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By Johnbosco Agbakwuru, ABUJA

THE Adult and Non-Formal Education sector in Nigeria received a boost at the weekend as the federal government commissioned a multi-purpose, state-of-the-art hall in Kano State, north western Nigeria.

The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, represented by the Ministry’s Director of Basic Education. Dr (Mrs) Folake Davis, while declaring the hall open, expressed the federal government’s avowed readiness to tackle the twin menaces of high number of out-of-school children and illiterate youth and adult population in the country.

Adamu said a facility like the Kano Multi-Purpose Mass Literacy Centre would go a long way in achieving the federal government’s objective and commended the Commission for completing the project in record time.

In his opening remarks, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education (NMEC), Prof. Simon Ibor Akpama laid the foundation of the Hall in January this year.

Akpama said the Multi-Purpose Hall located in the Kano National Centre for Adult Education was a step in the Commission’s determination to deliver quality literacy services in Nigeria.

“This multi-purpose hall depicts the Commission’s determination to scale up its service delivery profile as the facilities in the hall are targeted towards enhancing productive brainstorming sessions meant to address the myriad of large group meetings while simultaneously providing an enabling ambience for educational and break out activities”, he said.

The Executive Secretary listed the facilities, which were built through the concerted efforts of the Commission and support of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), to include a befitting lecture theatre, a block of classrooms, rest rooms, solar street lights, a warehouse, a vestry, two accommodation facilities of 12 and 23-bed capacity and a high-quality sound system.

‘The provision of these facilities is NMEC’s deliberate emphasis that a congenial teaching and learning environment is a sine-qua-none for effectuating instructional service delivery especially in a knowledge-driven economy and within the ambit of our sacred illiteracy eradication mandate’.

The Executive Secretary said the Commission’s mandate is situated within the framework of the attainment of the fourth goal of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which focuses on ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Prof. Akpama said the Commission had come up with an answer to those learners who ask what they stand to benefit after attaining literacy as the Commission has introduced a new initiative known as Literacy through Economic Empowerment Scheme (LEES) which he said was modelled after President Muhammadu Buhari’s National Poverty Eradication with Growth Strategy (NPRGS) which main objective is to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.

The Executive Secretary listed beneficiaries of the newly-introduced LEES initiative to include over 100 graduands of the Basic Literacy programme in Kano State, Edo State, and the Federal Capital Territory, while an additional 50 youths in Ahoada-West/Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Federal Constituency of Rivers State, were empowered in June of this year with agro-business starter kits, including fingerlings and relevant fishing facilities.

He said these skills and starter packs, besides helping to lift many neo-literates from the shackles of poverty and ignorance, will equally go a long way in taking them out of poverty and make them employers of labour.