Akwa Ibom State Government has explained why it embarked on a 10-year (2020-2030) roadmap in education and why it had to involve opposition parties in drawing up the plan.

Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Ini Ememobong, gave the explanation during an interactive session with journalists after a tour of projects executed by Governor Udom Emmanuel.

He said the present government drew up the 10-year road map to avoid policy inconsistency in near future and to sustain the growth of education.

He noted that the governor, in an effort to have even development in education, declared an emergency in the sector, where he convened a summit that came up with the 10-year roadmap.

According to him, the state government made the roadmap non-partisan by including members of the opposition party and other stakeholders in the education sectors in the think tank that drew up the plan, which would run for ten years.

“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 roadmap for education because the problem in Nigeria is policy inconsistency, every policy takes coloration and 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 roadmap. To make sure it is non-partisan, we made sure members of the opposition were there; education stakeholders were there also. We later realised there were issues in education.”

“We were having issues in personnel, in infrastructure and in curriculum. The ten-year-plan included that we did research to the point that the ratio gap of students-teachers was alarming.”

On how the student-teacher ratio was solved, he said: “His Excellency immediately directed that the deficit should be reduced by recruiting teachers: 1.000 teachers were engaged for primary school and 1,000 for the secondary school because the teachers, students ratio was unbelievable, made worse by the fact most of the teachers were retiring.” 

He added that the governor had been consistent in the payment of WAEC fees, which runs over N800.

“In terms of infrastructure, he declared emergency in education, WAEC fees are free and it runs to 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.”

He noted that both the Akwa Ibom State University and the schools of nursing and health technology had been fully accredited.

“Akwa Ibom state university has full accreditation and it has a fully digitised studio for the communications department. All our schools of nursing and health technology before lost their accreditation but have now regained their accreditation, and are prepared to produce their graduates,” he said.