Give traditional, religious leaders supervisory role to save rural schools–Dr. Kole Shettima

The Africa Director MacArthur foundation, Dr. Kole Ahmed Shettima has advocated for devolution of supervisory role over schools in rural communities to traditional and religious leaders to engender better performance. He made the call in view of the declining standard of education in rural communities across northern Nigeria, blaming the situation on disconnect between the […]

The Africa Director MacArthur foundation, Dr. Kole Ahmed Shettima has advocated for devolution of supervisory role over schools in rural communities to traditional and religious leaders to engender better performance.

He made the call in view of the declining standard of education in rural communities across northern Nigeria, blaming the situation on disconnect between the local government authorities saddled with the responsibility, with the realities in the schools.

Dr. Shettima who was the guest speaker yesterday at the Inspiring Leadership Reflection Interactive Series (ILERIS), a youth interactive seminar, organized by the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) said unless urgent measures are taken to salvage the rural populace from ongoing crisis in education sector their children would be shut out of development.

‘’Over the years there have been several problems in our education system and one of them is the problem of massification; many people are coming into the system without adequate infrastructure to make this system works; so you find a class of hundred people there are no enough teachers, no enough classrooms and the budget allocation is very poor to these schools, most importantly there is no ownership to these schools now. 

‘’Unlike in the olden days when the schools were under the traditional and religious institutions, these people have no choice but to take care of those schools because they don’t have place to send their children to apart from those schools, but now with the local government reforms nobody is taking care of these schools.

‘’The local government education authority and many of the people who are supposed to take care of the schools don’t have their children in the schools, they don’t even live in those places and therefore they don’t have any sense of obligation to make sure those schools function effectively’’ he said.