The Nation Newspaper

Tag: schools

  • Rotaract takes hygiene campaign to schools

    Rotaract takes hygiene campaign to schools

    The Rotaract Club members in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, have celebrated the World’s Hand washing Day.

    The event was held at Edgerley Girls’ Memorial School with the theme ‘’The power is in your hand.’’

    The President of the club, Miss Enobong Eyibo, said the association decided to sensitise pupils on hand washing because some diseases are contacted through dirty hands.

    She noted that for Nigeria to achieve its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), regular washing of the hand must be encouraged to reduce infant mortality.

    Eyibo urged the participants to always wash their hands with soap, noting that washing with water alone does not remove germs.

    A medical practitioner at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Dr Edidiong Essien, said: ‘’People usually wash their hands with water. But only a few individuals wash with soap, especially after using the toilets, cleaning a child’s faeces or before handling food.’’

    He said the event was inspired to promote the health of children, noting that children are a critical segment of a nation’s population.

    Secretary of the club, Godswill Udoh, said washing hands with soap was recommended because of its ability to reduce infections and promote public health. She noted that the theme of the event was apt, saying that the responsibility of ensuring proper hand hygiene lies in the hands of everybody.

    A member of the club, Mr Bassey Samuel, praised the youth of the organisation for its efforts at promoting the objectives of the club. He noted that the washing hands regularly with soap could reduce the incidence of diarrhea infection among children by 50 percent and respiratory diseases by 25 percent.

    Highlights of the awareness campaign included the donation of sanitary materials such as hand-towels, waste baskets, toilet soaps and parkers to the management of the school. This was followed by a practical session on hand washing by members of the club.

    The Principal of the school, Elder Iquo Oboko, who was represented by the Vice-Principal, Pastor Victory Ebong thanked the club for organising the event for the students. She added that the awareness campaign was timely, especially at a time when the culture of hand washing is seldom practiced, saying that the knowledge impacted on the students would help to improve their health.

    A JSS2 pupil Mercy Edet, who spoke to CAMPUSLIFE, thanked members of the club for the gesture.

    ‘’We deeply appreciate members of the club for bringing the message of healthy hand washing to our school. We will endeavour to be true agents of change by taking the lessons of hygiene to our communities,’’ she added.

     

  • Make Health Education’ compulsory in schools, group urges

    Make Health Education’ compulsory in schools, group urges

    The Nigerian School of Health Association (NSHA) has urged the Federal Government to make Health Education a compulsory subject in schools to create a healthier society and save government money spent yearly on curative medicine.

    Speaking at the association’s 26th conference/workshop at the Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education (AOCOED) Otto/Ijanikin, Lagos State, last Thursday, the association’s National President Prof Olawale Morounkola said the greatest challenges of the nearly 50-year-old body, is the lack of political will by government to take decisions that will benefit community health in Nigeria.

    The body was inaugurated on November 20, 1975 as a voluntary professional organisation. It derives its membership from health educators, medical doctors, media school personnel, students, agencies, researchers, among other stakeholders.

    “A lot of money is being spent on curative medicine. If learners learn right from childhood how to take proper care of their health, then government will spend less on curative medicine and by implication, the Nigerian society will be healthier. When you have an informed society on matters relating to health, then people will be able to live longer.

    “If Health Education is made a compulsory subject at various levels especially basic and post basic education, we will not need to force people to observe environmental sanitation,” Morounkola said.

    Morounkola, who is also the Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan, said cases of teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDs, among other ailments, could be attributed poor awareness of Health Education in Nigeria.

    He lamented that the new curriculum of Health Education though enriched, is being poorly prosecuted because they are not handled by experts.

    “Just look at Health Science or Health Education curriculum that we have developed and it seems nobody is using it. We will need somebody in the school system that will ensure the sustainability of such programmes. Sometimes you have UNICEF or other NGOs coming to schools and introducing various health initiatives but later they soon vanish the same manner such programmes were introduced,” he said.

    Chairman of the local organising committee for the conference, Dr Babs Adegbamigbe said the association aims to, among other things, improve personal health and hygiene of school committee members in Nigeria.

    He said every year NSHA publishes journals and magazines, gives talks to school teachers, and invite experts across disciplines to its workshop/conference for cross fertilisation of ideas.

    Provost of the host institution, Mr Bashorun Wasiu Olalekan said the theme: Personal health and hygiene of school community members is apt in view of the need to promote community health of members for effective teaching and learning.

    “Cultivating hygienic attitude, behaviours and practice is very crucial for an individual to live a life devoid of infection, most especially where various diseases have constituted serious threat to mankind. The advocacy is that hygienic habit and practices are necessities and must be embraced and promoted for individuals to enjoy good and wholesome health. This is very important to create an enabling and conducive environment devoid of diseases and illness so that potentials can be fully realised and utilised for national growth and development,” he said.

     

  • Nigeria ripe for international schools

    Nigeria ripe for international schools

    With the global village concept gaining more grounds as a result of technological advancements, an educationist, Mr Tunde Kolade, says Nigeria has to notch up the ability to begin providing international education for its people within the country.

    Kolade, who has taught in many ivy-league private schools in Lagos, including Grange and Greensprings, said in an interview that such international education is now necessary because the world has become a global stage and competition for the best jobs is no longer local.

    “When Shell wants to recruit, it opens up the vacancies to the international job market. People will apply from various countries for the job, because it requires international skills. If you have the skills, you can work anywhere,” he said.

    The educationist-cum accountant, added that meeting this need for international education requires schools that boast of requisite modern classroom, laboratory and ICT facilities as well as well-trained teachers who can deliver a robust international curriculum and guidance that provide the pupils with skills they need.

    Kolade said such schools should increasingly become available in Nigeria to reduce the need for parents to send their wards abroad. To this end, he said Thames Valley College, Sagamu, has been established to meet such needs.

    A member of the school’s Governing Board, Kolade said the school, which opens in September, will groom pupils that will not be lacking in all the domains of learning.

    “It is common with the upper class to send their wards to foreign countries. We must develop our own people to function in Nigeria and abroad. We want to benchmark with international standards. International education should provide you with the skills to live and succeed anywhere in the world. We made up our minds that it is possible to do this in Nigeria,” he said.

    Though it will cost an average of N3,200 a day to provide pupils for this kind of education in the kind of environment that Thames Valley College provides, Kolade said the school will offer tuition-free scholarships to brilliant pupils worth up to N900,000 per session.

    He added that while the full-boarding school would admit many brilliant pupils, it would also accept average pupils it can groom for excellence.

    “We are not looking for A students; we want to produce A students,” he said.

    The Ogun State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Mr Segun Odubela who visited to see the school’s facilities, praised its promoters for keying into the government’s vision to provide quality education for its citizens.

    Odubela was conducted round the 64 classrooms, 50-seater amphitheatres, workshops, laboratories, hostels, dining hall, staff quarters, and sports complex and other facilities on the 21-acre school premises.

     

  • Schools should really exist for students

    The relationship between teaching and research and the influence of both on community development became clearer to me at a workshop I attended for school administrators and academics last week.

    One of the facilitators, Prof Samuel Bandele, did an excellent job of explaining how many more students will succeed if institutions formulate mentoring policies to monitor their progress. It made me understand how mentoring can help tertiary institutions adequately fulfil their teaching mandate.

    That schools exist primarily to train students is an incontrovertible fact. Unfortunately, this does not always seem to be the case in our universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. Students do not seem to be the centre of focus. They are forgotten in the web of administrative inconsistencies and poor student-worker relationships that exist in many schools.

    Institutions have more to lose if they do not evolve policies and institute practices that help their students succeed. The workshop got me thinking about many obnoxious practices in our schools. During registration, students sometimes have to queue to submit one document or the other to various departments. It is not uncommon for them to get to these offices and be kept waiting by officers who are not on seat, or who totally ignore them to engage in activities as mundane as gossip. These workers do not offer explanations or apologies for the actions they take or think they owe the students any. In worse situations, they even totally ignore or scream at them (students) if they are not in a good mood. Yet, the reason various cadre of workers are employed to work in tertiary institutions is directly or indirectly related to teaching students.

    If this problem were restricted to infrequent contacts students have with administrative staff only, it would not be worrisome. However, lecturer-student relationships suffer from the same malaise. Some lecturers are so hard that their students are afraid to ask questions in class or seek clarifications. Some are not just approachable; they even instill fear in the students by threatening them with poor grades.

    Such practices are archaic. Institutions that want to rank among the best in the world should be concerned about how well their students perform. While it is true that at tertiary level, students should be independent and enjoy a reasonable degree of freedom as adults, they will achieve more if institutions have deliberate policies that guide students’ performance. From covering convocations for many years, I have noticed that the greater percentage of students graduate with average performance. A few make the coveted First Class grades, whiel the largest groups in the result categories are usually divided between the Second Upper (Upper Credit) and Second Class Lower (Lower Credit) grades. And most times, the number of students that graduate with Second Class Lower grades are more. However, there is really no big deal to making good grades than hard work and commitment. That means that if students would only work harder, many more would succeed. That is an important reason why mentoring should be an important part of a school’s student-management policy.

    There are many of us today who wish we had had somebody who gave us the push and guidance we needed to succeed. We have seen how that little push would have made a whole world of difference in how we turned out. Youthful exuberance makes students lose focus. However, the counsel of a mentor can help them stay on track. If students are mentored in school, they are likely to turn out better and can benefit society better.

    The second facilitator for the workshop also did a fantastic job in describing the research landscape in Nigerian tertiary institutions. I will focus on that on another day because I found a lot of truth in the decay he said exist in our institutions.

    In choosing the focus of the workshop, Dr Ayo Ogunsan, chairman of Executive Trainers Ltd, the firm that organised the training said the thought behind the topic was to remind institutions of their core responsibilities.

    “I want to bring back to the fore the reason why institutions are in business so they can go back and re-design their teaching modules and work on their administrative processes so their students can succeed,” he said when I interviewed him. This is an issue that should concern every institution and they should seek to make amends.

     

  • Club gives school library facelift

    As part of its community development programmes, Viva L’amour Lion Club District 404B Ikeja has refurbished and donated books to the library of Adeniyi Jones Primary School, Ikeja, Lagos.

    At the inauguration and donation of the books, the president of the club, Gertrude Akhimien, said the initiative is in compliance with the club’s community development objective.

    She said: “It is the tradition of the club to carry out an activity that would be of benefit to their community on a monthly basis.

    “As the president of Ikeja Viva L’amour Lion Club, the club mandated me to go round the community and look for a project that will be of benefit to the community in which I serve.

    “Having gone round, I found out that Adeniyi Jones Primary School need a functional library and the club decided not only to donate books which was the initial plan, but to also refurbish the School Library.”

    She said the club sourced for fund to rehabilitate the library through membership donations and from public-spirited individuals and organsations, while the books were sourced from Learn Africa Publishing Company.

    Akhimien thanked the Management of the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) for its technical assistance in ensuring that the refurbishment was done in line with acceptable standard.

    The SUBEB Chairman, Mrs. Gbolahan Khadijat Daodu, represented by Mr Lateef Oduntan, Director of Projects thanked the club for their gift, especially to the pupils of the school.

    She said the singular act has added impetus to the academic lives of the lucky children as the books are veritable research materials for them. She enjoined the pupils and the management of the school to use the library well.

    The Head teacher of the school Mrs. Victoria Ajayi was full of gratitude to God Almighty, SUBEB and the club for the donation. She pledged to ensure judicious use of the renovated library and the donated books.

     

  • Kaduna shuts 457 ‘illegal’ private schools

    •185 others to follow

    The Kaduna State Government yesterday closed 457 “illegal” private schools across the state.

    It, however, gave them a month to regularise their registration with the government.

    The Commissioner for Education, Mallam Mohammed Usman, told reporters that some of the schools were operating illegally without proper registration while others were operating below approved standard and outside approved curriculum.

    The commissioner said some of the affected schools were operating in shops, half plots of land and in parks.

    The affected schools included secondary, nursery and primary schools.

    Usman said another set of 185 schools would also be closed in the second phase of the exercise.

    The commissioner explained that the records of the schools were being examined to ensure that justice is done to all.

    He also said 331 illegal schools were closed in Kaduna zone; 81 in Zaria and 43 in Kafanchan.

    Usman regretted that some of the affected schools had been operating for about 10 years without attempting to register with the government.

    The commissioner said the government would not tolerate illegal schools, adding that it would punish operators of such schools.

     

     

     

     

  • Senator seeks more funds for FCT schools

    The chairman, Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Senator Smart Adeyemi, has called for adequate funding of the education sector in the FCT, a sector which he described as critical.

    He also revealed that the enabling law for the college has now been passed by the National Assembly.

    The Senator made these remarks during the committee’s oversight visit to the FCT College of Education, Zuba as part of its visit to the FCT Education Secretariat.

    He also commended the Secretary for Education for improving the academic standard in FCT schools.

    The committee visited the permanent site of the College of Education Zuba where ongoing structures where inspected. They included the School of Vocational and Technical Education, the library complex and the School of Education.

    While pledging to appropriate more funds in the 2014 budget to enable the completion of the projects, he called for the use of better building designs for future structures in the college to reflect its status as a tertiary institution in the FCT.

    Continuing, he said that future structures in the Abuja should be of world-class standard to reflect the status of FCT as the nation’s capital.

    On the passage of the enabling law for the College of Education Zuba, Senator Adeyemi commended the efforts of the Provost of the College and the Education Secretariat for all their efforts in ensuring its passage.

    Speaking while receiving the Senate Committee on the FCT, the Provost of the FCT College of Education, Professor Tijanni Ismail revealed that the institution has had all its courses accredited by the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) and that the College management has a cordial relationship with all the students and academic unions.

    He expressed his joy at the passage of the enabling law of the college by the National Assembly, even as he said that the college will now be able to carry out all its statutory responsibilities which hitherto had been hampered by lack of enabling law.

  • War against corruption gets to schools

    War against corruption gets to schools

    Corrupt practices will no longer be tolerated in tertiary institutions. In the new dispensation, lecturers can be prosecuted for failing to complete their syllabus, reports KOFOWOROLA BELO-OSAGIE.

     

    What corruption has permeated the fabric of the Nigerian society is no longer news. Like other sectors, the education sector is not beyond its reach and effect.

    Chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) Dr Ekpo Nta said in an interview that the extent of corrupt practices in institutions has given the agency a cause for concern, particularly given the important socialization role formal educational institutions are meant to play.

    Explaining the agency has been besieged by petitions of corrupt practices in tertiary institutions, the ICPC boss said investigating and prosecuting corrupt practices is not enough. He said the war will be more effectively won if fraud is prevented in the first place.

    To this end he said the agency has produced two vital documents which are expected will greatly help curb corruption. The documents are: the University System Study and Review (USSR), a template that prescribes steps to prevent corruption in universities; and the National Values Curriculum (NVC), which has been infused into the school curricula at the basic and senior secondary education levels, as well as that of the Colleges of Education. The chairman added that the NVC will also be infused into the curricula of universities and polytechnics.

    Nta said the potential of ICPC’s prevention mandate to save cost and reduce losses of national and institutional resources to corruption is part of what inspired the agency to design templates to nip corruption in educational institutions.

    Wit the USSR template, which was developed with the help of Prof Olu Aina, a commissioner with ICPC following empirical investigations into administrative processes in three universities (University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye and Salem University, Lokoja), Nta said corrupt practices should be expected to reduce in schools.

    The template has eight sections that deal with Admission, Enrolment and Registration of Courses (section 1); Examination Administration, Award of Degrees and Graduation of Students (Section 2); Teaching and Learning Services and Facilities (Section 3); Appointments, Promotion and Discipline of Staff (Section 4); Departmental Administration and Faculty Governance (Section 5); Contract Award (Section 6); Financial Management (Section 7); and Research and Research Administration (Section 8).

    Each section lists the corrupt practices associated with the subjects they discuss, and roles the tertiary institutions, National Universities Commission (NUC), the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and the ICPC should play to prevent corruption from occurring, which Nta believes will be more profitable for all parties involved.

    Nta said in the forward of the template: “‘Prevention is better than cure,’ so goes the old adage. In our efforts to combat this unwholesome phenomenon in our tertiary institutions, we also subscribe to this adage. It is far cheaper to prevent an act of corruption than to clean up the consequences of the mess created. It is in this context that this template has been prepared to accompany the main report of the pilot phase and the Template for Conducting System Study and Review in Universities.”

    For instance, to prevent examination malpractice covered in Section 2 of the document, universities are expected to install CCTV cameras in examination halls; print question papers on the day of the examination to reduce leakages; use of CBT; carefully select people of integrity to handle examinations among others. The NUC is expected to dutifully carry out its oversight functions; while ICPC could help by re-orienting students about the merits and demerits of examination malpractices.

    Section three, which covers the teaching and learning facilities, lists delay in take-off of lectures and non-completion of syllabus by lecturers as a corrupt practice. Others are: Non-adherence to students/lecturer ratio results in over-crowding of classes; and lack of commitment to work by the lecturers, leading to absenteeism and non-preparation for lectures.

    Nta said once the template is in use in schools, the ICPC would prosecute academic and non-academic workers that perpetrate the infractions.

    The ICPC chair also noted that the agency is interested in follow up visits to the ones done by the NUC to cross-check claims made by universities to gain accreditation for their programmes.

    “We have started a procedure of beginning to collect visitation reports of the NUC used for accreditation. We will go round the institutions without prior notice and when we come around, we will like to see the equipment the NUC accreditation marked as seen. If the otherwise is discovered, we will treat it as a very serious infraction meant to deceive. We cannot leave the responsibility of making universities attractive to universities alone. We must address the issues ourselves,” he said.

    Throwing light on the NVC, Nta said the curricula deals with 12 value themes that have been infused into the select subjects taught in primary and secondary schools.

    The values are: honesty, discipline, justice, right attitude to work, citizens’ rights and duties, national consciousness, contentment, courage, regard and concern for the interest of others, role of the family, religious and spiritual values, and Nigerian traditional values.

    The values will be taught in subjects such as English, Business Studies, Christian Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, Social Studies, and Civic Education at the Basic Education level (Primary 1-JSS3), while at the senior secondary level, they will be taught the national values in Book Keeping, CRS, IS, History and Food and Nutrition.

    Nta said the NVC has been hailed internationally as Nigeria is one of the first countries to come up with a document to prevent corruption.

    “Nigeria has been invited to make a presentation at the UN office in Vienna on the National Value Curriculum. It has been described as a good model of prevention,” he said.

     

  • War against corruption gets to schools

    War against corruption gets to schools

    That corruption has permeated the fabric of the Nigerian society is no longer news. Like other sectors, the education sector is not beyond its reach and effect.

    Chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) Dr Ekpo Nta said in an interview that the extent of corrupt practices in institutions has given the agency a cause for concern, particularly given the important socialization role formal educational institutions are meant to play.

    Explaining the agency has been besieged by petitions of corrupt practices in tertiary institutions, the ICPC boss said investigating and prosecuting corrupt practices is not enough. He said the war will be more effectively won if fraud is prevented in the first place.

    To this end he said the agency has produced two vital documents which are expected will greatly help curb corruption. The documents are: the University System Study and Review (USSR), a template that prescribes steps to prevent corruption in universities; and the National Values Curriculum (NVC), which has been infused into the school curricula at the basic and senior secondary education levels, as well as that of the Colleges of Education. The chairman added that the NVC will also be infused into the curricula of universities and polytechnics.

    Nta said the potential of ICPC’s prevention mandate to save cost and reduce losses of national and institutional resources to corruption is part of what inspired the agency to design templates to nip corruption in educational institutions.

    Wit the USSR template, which was developed with the help of Prof Olu Aina, a commissioner with ICPC following empirical investigations into administrative processes in three universities (University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye and Salem University, Lokoja), Nta said corrupt practices should be expected to reduce in schools.

    The template has eight sections that deal with Admission, Enrolment and Registration of Courses (section 1); Examination Administration, Award of Degrees and Graduation of Students (Section 2); Teaching and Learning Services and Facilities (Section 3); Appointments, Promotion and Discipline of Staff (Section 4); Departmental Administration and Faculty Governance (Section 5); Contract Award (Section 6); Financial Management (Section 7); and Research and Research Administration (Section 8).

    Each section lists the corrupt practices associated with the subjects they discuss, and roles the tertiary institutions, National Universities Commission (NUC), the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and the ICPC should play to prevent corruption from occurring, which Nta believes will be more profitable for all parties involved.

    Nta said in the forward of the template: “‘Prevention is better than cure,’ so goes the old adage. In our efforts to combat this unwholesome phenomenon in our tertiary institutions, we also subscribe to this adage. It is far cheaper to prevent an act of corruption than to clean up the consequences of the mess created. It is in this context that this template has been prepared to accompany the main report of the pilot phase and the Template for Conducting System Study and Review in Universities.”

    For instance, to prevent examination malpractice covered in Section 2 of the document, universities are expected to install CCTV cameras in examination halls; print question papers on the day of the examination to reduce leakages; use of CBT; carefully select people of integrity to handle examinations among others. The NUC is expected to dutifully carry out its oversight functions; while ICPC could help by re-orienting students about the merits and demerits of examination malpractices.

    Section three, which covers the teaching and learning facilities, lists delay in take-off of lectures and non-completion of syllabus by lecturers as a corrupt practice. Others are: Non-adherence to students/lecturer ratio results in over-crowding of classes; and lack of commitment to work by the lecturers, leading to absenteeism and non-preparation for lectures.

    Nta said once the template is in use in schools, the ICPC would prosecute academic and non-academic workers that perpetrate the infractions.

    The ICPC chair also noted that the agency is interested in follow up visits to the ones done by the NUC to cross-check claims made by universities to gain accreditation for their programmes.

    “We have started a procedure of beginning to collect visitation reports of the NUC used for accreditation. We will go round the institutions without prior notice and when we come around, we will like to see the equipment the NUC accreditation marked as seen. If the otherwise is discovered, we will treat it as a very serious infraction meant to deceive. We cannot leave the responsibility of making universities attractive to universities alone. We must address the issues ourselves,” he said.

    Throwing light on the NVC, Nta said the curricula deals with 12 value themes that have been infused into the select subjects taught in primary and secondary schools.

    The values are: honesty, discipline, justice, right attitude to work, citizens’ rights and duties, national consciousness, contentment, courage, regard and concern for the interest of others, role of the family, religious and spiritual values, and Nigerian traditional values.

    The values will be taught in subjects such as English, Business Studies, Christian Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, Social Studies, and Civic Education at the Basic Education level (Primary 1-JSS3), while at the senior secondary level, they will be taught the national values in Book Keeping, CRS, IS, History and Food and Nutrition.

    Nta said the NVC has been hailed internationally as Nigeria is one of the first countries to come up with a document to prevent corruption.

    “Nigeria has been invited to make a presentation at the UN office in Vienna on the National Value Curriculum. It has been described as a good model of prevention,” he said.

     

  • Address politics, leadership solve problems in schools

    The influence of politics on the administration of schools may be doing more harm than good, says, chairman of Executive Trainers Ltd (ETL), Dr Ayo Ogunsan.

    Ogunsan said in an interview with journalists that governments at various levels should limit their role to that of financial investment and leave the running of tertiary institutions to their governing councils.

    “The day we remove politics from the administration of universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in Nigeria is the day we will have an endurable system that every one of us will be proud of. Politics is the problem. I don’t know the business of a governor, president in administering our education. You invest and remove your hands; let the governing council you put there administer; provide them with funds that they need and allow them to generate funds. Education and politics should be separated,” he said.

    Ogunsan also said for Nigerian tertiary institutions to be better run, their leadership must be well trained.

    He explained that exposure to international best practices from renowned facilitators in world-class institutions would help equip managers of Nigerian tertiary institutions with knowledge and skills to move their institutions forward.

    Ogunsan, whose firm has spent the past five years organising international training programmes for Vice-Chancellors, Rectors, Provosts and other principal officers in renowned ivory towers around the globe, said through the platform, university administrators and others have learnt how to forge international linkages; manage resources; check crisis, insecurity, enhance productivity among others.

    He added that participants in such training over the years have testified of the effect and have sought training for other cadre of workers in their institutions.

    He said: “Because of what these top executives in Nigerian institutions like the provosts, vice-chancellors, and the rectors have seen, they now said they have other officials, academics and administrators that need similar training; that we should try to amend our rules that we are only for top executives; that we should extend our reach to all the people on the ladder, the rank and file.

    “In 2010 we started taking the other workers along. We took all heads of security for the crisis management programme in Dubai; we have taken Bursars to look at problems on accounting, financial matters in tertiary institution, sourcing for funds, funding of tertiary institutions which has become a big problem because most of them want to know how to generate revenue internally without relying on their federal allocations so that they can be competitive with all other institutions around the globe, so we designed a programme for bursars from Nigerian tertiary institutions and we held the first one this year in Dubai and the anchor man for that programme is the bursar of Oxford University.”

    To mark its fifth anniversary on September 5, Dr Ogunsan said ETL will be hosting its past participants to a lecture titled: “Advancing Higher Education in Nigeria through training and retraining of Manpower”, scheduled to hold at the Chelsea Hotel, Abuja.

    He said the firm will also be signing training agreements with renowned institutions like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and the like.

    “To mark our fifth anniversary we decided to sign some agreement with some notable institution around the globe because our clients indicated that they would want to relate with institutions that matter in the world. So we decided to sign contracts with Cambridge University, Oxford University in United Kingdom; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, United State, and by September we will have our first programme in Harvard, taking Nigeria Vice chancellors, provosts, and registrars, for a training titled: ‘Leadership, vision and change’,” he said.