The Nation Newspaper

Tag: centres

  • JAMB insists no bags, gadgets allowed in UTME centres

    JAMB insists no bags, gadgets allowed in UTME centres

    Candidates sitting for the 2016 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) have been warned to take only their e-registration slips and biros to examination centres.

    The examination gets fully  under way today, with candidates expected to sit for two or three sessions daily.

    Though the instructions are stated on the e-slips that bags, gadgets, calculators and phones are not allowed, many candidates took them to centres monitored in Lagos on Saturday, where 30 of the 53 centres held one session of the examination.

    However, they were forced to keep their property outside, some with strangers.

    Many were also sent away to re-print their e-registration slips because they brought the wrong ones to the centres.

    Dr. Beatrice Okorie, who heads the Lagos annex of the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) headquarters, said they were not expected to come with the items.

    “The instructions were clear.  But many of them still came with bags and phones.  We sent them away to go drop their bags,” said Dr. Okorie, who supervised the centre at the Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH).

    Regarding the correct e-registration slip, she said: “Before the examination commenced, the candidates were supposed to re-print their e-registration slips because the first one does not contain their centre and examination numbers.  That was why some who did not were told to re-print the correct one,” she said.

    At the West Midland Communication Limited Centre in Ikeja, candidates with bags and others were also sent away.

    The officials told parents to give their wards fare and leave.

    However, some parents ignored the advice and waited outside the premises for the 2-hour 45 minutes duration of the examination.  They helped to keep property for some candidates as well.

    The examination was hitch-free in many centres across Lagos.  However, there was a problem at Universal White Hall College in Fagba, Iju. Candidates were relocated to Bachel Model College, Ogba.

    The reason for the change was not explained to candidates and their parents grumbled about the last minute change, made at 10 am.

    Efforts to speak with the school officials proved abortive, as the headteacher, Mrs. Temilola, neither answered her phone nor showed up.

    A parent, Mrs. Adesanya, said: “It is bad that they changed it like that without any warning. It was difficult finding this new venue but thank God we are here now and everything is going on well.”

    But Bachel Model College was ready by the time the candidates reached there.  The college is supposed to serve as a UTME centre from March 7.

    The headteacher, Mr. Adekunle Adeleke, said the school responded to a distress call from Universal White Hall College a few minutes before 9 am.

    “They said they were experiencing technical issues at Universal White Hall College. I don’t know what it was but I think it had to do with their router. So, we gathered our staff impromptu and got things set. Lucky for us, we were prepared,” he said.

    Adeleke said the college had facilities for 270 candidates, and additional 30 computers as backups.

    The school’s proprietor, Mr. Ayokunle Fasusi, said it took between N8 and N9 million to get the centre ready to host UTME.

    “By the time the exam was over, the JAMB officials gave us an excellent grade in their report,” he said.

    The exams held between noon and 2 pm at Bachel and there were no hitches.

    While only one session of the examination held on Saturday, from today, Dr. Okorie said there would be two or three sessions daily for the 14-day duration.

    Besides the 30 split 1 centres, Dr. Okorie said there were 23 Split 2 centres in Lagos, which will start conducting the examination from March 7, 2016.

    The examination is expected to end on March 11.

  • Centres to begin food classes

    The Lagos State government has reiterated its determination to encourage primary health centres to organise food demonstration classes, Deputy Governor Idiat Oluranti Adebule has said.

    She said at the classes, mothers would be taught the processes of combining local food to enjoy their benefits.

    The deputy governor spoke at the inauguration of the State Committee on Food and Nutrition (SCFN).

    Represented by the Permanent Secretary in her office, Michael Dawodu, she said the programme was based on the importance government attached to food and nutrition.

    The deputy governor said it was regrettable that as important as food was to human beings, there was food insecurity,  caused by lack of modern farming techniques, poor distribution system, inadequate storage technology and facilities, inadequate transportation as well as poor market information for farmers.

