As greenhouse gasses and climate change become more topical, a basic education reform programme is contributing to reducing emissions through technology, writes Oluchi Chibuzor.
Ebilayefa Ituaton (not real name) is a quality assurance officer with Bayelsa State Universal Basic Education Board (BY SUBEB).
His job entails visiting schools (most of which are far-flung from, Yenagoa, the state capital) to ensure that teachers are in school when they should be, instructional materials are in place and children are learning with the approved curriculum.
“There are times I would travel for over five hours across 93.8 kilometers just to get to a school for quality assurance monitoring,” the 30-year-old said.
On a recent trip, I started on a bus, then took a speed boat for over 10 kilometers before ending the trip on a moto-cycle that took me another one and half hours,” he said, his face betraying the stress that comes with such tedious journeys.
Across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), this is often the case (except for the element of travelling by water), where modern technology that provides real-time data for decision making has not been fully integrated into quality-assuring public primary schools.
As expected, these trips come at a cost not just to the physical traveler, but also the environment as many of the schools being visited are in hard-to-reach areas which require land and water vehicles (which contribute to atmospheric pollution and gas emissions) to reach.
Behemoth in disguise
Research conducted at Columbia University suggests that, “the transportation sector is responsible for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions, the majority of which derive from passenger road vehicles.”
According to researchers in the New York based university, “road transport accounts for 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, a major factor contributing to climate change.”
Information provided by the federal government in its Energy Transition Plan (ETP) document suggests that “the transportation sector represents about 24 percent of in-scope emissions.”
To address this issue, government announced a commitment to carbon neutrality by 2060.
The Energy Transition Plan (ETP) released in 2021 highlights the scale of effort required to achieve the 2060 net zero target, steps to be taken to ensure success while also proffering a roadmap to meet the nation’s energy needs.
A major feature of the Bayelsa State Promoting Reform to Improve and Modernise Education (BayelsaPRIME) reform programme launched by Governor Douye Diri’s government in early 2023 is the use of technology to reduce needless travel for quality assurance activities in state owned primary schools. This inadvertently has an impact on the level of emission contributed by such endeavours.
Lessons for the rest of Nigeria
BayelsaPRIME is a homegrown reform programme that addresses shortcomings in basic education management and administration using modern technology.
It addresses challenges the state used to face with teacher absenteeism and truancy, poor and inadequate instructional materials, outdated teaching methods and curriculum.
Beyond these, it uses technology to address the challenge of distance and long travel.
Activities in the 222 schools where the programme has been implemented can be monitored remotely without quality assurance officers being necessarily present in schools.
From the BayelsaPRIME terminal or network of computers (which will soon become a full fledge situation room), basic education sector administrators in the state capital can monitor when each teacher arrived and departed school each day, what subjects were taught, if lessons were completed, and the performance and attendance record of each child in the state-owned basic education ecosystem.
Essentially, schools can be monitored effectively remotely.
This new system drastically reduces the need for long bus, car, boat or motorcycle journeys to schools across several kilometers, several times during the academic calendar.
It also obliterates the issue of distrust as information is largely collected through a network of smartphones, tablets and computers which are less prone to human manipulation and distortions.
Although school visits are still a part of the quality assurance process, because in-school upskilling of teachers is a continuous process, under BayelsaPRIME basic education administers no longer have to be physically present at a school to know what is actually going on before, during and after school hours.
“It’s a dramatic positive change we have come to embrace since the state implemented BayelsaPRIME. I can tell you that we are like people who have emerged from the dark since we started BayelsaPRIME,” the Executive Secretary of the Bayelsa State Universal Basic Education Board, Chief Victor Okubonanabo said in an interview at his office.
Each teacher in the programme is assigned a teacher-tablets which facilitates teaching and learning in school.
Lesson guides are sent to the teachers through their tablets to ensure that a structured approach to teaching is attained across all schools and classrooms simultaneously.
Through the tablets, teachers who are not teaching and those who are not punctual in school can be identified remotely on a daily basis, so they can receive the necessary help to meet up with the requirements of the reform.
The tablets also serve as a source of information and news from BY SUBEB and the State Ministry of Education. It is the tool through which school attendance is electronically recorded for teachers and pupils.
Few states in Nigeria (Edo, Lagos and Kwara) have such capabilities, where technology is the fulcrum of basic education reform and management.
It is understandable why Bayelsa is a leader. It is a coastal state desiring to be more efficient in adopting technology and the governor of the state is at the forefront of implementing measures that will make the basic education system more agile and amenable to latest trends in education.
Matching words with action
In the afternoon of 4, December 2023, Governor Diri lent his voice to the growing calls for global attention to the challenges facing coastal states as he sat shoulder to shoulder with leaders of the “Deltas Unite” environmental campaign.
Later that evening he would write on X (formerly Twitter), “Today, I joined in the formal unveiling of the United Nations Convention for Conserving River Deltas (UNCCRD) at the ongoing Climate Change Conference, COP 28 in Dubai.
“The gathering of eminent leaders across the globe including Nigeria’s President, H.E. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, in Dubai at this time underpins the sense of commitment and determination to save our planet.
“From the Niger Delta region where Bayelsa State is located, the impact of climate change continues to wreak unimaginable havoc on our environment, ecosystem, and human resources, hence, this unveiling today to draw global attention to the threatening and impending extinction of world’s deltas and wetlands.”
Certainly, the governor who aptly describes Bayelsa State as “more delta than Delta State and more rivers than Rivers State” is at the forefront of responding to the climate change question. As his presence at COP28 sent a strong message of commitment to stopping the debilitating impact of climate change.
A peep into the future
One of the lessons from the example of Governor Diri is that leaders and policy makers can make change possible through their actions.
The overall Nigerian environment will benefit immensely if similar policies are implemented across several sector thereby reducing travel time, stress and resources deployed on travel and the consequent impact on the environment.
What is even more important is the cutback on dangerous vehicular emissions that do not only impact the environment but also the overall health and wellbeing of several citizens.
