanda, a nursing student of Federal University, Oye-Ekiti few days ago.