    She said to cushion the effect, government was working to improve food sustainability and nutrition by encouraging farming.

    “The government has acquired 1,084 hectares of land in Osun State for oil processing, agric-YES and other agricultural purposes, while 500 hectares was acquired in Ogun State for rice production in addition to 50 hectares in Abuja for arable farming,” Mrs. Adebule said.

    The committee Chairman, Abayomi Kadiri, hoped that nutrition intervention would add value to other investments in health, education and poverty reduction.

    The representative of the chairperson of the National Committee on Food and Nutrition in Nigeria, Mrs. Roselyn Ronke Gabriel, hailed the sgovernment on the inauguration.

    saying “It is a good step in the  right direction”.

  • Establish labour unemployment centres, Oshiomhole advises govt

    The Federal Government has been urged to establish labour unemployment centres across the country.

    Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole  made the call in Abuja when he visited the Minister of Labour and Employment,  Dr Chris Ngige.

    He said the call was necessary to enable the ministry have comprehensive database of qualified but unemployed Nigerian youths.

    The governor noted that the administration of President Muhamadu Buhari made it clear that its primary purpose was to improve the welfare of the people. He said that only way to achieve this objective was through job creation.

    Oshiomhole said he benefited from the services provided by labour unemployment centres when he was in his early 20s. “The re-introduction of labour unemployment centres for the unemployed will create opportunity for employers of labour to contact and recruit people who registered.

    “It will also provide opportunity to those who registered to acquire training and also enroll in one form of apprenticeship or the other.

    The centres will also give employers the opportunity to carry out regular trade test, do proper grading of skilled and semi-skilled test among others,” he explained.

    Oshiomhole stated that this is one area the country has neglected over the years and that given the present circumstance, there is need to re-establish these centres.’

    He called on employers to inform the Ministry of Labour and Employment whenever they employ, dismiss and retrench members of staff in their various establishments.

    He also called for the review of expatriate quota for firms and industries operating in Nigeria.

    In his response, the minister told the governor that under his leadership, the ministry would experience turn around.

    He said the ministry would ensure that the aspirations of unemployed youths were met.

    James Ocholi, the Minister of State in the ministry, who praised the governor for his instructive suggestion, promising that the ministry would heed the advice.

  • Ajimobi calls for youth centres

    Ajimobi calls for youth centres

    Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi has urged governments  to create more youth centres to promote educational development in the country.

    This, he said, would discourage youths from social vices. Ajimobi, who was represented by the former Secretary to the State Government, Olalekan Alli, made the call at the inauguration of the Educare Trust Youth Centre, Samonda, Ibadan, the state capital.

    The governor praised the secretary of the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Dr Tony Marinho.

    He said his administration was committed to youth and educational development.

    The governor said the government was not happy with parents who do not allow their children to enjoy the privilege of good government educational programmes.

    Ajimobi said: “One important way we want to enhance educational development is to consider merit in promoting students to the next class and this will be implemented soon. This will allow pupils be more dedicated to learning.”

    Marinho said Educare Trust aimed to empower youths in reading culture programme,  save lives, entrepreneurship programme and other curricular activities.

    “ The initiative of youth centres in every ward will help youths in their career choice, make them avoid social vices, such as drug and sexual misconduct, internet crime and will make them see a positive side of life.”

    The Chairman of the NGO, Prof. Ayo Banjo, said the idea behind the youth centre was to enrich the educational experience of young people.

  • Agency to build ICT community centres

    Agency to build ICT community centres

    The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will build Information Technology (IT) community centres nationwide to increase access to IT, its Director-General Mr Peter Jack, has said.

    The agency has concluded arrangement to kick off the project with about 48 community access centres, as pilot projects in the first quarter of this year.

    Jack spoke on the sideline during the public presentation of the Framework for Building a Knowledge-Based nation through Information Technology with focus on women and youths, developed by the Consultancy Support Services (CS2) Limited, in Abuja.

