Nigeria Firm, UNICEF Drive Digital Literacy, School Connectivity In Nasarawa

Communications infrastructure outfit, IHS Nigeria Limited, an limb of IHS Towers Group, has launched a integer literacy and schoolhouse connectivity programme successful Nasarawa State. In concern with the Nasarawa State authorities and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The programme targets 100 teachers and provides 50 secondary schools with internet-enabled routers.

The initiative, implemented by the Focus Teens Foundation, with method enactment from MTN Nigeria, is portion of a broader effort to beforehand UNICEF’s extremity of connecting each schools globally by 2030.

Speaking astatine the event, Titilope Oguntuga, director, Sustainability, IHS Nigeria said, “This is much than conscionable a grooming programme, it is simply a corporate concern successful the future. A committedness to empowering students, supporting teachers, and strengthening communities done improved entree to exertion and indispensable integer skills.

“Through this programme, we are not lone connecting schools to reliable integer infrastructure but besides enabling entree to the Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP)—a almighty e-learning level that equips some teachers and students with prime resources for continuous learning.”

According to the enforcement director, Focus Teens Foundation, Olaonipekun Kazeem,  the programme goes beyond the donation of devices, it besides includes integer literacy grooming for ICT teachers and schoolhouse representatives, arsenic good arsenic putting successful spot a monitoring strategy to guarantee due usage of the resources provided.

“We person 50 schools present with 100 representatives contiguous for this phase. This is the 5th authorities we are engaging in, aft Osun, Kwara, Abia, and Jigawa States.

“ Internet information volition beryllium provided to each participating schools implicit a one-year period, and from the back-end, IHS tin show usage to guarantee these devices are not lying idle”, Olaonipekun said.

He added that enactment mechanisms designed to assistance teachers and students maximise the benefits had been enactment successful spot and schools that failed to utilise the devices would beryllium flagged to the authorities authorities.

Director of Planning, Research and Statistics successful the Nasarawa State Ministry of Education, Hassan Mohammed, representing the Commissioner for Education, described the programme arsenic a “complete departure from the analogue strategy of education,” which aligned with Governor Abdullahi Sule’s argumentation thrust connected promoting integer acquisition wrong the state.

According to the authorities authorities representative, “The devices fixed to Nasarawa State are a precise large boost to our acquisition initiative.”

“However, principals and teachers are warned against hijacking oregon underutilising these tools. They are for schoolroom use, and anyone recovered diverting them volition look sanctions,” Mohammed stressed.

The programme reflects a increasing inclination of firm improvement partnerships betwixt nationalist and backstage institutions, aimed astatine bridging Nigeria’s integer disagreement by combining infrastructure, training, and monitoring to adjacent the gap.

Stakeholders astatine the programme said that the task would heighten teaching quality, amended integer literacy among students, and lend to the state’s semipermanent quality superior development.