Yakubu Busari
At least over 900 million illiterate people in developing countries are suffering; it also includes 13 million children who dropped out of schools due to crises and poverty.
The Executive Secretary of Plateau State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, Prof. Mathew Sule who made this statement, said the current conflicts in Africa is among the reason for poor learning and reading culture amongst the teeming populace.
He decried that the major causes of what is ravaging the continent was the problem of illiteracy and non-formal education and decay in moral values.
Prof Sule stated this while addressing the gathering at read, learn and grow literacy organization Religion NGO’s flag-off ceremony for 2017.
Sule commended the organization for introducing reading culture in the lives of upcoming generation who are gradually loosing focus.
According to him, the state government have put in place facilities to tackles challenges of poor reading culture among primary six and junior secondary schools which will be compulsory for them to access quality education.
Governor Simon Bako Lalong said, “The world has become a global village and this is why nations of the world are workings in an atmosphere of global competitiveness to attain a high degree education, scientific and technological breakthrough.
He said, “we have repositioned the educational sector in the state with an improvement in the quality of teachers and the facilities in our schools”.
“We have tried as much as possible to address the challenges that have bedeviled the critical need for vocational and technical education which we met on ground “, he added.
Lalong explained further that government is working to ensure assurance across all institutions in the state through our school renewal project.
The welcome address by the chairperson of the Reading culture, Dr Ijeoma G.U Ayuba stressed that the big challenges facing Nigeria is that an estimated population of over 180 million people today both adolescents and young adults account for 64.9%of the total population making Nigeria with a highly youthful population.
She lamented that non-inclusion of library period in the time table of primary and secondary schools and non-qualified librarians that are supposed to be assigned to school libraries to further enhance the reading culture of students has contributed to the fallen standard of education in Nigeria.
However, “our experience to tackle the above problem revealed that interest in education is also declining as students believed there are no more jobs after graduation, she noted.
