By Bala Ajiya

Yobe state is one of the states recorded as being backward in education and  the administration of Alh. Ibrahim Gaidam is doing its best to uplift the standard of education in the state.

However, several attacks by insurgents had brought a setback in the education sector with so many of the school facilities destroyed, and this also resulted to the closure of schools in the state for some times.

Well, in providing education and bringing it up to the required standard, it is important to put a lot of things in place so that you can lift the standard of education in the state. So the challenges faced are the provision of basic facilities in all the institutions, schools, colleges of education and the state university.

This include the provision of classrooms, staff quarters, furniture, laboratory equipment and these require a lot of resources to provide them.

Of course the state government at the present is doing a lot in this respect. It has started renovating about three schools holistically in that when a particular school is taken, the authority makes sure that it renovates it completely, provide virtually every structure needed in that school.

That is exactly what the government is presently doing in Gaidam Government Science Technical School, Government Secondary School Damaturu, and Government Secondary School Mamudo in Potiskum local government area.  These last two schools in Damaturu and Mamudo became so special to the government because of the recent attacks by insurgents where classrooms, dormitories, staff quarters and other facilities were burnt down by the insurgents.

The government’s plan is to put all the structures back in place so that conducive learning environment will be created in these schools. It has started renovating and fencing work in Damaturu GSS and that of Mamudo as well as the Government Science Technical school in Gaidam  town of Gaidam local government area of the state.

The government has equally signed agreement with three different contractors for the fencing of the College of Agriculture (COA), Gujba in Gujba local government area of the state where insurgents murdered dozens of students in cold blood recently.

Other action as gathered from the state Commissioner of Education, Alh.  Mohammed Lamin, is the taking of students from junior secondary schools into the senior secondary schools, including almost all the students that passed out from junior secondary schools, into the senior secondary schools to make sure that it accommodates all granduands of JSS into senior secondary schools and this explains why the authority is trying to expand some of the schools like the GSS Damaturu, GSTS Gaidam and that of Mamudo to take more students.

These schools are also being provided with virtually all the required classrooms and dormitories so that they could accommodate all the students. And as the  commissioner for education, Alh. Mohammed Lamin explained, the government plans, in the future, is to expand all the senior secondary schools so that they could accommodate all the junior secondary schools coming out from those areas to ensure that no child will be left without going to secondary school.

However in the aspect of having qualified teachers in appropriate ratio to students, the commissioner admitted that the sector does have enough for now.

“We have fairly, reasonable number of teachers to take care of the teaching and learning processes in our schools.  But Government has recently approved the recruitment of 3000 teachers, some are graduates although they do not have teaching qualifications but we intend to use the services of the Nigeria Teachers’ Institute (NTI) to train some of them in order to give them the rudiments of teaching so that they would be able to handle the classrooms and effectively teach in the schools, while we will continue to give in-training services to our teachers so that they will be well equipped to teach,” said Lamin.

“And we will continue, with state government assistance, to employ the services of more teachers to teach in our schools, especially in the areas of  science subjects where we have shortages like chemistry, biology, physics. And of course the Governor has given the Head of Service the go-ahead to recruit more teachers in addition to the 3000 teachers we have already employed.

So this is the effort of the state government to improve both the number and quality of teachers in our schools,” the commissioner added.

To solve the problem of overcrowding in classrooms which is found in most cases in Day schools which are located in the urban areas like in Potiskum and Gashua towns respectively, where there are day secondary schools.

upstairs, that means growing vertically in order to provide more classrooms to these urban schools and reduce the crowding of students in classrooms.

With particular attention to Girl-Child education, a lot of things are being put in place and very soon, as the commissioner revealed, the state government will soon embark on the conditional cash programme where every family with a girl child will be given a token capital for them to set up their own small businesses.

This, as the commissioner said, is to ensure that these girls that are engaged in hawking of things are taken off the streets and the funds that will be given to their parents is to help them do all these trades themselves rather than the girl child hawking in the streets.

He also pointed out that right now there are also some organizations that have been improving on the girl child education especially for those girls that were withdrawn from schools and given out in marriage.

He said such ones would be recalled back for them to attend some classes so that they would be able to obtain minimum of either WAEC or NECO certificates now and in the future. Also train them as nurses and midwives and so on, so that afterward, they could serve in their various communities.

Infrastructure decay, shortage of lecturers in universities Yobe state university is fairing well in terms of the provision of infrastructure such as equipped laboratory, theatres, classrooms, hostels and other infrastructures. In terms of lecturers, recently, some lecturers we recruited from Egypt, India, Korea and other countries.

In an interview with them, they confessed that in terms of physical infrastructural development, Yobe university is one of the universities that are growing fast and of course, this is because the state government is committed to the provision of these infrastructures in the institution to make it measure up to any modern universities anywhere in Nigeria or in the world. Its  laboratory has a state of the art equipments.