    He said the centre when fully in operation would assist in running other services such as voter’s registration, National ID Card registration as well as registration for various examinations such as the West African Examination Council (WAEC), Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), in addition to being a training centre on ICT.

    He said: “If those centres are in a community it can provide e-government services to Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Identity Management (NIM), JAMB, WAEC and others.

    “It can also provide relevant information on health, agriculture, like e-wallet system. It can provide ICT market in the community.”

    He explained how it would be achieved,  saying that he would not rule out the possibility of adopting the existing cyber café in the community. He reiterated the agency’s commitment to creating a robust package.

    “We have already had 48 pilot projects in our budget last  year (2014), and it will be implemented by the end of the first quarter of this year (2015),” he added.

    Jack said the agency was exploring ways of taking advantage of the opportunity created by the recent launching of the N200billion Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) fund by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to boost the realisation of the project.

    Presenting the framework, the NITDA chief called for inter-agency co-operation in an effort to build a knowledge-based nation through Information Technology (IT), adding that several initiatives of the agency had yielded the desired result due to lack of synergy.

  • Ensuring security of information at data management centres

    Ensuring security of information at data management centres

    Technological innovations are designed to provide solutions to various challenges facing mankind. A  data centre is one such innovation. It is becoming the vogue with so many of them springing up in the country despite fears about security of data. While some of these data centres have their servers in the country, others have theirs offshore. LUCAS AJANAKU reports that managers of data centres must take extra steps to ensure security of clients’ data.

    Today’s information technology (IT) business leaders, need to have command and control insight on all operations that support the data centres housing their critical business infrastructure. They need to monitor, coordinate and optimise multiple interconnected systems to ensure that their data center operations are running at optimal levels to prevent any failures from any adverse externality.

    The solution to this is the deployment of sophisticated data centre management systems that address the myriad of issues associated with data centre operations. These Data Center InformationManagement systems, monitor power, cooling, computing resources, security and environmental variables to enable personnel to efficiently maintain the high performance required of all subsystems in the data center to work together seamlessly. These systems have come to the market at a time when the rapid growth of large commercial data centers have made it imperative to adopt more efficient management techniques.

    According to research conducted by Gartner in 2010, Data Center Infrastructure Management, integrates facets of system management with building and energy management, while ensuring that a bridge is built between IT asset and physical infrastructure monitoring. These tools reduce operating costs, improve IT efficiency and enable sophisticated infrastructure analytics, extending the life of data centers by years.

    The traditional approach to data center management and facility monitoring in earlier data center implementations, required manual intervention and collaboration between various technical teams. These collaborative activities were highly inefficient, leading to poor utilisation of resources and eventually inefficient data centre operations.

    First generation data center infrastructure monitoring systems were developed to monitor equipment availability and provide a complete view of data center infrastructure. These systems had the ability to measure and display real time equipment performance measurements using graphical display interfaces. However, they lacked the ability to monitor multiple interdependent systems in parallel, or even go as far as reporting on total system performance using aggregated input from all these sub systems.

    Modern data center infrastructure management solutions have evolved to automate a variety of tasks critical to data centre operations. At a high level, the software manages and displays all physical assets in a single graphical interface, while providing the capability to automate commissioning tasks, capacity planning and other time consuming manual tasks.

    This level of software intelligence, enables data centers operate at levels of efficiency previously thought to be impossible to achieve.

    Commenting on Intelligent Infrastructure Management for Data Centers, RiT Technologies, President and CEO, Motti Hania,  said these systems are described as best practice platforms that reduce operational costs significantly by enhancing ongoing operations, security and scalability. They enhance operations by continuous monitoring of a “self-aware” network, power and environmental apparatuses, which together determine network and operational status in real time.

    Chief Executive Officer, MainOne Cable Company, Ms. Funke Opeke, said in line with this global trend and with the increasing demand for content across Africa, the MainOne data centre has deployed an intelligent infrastructure management system that proactively monitors the facility environment and the equipment in it.

    She said: “Our intelligent infrastructure management system ensures a highly optimised data centre environment that guarantees best performance of all collocated equipment.”

    Chief Executive Officer, Venema Advies Nigeria Limited, Dick Venema said turning to the use of data centre could reduce operating cost for big corporations and SMEs by more than 30 per cent.

    He said: “What we see in Nigeria is that everybody is still using the break-fix model which means something is broken, they are going to fix it. And the solution we always see that is offered when it’s broken is that they buy new equipment. They install it and it works again. This is not how it works, most times, the equipment is not broken, it’s just bad maintained, no technical knowledge of IT consultants and bad advice from the IT company.”

     

    Top issues in data centre management

    According to the Chief Marketing Officer, FieldView Solutions, Sev Onyshkevych in the past, managing a data centre was pretty straightforward.  But due to the inexorable trend of processing more and more data, the management of these facilities grew in complexity. Complicating the situation, operational decisions at the data centre now include such factors as power, cooling, rack space and CPU availability. This is in addition to other information gleaned from IT systems, and related to the facility infrastructure components such as UPS devices, PDUs, chillers, HVACs, generators, branch circuits and others. He wrote via Data Centre Knowledge, an online platform.

    FieldView Solutions, a Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solutions provider, identified the following as top issues in efficient data centre management

     

    Energy Efficiency

    Data centres are increasingly under attack for their energy consumption and costly operations.  According to a 2011 New York Times-sponsored study by Jonathan G. Koomey, a consulting professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at Stanford University, titled “Growth in Data Centre Power Use 2005 to 2010,” United States’ data center power consumption increased by 36 per cent over that period. Electricity used in global data centers in 2010 likely accounted for between 1.1 per cent and 1.5 per cent of total electricity use, respectively. For the United States, that number was between 1.7 and 2.2 per cent.

    Cutting energy usage will help organisations save significant money, while changing the public perception of data centers being “energy hogs” with a “greener” impression.  To reduce energy consumption, it must first be accurately measured.  The measurement must start with a baseline view of what energy every part of the data center is actually consuming.  And to be accurate, this view must include all areas such as IT equipment, power distribution infrastructure, and ventilation/cooling infrastructure. This is an often time-consuming and manual data extraction process to which nobody looks forward.

     

    Monitoring

    No doubt, day-to-day system failures have underscored the need for proactive response to potential data centre uptime threats.

    Proper monitoring also helps enable an effective call-to-action. In the event of a pending issue, alarms can be sent via e-mail, phone or pager, allowing proactive steps to be taken to correct problems before they become critical. In addition, continuous logging of all alarms and alerts empowers data center operators with a chronological, forensic, review of events to strengthen the infrastructure and improve disaster recovery plans.

     

    Capacity Planning

    It’s no secret that many data centre managers lack the systems visibility to determine if their facilities are truly running at peak capacity.  Traditionally, operators have left plenty of room for error so uptime isn’t interrupted—a strategy known as “capacity safety gap,” or “over-provisioning.”  This strategy wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars of unused space – not to mention wasting power and cooling.  In a day and age of chief financial officers (CFOs) deferring capital expenditure budgets, many data centre managers’ expectations of having additional data center construction have been unfulfilled, leaving about 30 per cent of data centre managers worried about running out of capacity.

     

    Performance Management

    One of the greatest challenges facing data centre operators is ensuring that power and cooling is operating at its highest energy efficiency.  One of the best methods to maintain this accuracy is via accessing a real-time data source that provides up-to-the-minute metrics such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE).

     

    Real-Time Reporting

    Without a real-time reporting system, operators may find it a challenge to make informed decisions.  Manual readings taken weeks ago on a static report are no longer valid for today’s complex data centre operations – where workloads, power consumption and temperatures vary widely throughout the day, and from day to day.

    Up-to-the minute information also allows for the optimisation of power loads and overall capacity trending.  Additionally, a dashboard view that spans across various monitoring and control systems is a necessity for accurately tracking energy efficiency across single rooms, complete floors, an entire data center  or multiple data centers—domestically and globally.

    Onyshkevych said the continued proliferation of applications, data and platforms such as mobile devices will ensure that data centres continue to grow.  This, in turn, will strain the data centre’s processing power and drain enormous additional amounts of energy from the grid.  As data centres evolve, so too should the tools that manage them.  The antiquated methods of storing vital operational data within individual software “silos” impedes the efforts of data centre facility managers and IT managers to optimise their operations properly and avoid potential downtime.

  • WASSCE: Society seeks policy against ‘special centres’

    The Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN), Lagos State Area Unit has expressed dissatisfaction with the decline in performance recorded at the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results.

    President of the students-based society, Alhaji Kaamil Kalejaiye, noted that the decline was an indication that the nation is losing its pride of place in education.

    Kalejaiye said the Head of National Office, WAEC, Mr Charles Eguridu, as saying only 529,425 candidates representing 31.28 per cent, obtained credit passes in five subjects and above, including English Language and Mathematics.

    He reasoned that when compared to the 2012 and 2013 May/June WASSCE results; there was marginal decline in the performance of candidates, saying 38.81 per cent was recorded in 2012 and 36.57 per cent last year.

    He suggested that adequate infrastructure, proper remuneration and teachers’ training, review of curriculum and promotion of academic activities among others as means of reducing failure in the examination.

    He said: “If only 31.28 of the 1,692,435 candidates that sat for the examination are those that passed with necessary subjects (Mathematics and English), we should know that if care is not taken, we will completely lose our pride of place in education among the West African countries.

    “It is also not encouraging that 86,822 candidates representing 5.13 per cent have a few of their subjects still being processed due to some errors.

    “We have come to a point where government at all levels must realise that without quality education, the nation will hardly grow except with the help of God”.

    The government, Kalejaiye said, must not only invest in education, but ensure proper implementation and usage of the funds.

    “It is only in this part of the world that we spend much and still have poor output. Government should begin to place its appointment in the education sector based on merit. Good budgeting and policies require good and dedicated manager for efficiency,” he said.

    The group challenged government and stakeholders in the educational sector to initiate a rewarding system that would surpass that of athletes and entertainers for outstanding students.

    “It is worrisome to us, Kalejaiye said, “that students are not doing well in mathematics and English Language, which are the core subjects. What this means is that the left brain that is responsible for analytical thoughts, logic, language reasoning, written and number skills has not been properly trained. This is to show that the recorded decline in performance must be attended to with utmost urgency; it must be treated as an emergence situation for the benefit of the country’s development.

    “We must also say that social activities promoted by government and private individuals/organisations also contribute to the challenges being faced in primary education. It still remain a wonder to us why top government officials including President Goodluck Jonathan and states governors give grand welcoming and host parties for athletes/celebrities who emerge victorious and sometimes defeated while outstanding students are less celebrated. I am not saying we should not celebrate outstanding performances but importance and priority should be placed on education.

    “We challenge and await the day a governor or the president will announce millions of naira for students who emerge top in different states.”

    To reduce failure in WASSCE, the youth leader said the Lagos State chapter of MSSN usually organise a pre-WAEC/GCE examination for students to measure their level of preparedness.

    He urged parents and guardians to monitor the activities of their children, warning them not to engage in illicit acts or bribery.

    He said: “As an organisation with the mission of building young generations to be outstanding, we usually hold a preparatory examination for candidates and prospective candidate of WASSCE, which helps to prepare and monitor their level of performance. Our experience in the last preparatory exam shows that more attention needs to be put in tutoring students in Mathematics and English Language”.

    “But instead of taking corrective measures by tutoring, what we see today is that parents and schools go as far as bribing examinations officials. In some instances, they patronise the so called ‘special centers’. Government should initiate a policy to battle and stop illegal activities during WAEC. This will help to encourage students to read and get better result,” he added.”

  • NBA seeks access to detention centres of terror suspects

    The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has sought to be granted access to the centres where suspected terrorists were held. It said it needed to visit the centres to ensure that the human rights of those held were not abused. The association also condemned extra-judicial killings. Its President Okey Wali (SAN) called on security agents to observe international best practices and rules in combating terrorism. He said it was gratifying that the military authorities had acknowledged that for close to one year, they have detained over 1,400 suspects.

    The military, he said, also claimed to have recommended 500 for trial, 167 to be freed and 614 cases to be reviewed. The implication is that these suspects have been in detention for several months in violation of constitutional stipulations.

    “This is constitutionally unacceptable,” the NBA chief said. “We, therefore, urge the Attorney-General of the Federation and the Chief of Defence Staff to grant the NBA access to the detention facilities in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa to access the condition of those centres and the number of persons detained and for how long they have been detained,” Wali said.

    NBA called on the all those who have one form of grievance or the other to explore peaceful and non-violent means of redress.  It added that nothing justified the killing of innocent citizens or persons of different faiths because of what they do not know.

    “Nothing justifies the mindless destruction going on in different parts of the country. We must continuously and continually work on our federation for purposes of strengthening the bond of unity and brotherhood in the country.

    “Unexplained and challenging security situations must make us stronger and we must at this time stand firmly with our troops that are in the line of fire with an enemy that is very mobile and vicious.

    “More fundamentally is the fact that we do not seem to have a coherent, forward looking and acceptable national security policy and strategy. Our national security strategy is obviously reactive and episodic,” Wali said.

    NBA called on President Goodluck Jonathan to constitute and convene an all-Nigerian national security conference to draw up a comprehensive and coherent national security policy strategy that can respond to the changing domestic and international situation.

    “Since the present security strategy in Nigeria is reactive, episodic and ad-hoc, no serious country can operate on such loose security infrastructure.

    “In our fight against violent crimes, we must never lose the soul of compassion and empathy on account of the security challenges facing the country,” Wali said.

    Wali said NBA, last year, resolved to look at the fundamental right to life against the background of extra-judicial executions and other rights violations and implications for national security.

    “We decided to focus on the right to life because the fundamental law of the land, which is the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) guarantees the right to life and provides very clear constitutional basis, when someone’s right to life can be abridged.

    “Even in those circumstances, very clear safeguards are provided, because life as they say in local parlance, has no duplicate and has no photocopy and if someone’s life is taken away, it cannot be reversed. The right to life is therefore fundamental and inalienable to the human person. Yet it seems we have lost the value for life in Nigeria.”

    He continued: “While it is unacceptable that Nigerians will continue to die on account of insurgency, robbery and mindless kidnappings, it is unconstitutional, illegal and immoral for state and non-state actors to engage in extra-judicial execution of Nigerians who have not been found guilty by a properly constituted court of law.

    “It is also not sufficient to plead the doctrine of necessity occasioned by rising crime and criminality and the deadly insurgency challenges, to engage in extra judicial killings and executions.

    “While we recognise the fact that where there is rise in crime and criminality people are jittery and more nervous about the constitutional protection of our liberties, believing that suspects should be detained indefinitely and not given their due process rights.

    “However, it is in moments of difficult security challenges that the citizens must become more vigilant in the defence and protection of the rights of the citizens.”

    The association admitted that battling insurgency was not mean task, but that the law must always be respected.

    “We acknowledge that our security agencies have been engaged in difficult insurgency and militancy operations.

    “We support our military and other security agencies who day and night toil to make sure that we remain safe, but we will continue to urge them to observe the rules of engagement in their operations and not to engage in indiscriminate execution of persons who are mere suspects, no matter the circumstances,” the NBA boss said.

