Obiageli Ezekwesili, the Former Minister of Education, has stated that the solution to solving Nigeria’s economic issues lied in achieving higher productivity and competitiveness for the citizens.
In a statement she made via her official Twitter handle on Friday, July 7, the ex-Minister had remarked that the country urgently needed to expand opportunities for quality education. An expansion that would begin with immediately restoring the deep crisis of poor Foundational Literacy and Numeracy learning outcomes for children in the early stages of education before the age of 10.
Her tweet had read partly:
“Nigeria’s foremost economic problem of tackling Poverty and Inequality have everything to do with achieving higher Productivity and Competitiveness of our people.
We urgently need to expand the exact opportunities to quality education that the SBS students had to their fellows in Nigeria and rest of Africa.”
Mrs Ezekwesili had gone further to disparage the dismal data by the State of Global Education Update. The data had revealed that almost 9 in 10 children in Sub-Saharan Africa were incapable of reading and understanding a simple text by the age of 10.
Worldwide, 70% of children were unable to perform this task and research revealed that the numbers rose to 57% before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The role of Government and Good Governance in achieving intentional response to poor literacy and numeracy skill is therefore, without a doubt, an immense hurdle to confront.
“Nigerian citizens have still, a fresh reason to stay engaged until Nigeria and the countries of Africa achieve Democracy that administers effective Governments and Good Governance.”
