Group urges Zamfara to increase budgetary allocation to education

From Ibrahim Sidi Muh’d, Gusau

The Youth Advocacy Conference on Mobilizing Nigeria Youth for Access to Safe and Quality Education for Children, especially girls has called on Zamfara state government to increase its budgetary allocation to basic education.
This was contained in a communiqué read by the national coordinator of the conference, Comrade Abdulbasit Abubakar during closing ceremony of the 4-day conference held in Gusau the Zamfara state capital in collaboration with UNICEF which was aimed at securing the establishment of at least three All Girls model basic education schools in a bid to fight illiteracy and girls hawking during school hours.
He further said, the meeting has unanimously agreed to appeal to the state government to provide structured in-service capacity building for 1000 female teachers every quarter, to also recruit and deploy another 1000 qualified teachers on annual basis to the rural areas where the need has pasted a serious stain.
“We are pleading with the state government to for the sake curtailing the prevailing acute shortage of qualified female teachers in community schools, approve the recruitment of graduate female teachers who graduated under the Female Teachers Trainees Scholarship Scheme (FTTSS)”, the Coordinator has stressed.
He stressed the need for the state government to allocate a specific funds for systematic monitoring, supportive supervision if teachers and schools, and to invest in pre-primary education with a view to actualize the current policy on one year pre-primary education as that will help to shape a generation of children willing and able to guide the generations to follow.
Earlier, the conference has paid a courtesy visit to the Acting governor, Barrister Mahdi Ali Gusau seeking the government’s active commitments through building of possible pledges and implementations of the release of budgeted funds meant for moving education sector forward in the state.
Responding, the Acting governor, Barrister Mahdi Ali Gusau assured unreserved support to any crusade mobilized in the name of uplifting education, adding that, “The state government has a great concern in girls education, the reason which a law will soon be enacted banning the girl’s hawking in the state”.