    Wali said it appeared as if the country had lost its soul and no longer regarded the right to life as important.

    “On a daily basis we are regaled with bizarre statistics of the number of persons that have lost their lives in questionable and unacceptable circumstances.

    “We flip through the newspapers and behold these statistics and pictures and simply move ahead, because we have become immune to shock. The lives of Nigerians are wasted on account of ethnic, communal and religious conflicts, and we do not bath an eyelid,” he said.

    Speaking at an event to mark the International Human Rights Day, Wali said the country must continue to reflect on the past.

    “More often, it is our refusal to look at the past and learn from our challenges that leads us into making the same mistakes in human rights defence and protection.

    “For when we sincerely interrogate our past, we will find out that those that trampled the fundamental rights of the people in the past have always and I say always appealed to be afforded their rights when they are out of power and in difficulties.”

    On Mandela, he said: “Let me pay tribute to the greatest symbol of human rights and human rights activist of this century, the late President Nelson Mandela.

    “Mandela was an iconic leader, freedom fighter and human rights activist who used his training as a lawyer to serve, not only his people in South Africa, but the entire humanity.

    “He demonstrated the role a lawyer should play in the interest of the public, which should serve as a lesson to lawyers worldwide.”

     

     

  • VC seeks more risk mgt. centres

    The Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Minna (FUTMINNA), Prof Musbau Adewumi Akanji, has called on the Federal Government to establish more Centres for Disaster Risk Management & Development Studies (CDRM & DS) across the country to help train citizens and create awareness on disaster preventive, mitigation and responsive strategies in Nigeria.

    The VC stated this while declaring open a two-day Regional Faculty Development Workshop with the theme: Curriculum Development for Disaster Resilience Programme in West Africa. It was organised by CDRM & DS, FUT, Minna in collaboration with the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ghana; Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy of Tulane University, USA; and School of Public Health, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. It was held at Dogon Koli Hotels, Minna, Niger State.

    Prof Akanji said the six existing centres in the country cannot cope with the huge number of applicants seeking admission for masters and diploma programmes in disaster and risk management.

    The don noted that more of such Centres would help train people on means of curbing disaster and other environmental related hazards in the country.

    In his goodwill message, the Director-General of NEMA, Alh Muhammed Sani Sidi who was represented by Mr Hakeem Akinbola, called for the inclusion of Disaster Risk Reduction in General Studies for undergraduate students which he noted would provide them with the needed skills and knowledge to recognise hazards, vulnerabilities and how to reduce physical risk in their environment.

  • Sokoto sets up skill centres

    The Sokoto State government has established three agricultural skills acquisition centres in each of its three senatorial zones in a bid to improve livestock production in the state.

    Governor Aliyu Wamakko made the announcement in a statement issued in Sokoto by Malam Abubakar Dangusau, his Special Assistant on Press Affairs.

    He made the announcement at the end of the annual Gumare Fishing Festival in Romon-Sarki in the Tambuwal Local Government Area of the state.

    Wamakko said that his administration would continue to accord priority to the agriculture sector which, he said was the mainstay of the economy.

    “We will indeed, continue to ensure that all forms of farming activities in the state are bolstered.

    “Food security is next to nothing and it is extremely crucial to find solutions to the current food problems plaguing Nigeria.’’

    The statement said that the government was also committed to improving and encouraging fish farming in the state, adding that the government had also introduced modern fish farming techniques in the 23 local government areas of the state.

    It advised the people to engage in any form of farming with a view to improving the socio-economic development of the society.

    “We should go back to the farms as they hold the key to the transformation and revitalisation of our personal and national socio-economic development.’’

    The highlight of the occasion include presentation of a vehicle and N50,000 to Malam Sani Dan-Halima and Malam Sani Barga as first and second prize winners respectively, while Malam Umar Sani clinched the third prize of a motorcycle and N50,000.