A corps member’s challenge in Niger

Her effort may seem insignificant for a distant onlooker, but it was the motivation the teachers of  Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Academy, Hilltop, Minna needed to take a dive in the opportunity provided by the Information Communication Technology (ICT).  Youth Corps member Ummi Kaltume Abbdallah’s effort also exposed the ignorance of secondary school teachers in […]

Her effort may seem insignificant for a distant onlooker, but it was the motivation the teachers of  Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Academy, Hilltop, Minna needed to take a dive in the opportunity provided by the Information Communication Technology (ICT).
 Youth Corps member Ummi Kaltume Abbdallah’s effort also exposed the ignorance of secondary school teachers in Niger State in a 21st Century Nigeria in the use of computer at a time when e-learning and teaching has become the order in public schools in other parts of the country.
At the end of the e-learning and teaching workshop organized by Ummi Kaltume penultimate Wednesday, the school’s head teacher (administration), Mr. Olamitoke Olalekan could only marvel at the many functions the  mobile phone he clutched around possesses. “I never knew it was like a computer,” he exclaimed, but even before the training he had a limited knowledge of how a computer functions.
The enthusiasm so openly displayed by teachers Olamitoke Olalekan, Sidi Aliyu Ndanusa and Abigail Chris-Ugo is likely to be short-lived except the state government keys into the initiative by introducing computer education into the curriculum of schools across the state and further embark on massive training of its teachers for the purpose.
Ummi Kaltume, a Batch ‘C’ corps member, said the initiative was her own little way of spurring the state government into embracing ICT as  a key component in acquisition of knowledge in this century. 
Her choice of Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial College, she said, stemmed from the fact that the school, established in the early 80s by the former Senate President, Senator David Mark, when he was a military administration in the state, had played a pacesetter role among its peers in the state .
The vice principal (admin), Malam Garba Zakari agreed that the school had been the envy of others, including the privately-owned across the state. “Parent struggled to ensure that their wards get admission into the school,” he noted with pride.
However,  it is apparent that the school is only basking in its past glory when it was a model for others. The standard,  like those of  other government-owned institutions before it, has no doubt, taken a downward slide overtime. The structures are still elegant and bear the footmark of its initiator.  The David Mark Hall is still imposing as it were; a Hall of Fame that it used to be in the hey days when the school won every academic laurels that was competed in the state.
But not much has happened in terms of expansion for a long time. The school’s vast land is also open to encroachers, while students could easily sneak through the shrubs out of its premises because of the lack of fence.
In her office last Wednesday, the new principal, Mrs. Aisha Mohammed Bello, was handing out order on the need to keep the students in the class, even as she expressed worry over her observation that students did not have text books. She resumed just a day earlier and also talked about changing the school’s uniform to distinguish it from other schools that now adore its colours and style.
“A lot of things need to change here; the school’s glorious days must return,” she vowed. But deep-down she knows that restoring the institution’s pacesetter’s status would be herculean. It has no doubt undergone a change of name from Hilltop Model School to Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Academy. The head teacher believes to achieve its goal, the school should be able to take care of its funding needs outside the government allocation. “It used to be collaboration between the state government and the parents then,” he noted.
The principal would also come up with a new innovation like the e-learning and teaching initiative, which only the state government can articulate and implement. It is the challenge young Ummi Kaltume threw not to Sir Ahmadu Bello Academy but the state government by her workshop that fateful day. But will the new government desirous of change in all its facets buy into the concept?
Nasir Muhammed Sadiq, the workshop instructor believed now is the time for the state government to embrace the programme and even include it in the curriculum.
He said the trend now in knowledge acquisition is e-learning- a “computerized and digital type of education in which texts, audio or sound, pictures, images, graphics and videos can be simultaneously presented online to students.”
He said the two models of e-learning are the classroom and distance education models. He said it enhances curriculum implementation through the development and use of multimedia courseware relevant to teaching-learning situations.