TO get Nigeria’s 10 million out-of-school children into school and learning, today, alongside development partners, we will announce millions of dollars of international support in a joint effort with President Goodluck Jonathan and his state governors.

Declan Chukwuma Umege is a practicing Health Safety and Environmental professional. A University of Nigeria, Nsukka graduate of Microbiology and Masters degree in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety Management, University of Portsmouth UK. As someone who has lived and worked in Niger Delta and seen the effects of oil pollution there, Declan recently came out with a book titled Muffled Voices, that tells the story of environmental and human rights crimes committed by oil companies against their host nation. In this chat, the Imo State born upcoming author explains why he wrote the book and other sundry issues.

The state of emergency declared in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states due to the activities of insurgents, is now over three months with no end in sight.

The lingering industrial action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which enters its third month, has been greeted with reactions from Nigerian mothers who lamented the face- off between the Federal Government and the union and expressed readiness to wade into the matter.

PRESIDENT of Campaign for Democracy, a human rights group, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, has advised the Federal Government to comply with the agreement reached between her and the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, so that the union would call off the strike, saying that giving piecemeal money would not help to improve the education sector.

It is often said that a teacher’s reward is in heaven alone. The reason for such a belief is not far-fetched – teachers in this part of the world are some of the most poorly paid professionals, with some graduates being paid as low as N20,000 per month. In spite of this, a recent survey carried out by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) rates the teaching profession as the highest employer of labour in Nigeria, garnering a total of 70, 183 people from the employment market.

In most urban and semi-urban centres in Nigeria, you find waste piles of various sizes and shapes with foul smell oozing from them. These wastes include plastics, papers, clothes, food scraps, bottles, cans etc. Apart from being an eyesore which does great injustice to an otherwise scenic environment, these wastes can migrate and accumulate in ways that pose risk to humans, according to Dr. Charles Reith, the Director of Sustainability and Interim Provost, American University of Nigeria, Yola. In this chat with Vanguard Learning, the Professor of Environmental Science and Entrepreneurship, says there is need to practise controlled waste disposal to safeguard the environment and health. Excerpts:

Wellspring College whose students had 100 per cent in 19 subjects in the 2013 WAEC has attributed the achievement to some salient factors.

The Rivers State Government has given automatic employment to 36 doctors that graduated from the Kuban Medical School in Russia. The 36 medical doctors were beneficiaries of the Rivers State scholarship scheme to study medicine in Russia.

The 2013 winner of MBA Scholarship to Harvard has emerged. She is Miss Mayowa Kuyoro, a graduate of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Warwick, UK. Out of the seven contestants, she emerged as best.