Lagos — The Minister of Education, Dr. Igwe Aja-Nwachukwu, Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Ahmed Modibbo Mohammed, Director of the National Teachers' Institute (NTI), Kaduna, Dr. Patrick Onyekwere, are expected at the opening ceremony of Microsoft Nigeria's Partners in Learning (PiL) Programme, which kicks off today in Kaduna.

No fewer than 225 primary and junior school teachers, drawn from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are to be trained on the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in education and Microsoft education applications. NTI will also work with NTI to develop a world class ICT curriculum for Nigerian schools.

The trainings are to be held in two batches in Kaduna from today till October 19 to 26, 2007. In Abakaliki from October 29 to November 2, 2007 and Ibadan from November 5 to 9, 2007.

Ahead of this morning's opening ceremony, Microsoft's Citizenship Manager, Jummai Umar-Ajijola said in an interview that PiL, which is a part of the company's Unlimited Potential (UP) plan, is a 215 million dollar project being undertaken all around the world to take Information Technology (IT) to no fewer than a billionpeople.