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Don restates call for improved funding of sector

By Eniola Daniel
22 March 2018   |   4:25 am
A university teacher, Prof Ternenge Ende has called on stakeholders to support the government in the task of effectively funding the sector.

Students and members of the Ibrahim Babangida University, Niger State with The Guardian Assistant Editor (Health and Science), Chukwuma Muanya during their visit to Rutam House, Lagos.

A university teacher, Prof Ternenge Ende has called on stakeholders to support the government in the task of effectively funding the sector.

Ende who is the Head of Mass Communication Department, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Niger State, lamented the poor funding of education saying for the nation to be globally competitive, the sector must be well funded.

He spoke when he led a delegation of students from the department to the corporate headquarters of The Guardian as part of efforts to expose them to media operations.

“We need to properly fund education. At the moment, the sector is not well funded. Most of the achievements we have recorded in the sector can be attributed to lecturers’ commitment. We are doing our best, but one key thing is that we need to fund our education very well. Talking about research, it requires a lot of funding, even if it is not about buying equipment, there are some other things that must be put in place to ensure that quality is brought into the ideas that are produced. And therefore, one key path to having quality education in the country is funding, which government and other stakeholders must improve on.

He explained that their visit to the organisation was because it occupies a special place in journalism in the country.

“It is a reputable newspaper; the same way you can talk about the Guardian of UK and we thought it necessary that we should come and see how the professionals work and take one or two things home that will encourage our students on the path that they have set for themselves.

Reacting to recent claims by the vice chancellor of the University of America, California, Prof. Gamalier O. Prince that Nigerians are receiving expired education, Ende said “That we may not have attained the level of development we seek to attain as a nation does not mean that it is only a factor of our education. There are several aspects of our lives that need to be fixed. We have reviewed our curriculum several times in line with what we’ve seen elsewhere. We attend national conferences in Germany, Australia, all around the world, and our curriculum is in tandem with what is obtained over there. We can also say that our education system is not dead, because when products from some of these schools go to the U.S or the UK, they still excel. Hence, there is no basis at all in the claim that our educational system is dead in Nigeria.

“We still need to do a lot of things to come up with better practices, better ways of instructing our people to become more professionals, but of course saying that we are operating a dead educational system is incorrect.

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