By Khanoba Khanoba, Abuja
The commitment of the present administration towards ensuring massive development in the nation’s education sector led to the increase of the federal allocation to the sector from N234 billion in 2010 to over N495 billion in 2014, President Goodluck Jonathan has said.
Jonathan, who disclosed this during the opening ceremony of the third National Education Innovation Exhibition in Abuja on Monday (today), stated that the federal government also supported states to boost basic education to the tune of N150 billion in the last four years.
“The commitment of my administration is manifested in the gradual increase of budgetary allocations to education. In 2010, the federal allocation was N234 billion, this was raised to over N495 billion in 2014.” Jonathan, who was represented by the Minister of Education, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau said.
The President also listed the N1.3 trillion Universities Needs assessment five-year intervention, training of over 700, 000 teachers, scholarship for first class university graduates as other efforts of government to shore up the level of education.
“We are reviewing the needs assessment of Polytechnics and Colleges of Education.
” We have trained almost 700, 000 teachers in the last four years.
“10, 000 academic staff have benifited from our scholarship scheme in order to increase the number of doctorate degree holders in our universities.” He added
Earlier, Mallam Shekarau restated the commitment of the Ministry Of Education to promote adequate training for teachers.
Shekarau, whose speech was delivered by the Minister of State for Education, Prof. Viola Onwuliri said the education innovation exhibition will go a long way to showcase the recent technological breakthroughs recorded by Nigerian schools.
The exhibition which opened today with the display of various works by participating institutions from across the country will come to an end tomorrow(Tuesday).
