BY CALEB AYANSINA

ABUJA – The Minister of Education, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, last weekend, called on Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme, SURE-P, to intervene in the training of teachers for improved quality of education and national development.

*Shekarau

The Minister stated this when he paid a courtesy vist to the   Chairman of SURE-P, Gen Matin Luther Agwai (rtd)   and other committee members   at SURE-P secretariat in Abuja. Mallam Shekarau said that manpower development is the thing that would make Nigerians have a better life and education is an important segment of the economy. He noted that “issues of teachers’ professional training is lacking in Nigeria, while teacher-to- student ratio is nothing to write home about. There is hardly any public school today that is not 300 per cent over its capacity.”

The Minister stressed that “every sector of the government that has something to do with human capacity- building should give preference to teachers. Nigeria has the best standard; the failure to produce quality teachers is a challenge.

“We need incentives like automatic scholarships; we want the chairman to squeeze in something for the training of teachers, today’s teachers are miserable. No nation can grow without quality education and there will be no quality  education without quality  teachers.”

The Chairman of SURE-P, Gen. Agwai (rtd) said that “it is the Federal Government which decides the programme to finance. We work with MDAs, we supervise to ensure that the money is properly utilised.”

He promised to advise the government on the need to involve the Ministry of Education in next year’s budget. The SURE-P boss also advised the minister to bring it up at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting.