The North-East region has again been identified by the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) as the most educationally disadvantaged region in the country.
In a statistic made available to participants in a two day workshop by the Senior Programme Manager of CITAD, Kabiru Saidu Dakata, male adult literacy “rate” he said “is low with all states in the region having lower than national average rates” adding that Yobe and Borno have the lowest with 31.9% and 35.1% respectively.”
The resource persons also noted that the corresponding figures for female adult literacy are 14.9 and 18.0% respectively for the two states, the performances of the states in both NECO and WAEC as made known by him have been the lowest of in the country.
According to him, “a survey showed that percentage of children between 6 and 16 years who have never attended school has high prevalence in the following states; Borno 72 percent, Yobe 58 percent and Bauchi 52 percent stressing that “only about 20% of all school age girls get to attend school.”
Prominent among the several factors that contributed to this ills as stated by him includes poor funding of education, corruption, lack of accountability by the policymakers and lack of capacity by the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and journalists to demand for accountability and engage properly with the policy makers.
The need for both journalists and the CSOs to go extra legitimate miles to hold government accountable, he said, have become necessary for the growth of education in the region.
Stressing that accountability of public officials is the cornerstone of good governance and democracy, he noted the need for the CSOs and media practitioners to get the people involved in monitoring government performance, demanding and enhancing transparency and exposing government failures and misdeeds. This to him can no longer be overemphasized.
Also speaking on the roles of journalists in promoting social accountability, a university don, Maude Rabiu Gwadabe, enjoined the media to hold tenaciously to the ethics of their profession by exposing the ills in the society.
He stressed the fact that Nigerian society would be a better place if journalists, been the fourth estate of the realm would endeavour to ensure that policy makers are accountable to the people.
The workshop which brought together journalists and CSOs from the six states of the North-East zone to Gombe state, as observed by Quick News Africa, was organized by CITAD and funded by the USAID.
