The Gombe state government has employed 15,000 facilitators to work in Tsangaya Almajiri schools across the state, the state governor, Inuwa Yahaya, has announced.Yahaya stated this in Gombe on Thursday, at a stakeholder engagement meeting convened by the Better Education and Service Delivery for All (BESDA) project in the state.
He said the facilitators engaged were in various Tsangaya schools across the state and government was paying them a monthly stipend.Yahaya added that the objective of the meeting was to equip and improve the capacity of the Alaramas (Islamic instructors) to meet the teaching needs of the 21st century .“We are here today to discuss better ways of improving the Tsangaya education system in our dear state.“Many Muslim countries like Morocco, Sudan Indonesia have done very well in upgrading the Tsangaya system and making it to meet the requirements of our times,” he explained.
The governor said that the Tsangaya Education programme was one of the initiatives of the Federal Government to address the problem of out-of-school children, with the objective of providing access and equity to basic education for all school age children.“The establishment of non-formal learning centres, through BESDA in Tsangaya schools, is aimed at introducing modern Education into the curriculum so that the children could benefit from both educational systems.“I, therefore, wish to call on the Tsangaya school proprietors to continue to embrace government policies and programmes .“
The programme is aimed at developing the skills and capacity of Almajirai, so that they can contribute meaningfully to societal development,” he said.Hajiya Amina Haruna, National Coordinator, BESDA, Federal Ministry of Education, said the programme was to shape the scope of Almajiri education in Nigeria and to give them a unique identity as “they are our children and the deserve the best because they are bonafide citizens of the country ,” she said.
She also commended Governor Yahaya for prioritizing the programme in Gombe, unlike other states in the country.Earlier in his address of welcome, Dr Abdullahi Ahmed, the Gombe state BESDA project coordinator, thanked the governor for the timely payment of stipends for the Tsangaya teachers, as well as local government chairmen for assisting the teachers in ensuring the sustainability of the programme. (NAN)
