Education Minister Chides Director Over Questionable, Poor Knowledge of Data

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

The Minister of education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, yesterday put the director in charge of Education Planning and Research Development, Mrs. Uju Anigbogu, on the spot after her presentation of a report she has little knowledge of.

The minister who sought for clarification in data surrounding digital schools kit located on the last page of her presentation was visibly annoyed and disappointed with her multiple responses and transfer of blames with emphasis that she only read it on behalf of the committee which she headed.

This happened in Abuja when the minister met with the National Education Group comprising of UNICEF, UNESCO, World Bank, GIZ, PLANE, Civil Society Organisations and other stakeholders in the education sector.

In a swift reaction to her response, the minister in his outburst after referring to the data as questionable and referring to the director’s presentation and knowledge of the document as poor, went ahead to add a co-chair to the committee alongside other arrangements in a unanimous decision that was agreed upon by the NEG members present.

He apologized to the ministry’s partners that such will not repeat itself again, while lamenting that more worrisome to the presentation was that the mix up was on data dwelling on the aspect of finance.

The minister said: “You can’t come here and present wrong data! You present what you sent and I am sitting here? This is absolutely unacceptable. We apologize it won’t happen again.

“Mr. Issa and the new director of ICT will be the co-chair of this committee, going forward. NEC members, is it a yes, or a no? Let’s vote? If you want yes, let’s hear it – so yes was adopted.

“Mr. Issa, going forward, you’re part of the co- chair committee. From the look of things, you can’t even answer this question that I wanted to ask.

“Unfortunately, this data has been in the commercial side of the data, and this should not have happened. But thank God, PLANE people flagged it off, and so we will move decisively to stop that.

“That means we are weakening our country’s data. We are migrating it to our gov.ng site now. Perm Sec, I need to know when those migration will be completed. Mr. Issa, I’m going to call on you because there so many disparities”.

The meeting ended with recommendations surrounding out-of-school children and almajiri education, promoting grandchild education, teachers empowerment and trainings, the use of ICT and digital technology amongst others.