The government has been called to promote scholarship in all forms to aid national development. An education activist, Mr. Chijioke Amunnadi, said this in an interview with media men in Port Harcourt on Tuesday, September 9.
Mr. Amunnadi, who defined literacy as the ability to articulate and understand the dynamics of society and employ knowledge to effect the change needed, lamented that about eighteen million Nigerians are not literate.
Mr. Amunnadi, the former Director of New Media in the Niger Delta Development Commission, frowned at the effects of wrong social media influencers on youth scholarship, and decried the deplorable infrastructures bedevilling the educational sector in the nation.
“A lot of schools are not properly funded for good infrastructure. I remember when I was in NDDC, part of what we wanted to do was to go to schools that are in the Niger Delta to renovate them to provide a proper learning environment”, he noted.
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Mr. Amunnadi proffered solutions to the poor educational standard in the nation to include making education attractive to both parents and teachers.
“While the physical infrastructure is important, I believe the social infrastructure and the incentive that comes from energising and enthusiasm. Here we are talking about incentivising education. To create proper incentives for teachers and parents to allow them to send their wards to school”, he concluded.
The education activist advocated a system that would discourage parents from sending their wards to hawk on the streets instead of encouraging learning.
