Commissioner of Education, Mrs Elizabeth Petkwap Wapmuk
From Yakubu Busar, Jos
Eighty public Senior Secondary schools in Plateau State are to benefit from the solar inverter e-learning model equipment to help boost learning, as government issue warning against diversion to private use .
Commissioner of Education ,Mrs Elizabeth Petkwap Wapmuk disclosed that The Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment, AGILE, scheme is an intervention programme for the World Bank with the aim of developing capacity of the girl child and boys with the requisite skills to advance to adulthood as they traverse the learning circle.
She made this disclosure during the distribution of digital skills equipment to Senior Secondary schools in Plateau State held at gold and base ground in Jos North Local Government Council on Tuesday.
According to her, “when the World Health Organization ,WHO, declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic, it had a significant impact on many different sectors ,the education sector being one of them. So different measures have been taken by shutting down of schools and the use of social distance precautions ,and schools of all levels have utilized all their available technical resources to continue their education online, hence this initiative.
Wapmuk emphasized that some countries tried to overcome this unexpected health crisis through distance education whereas others suffered from socioeconomic or digital infrastructure problems .
She stressed that educating girls contributes significantly to the development of a stable, prosperous ,and healthy nation state whose citizens are active, productive and empowered .
Mrs Elizabeth disclosed that data indicate that Nigeria has over 5.5 million girls are out of school as reported by UNESCO in 2014 and that 40% women and 28% men have never attended school .
She noted that teaching generally involves the use of resources ,human and materials ,it is an enormous task to build the ICT infrastructure and train the teachers and students at the same time .
“The use of computers and digital technology is a requirement for the future empowerment of our population ,adding without literacy our youth will be at a major disadvantage both economically as well as educationally, she said.
Stressing that, “if we fail to provide them with education for employment ,the size of the unemployment problem with dwarf the current situation and bring tremendous hardship with it.”
Elizabeth pointed out that instead of “our students to use pen and paper ,they’re now to use software equipment to create presentation which is compared to a stack notebooks ,an iPad is relatively light .
She explained further that the digital literacy and remote learning platform each of the school will have complete equipment of solar power ,solar panels ,inverters ,tubular batteries ,charge controllers, adding that twenty (20), laptops and Internet connectivity and other equipment including projectors ,motorists projectors screens ,digital safes to protect the laptops against unwholesome individuals are in the package .
She said this equipment would reduce the digital infrastructure gap in the state as the Lalong administration embarks on massive renovations of public schools .
Mr Danjang receiving the equipment from Wapmuk while stakeholders look on
The Deputy Project Coordinator /Component Leader -Digital Skills, Mr Dachung Thomas Danjang said about 14,000 students are already beneficiaries of the girl child education program of e-learning model equipment in Plateau state .
He said teachers and principals were also trained on how to handle the programs in their schools to help boost learning and empowerment of the girls in rural communities .
Thomas revealed that World Bank in conjunction with the Plateau state government introduced the programs in 2020 but they kept going back and front .
He maintained that Lalong administration built 55 schools and renovation of the existing one to meet up the yearning of the standard of e-learning equipments.
