FG should step up effort in education sector dev’t
Avarsity don, Professor Rashid Adewunmi Aderinoye, has said the Federal Government should increase its efforts towards the development of the education sector in order to promote literacy in Nigeria.
He said concern was growing over the illiteracy rate across the country which, according to him, portended danger for the future of the country, if government refused to address the situation with dispatch.
The professor of Literacy and Open Distance Learning of Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan who stated this while presenting his inaugural lecture on, ‘Literacy and Sustainable National Development: A Tripod of Intervention’, said it was worrisome that over 80 million Nigerians cannot read and write.
According to him, regardless of the attention and importance attached to literacy by successive governments, there were evidences that resultant outcomes had been highly disappointing.
He said: “Following the identified challenges, I move that a ministry of basic education having the three commissions as special operational departments be established without further delay.
“Each of the 2019 presidential candidates must make literacy for all a cardinal campaign programme. The year 2021 to 2025 should be declared as campaign to ‘Free Nigerians of Illiteracy’.
“A university each from the six geopolitical zones should be adopted as literacy research and documentation centre to develop the needful for the free Nigerians of illiteracy campaign.”