Chuks Okocha
2 January 2009
Abuja — Minister of Education, Dr. Sam Egwu, has vowed to embark on far-reaching changes that would turn around Nigeria's troubled education sector.
One of such major changes, he said , would be the repositioning of the Inspectorate Services of the Federal Ministry of Education to enable it play its role as the policeman of the sector.
Egwu made these comments over the weekend when he addressed staff of the South-East Zone of the Federal Inspectorate Department at Enugu . He described the Inspectorate Service as the engine-room and the main driver of educational policies and programmes, hence the need for its proper funding and deployment of trained and qualified staff.
Speaking on the problems of education in Nigeria , Dr. Egwu observed that while education remains the best means of achieving self-emancipation and development of society, the sector had not been accorded the necessary priority and attention both in terms of funding and infrastructural development.
This neglect, he noted, had resulted in students poor performance and mass failures at various levels of examination. According to the Minister, "no nation can achieve success in any field of human endeavour if its educational system has a weak or poor foundation.
The mass failure recorded in the last West Africa School Certificate (WASC) examinations is indeed the result of many years of neglect of the education sector". Egwu however promised to introduce corrective measures that would redress the situation and announced that a blueprint for the revamping, development and growth of education in Nigeria would soon be unfolded.
He therefore called on the staff to join hands with him in this new move to positively change the fortunes of education in the country.
The minister warned that under his watch, examination malpractice and other forms of corruption associated with education in Nigeria would not be tolerated, He advised corrupt officers to leave immediately before the long arms of the law caught up with them.
He also promised to protect and reward honest, loyal and hard-working officers in the ministry. Earlier, the Zonal Director, South-East zone of Federal Inspectorate services, Dr E. G. Kutara, while welcoming the Minister, presented him with a list of problems that had made the education inspectors ineffective.
These,according to him, included poor funding, inadequate transportation, lack of training and low morale of staff.
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