By Adekunle Adekoya
THERE exists an issue I had wanted to write about for long which other matters kept pushing  to the back. I hope readers of this column will remember that about mid-September, the Federal Executive Council, among others, approved contracts for the provision of Information technology in 387 schools across the country.

While criteria for selecting schools to benefit were not disclosed then, Communications & Technology Minister, Mrs Omobola Johnson was reported as saying that 100 classmate personal computers for students and 21 laptops for teaching, two printers and one server, broadband internet and 5kva solar power equipment would be provided for the schools.

Mrs Johnson disclosed further that “equipment for teaching ICT across the country would be installed in nine schools in each of the 36 states of the federation, three in the federal capital territory and 10 additional schools in each geo-political zone. The equipment would also cover refurbishment and securing of equipment storage room, provision of wireless mesh and charging platform for each of the schools.”

Mrs Johnson added that the project will have  “a total cost of N6, 449 billion with a completion period of 36 weeks each, while funding is coming from the universal service provision fund (USPF).

Bothering issues

There are several bothersome issues about this ICT-for-schools programme. There exists an organization in this country called ANCOPSS (All Nigeria Conference Of Principals of Secondary Schools). From a membership of 32 at inception in 1957, it now has well over 13,000 members.

What that means is that at one principal per secondary school, there are more than 13,000 secondary schools nationwide. In provisioning schools for ICT, how did we choose nine schools per state? What criteria apply? I hope some people are not playing kalokalo with ICT education.

After taking care of 387 schools, what happens to the remaining 12,613 secondary schools? This becomes important because of the way we do things in this country. After “settling” the 387 schools, the remainder may not get attention for a long time, if ever, and the instructional gap between students in the lucky 387 and the remainder will continue to widen. What about primary schools?

Wrong approach

That aside, it would seem that the approach is to teach ICT as a subject; in other words, from the viewpoint of a classroom teacher, ICT will be like Technical Drawing, or Biology, or Physics, or Home Economics. I beg to differ.

Personally, the way I feel we should go is for us to use ICT to teach EVERY subject, the way many countries we love to copy already do. All subjects, especially and including Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Efik and other Nigerian language subjects should be taught using ICT, as well as other subjects.

That means the very curriculum of teacher education at the colleges of education and faculties of education needs overhauling; those who will teach our young ones must come out of training as teachers who can use ICT to teach any subject, be it Physics, Chemistry, Agric Science, Religious Knowledge, or Woodwork.

If we start now with a fresh National Conference on Curriculum Education whose outcomes we will faithfully implement, we might still make this Vision 20-2020, which is just eight years away.