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Northern Governors’ Forum, Catholic Bishops Sign MoU on Education

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 By Samuel Oyejola

A Memorandum of Understanding that would ensure that northern children have access to education like any other child in the develop world have been signed by the Northern Governors’ Forum, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria and the profuturo Foundation.

The project which would kick off in September 2017 is to cover catholic schools and selected public primary schools in all states in the northern Nigerian for the first phase. The project involved the use of tablets with instructional materials for children.

At the event, the Chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum and the Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima said that the MOU would rekindle the hope for a better tomorrow for millions of children in the northern Nigeria and also foster intercommunual and interfaith dialogue in that part of the country.

He commended the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria and Community of San’t Egidio for making the project possible stressing that the Catholic Church has been a front bencher in education advancement in the country.

While explaining that the problems in the north are hinged on low literacy and high poverty levels, he said the needed panacea is to ensure that the educational institutions in the north are functional, qualitative and accessible.

It should be the primary schools in the southern part of Nigeria consisting of the south-west, south-south and the south-east has less than 20,000 public primary schools while the north-east alone has closed to 20,000 public primary schools.

“The whole thing is an irony, the schools are there but not functional and where they are functional there is low enrolment. We must continually devise means of tacking this problem through creative means”, he said.

While harping on the fact that education is very important to the growth of the northern Nigeria, he appreciated the commitment of the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Dioceses, Bishop Mathew Kukah and the Emir of Kano as the promoters of the project.

The chairman of profuturo, Ceaser Alieta… speaking to Time Nigeria said he was impressed with the commitment of the Nigeria Northern Governors Forum and he is ready to partner with them to ensure that children in the north are well educated.

“we are very motivated, we are going to work together and we are going to ensure that children in the northern Nigeria have a very good education, the governors are very cooperative so is the Kukah Center, the Catholic Church  and we are fully committed to that.

Speaking at the event, Professor Van de Volder, of the Community of San’t Egidio the initiator of the programme said, the project is one of the mission of the community which is to ensure that peaceful coexistence is achieve all over the world.

“Dialogue is not only about friendly talk, nice meetings, nice declarations but it needs to materialize to become complete interfaith collaboration working together for peace and that is what we are doing.

“We cannot beat boko haram with arms it can only be defeated when the children of the northern Nigeria will have access to education.”

The project is expected to be coordinated by Kukah Center and Community of San’t Egidio Nigeria.

 

 

   

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About author
Time Nigeria is a modern and general interest Magazine with its Headquarters in Abuja. The Magazine has a remarkable difference in editorial philosophy and goals, it adheres strictly to the ethics of Journalism by using the finest ethos of the profession to promote peace among citizens; identifying and harnessing the nation’s vast resources; celebrating achievements of government agencies, individuals, groups and corporate organizations and above all, repositioning Nigeria for the needed growth and development. Time Nigeria gives emphasis to places and issues that have not been given adequate attention by others. The Magazine is national in outlook and is currently being read and patronized both in print and on our vibrant and active online platform (www.timenigeria.com).
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This is not a story about a reluctant investor. It is a story about capital that wants to move, cannot find enough places willing and able to receive it in a form it can underwrite, and quietly waits instead. Multiply that fund by the hundreds of pension schemes, sovereign wealth vehicles, commercial banks and infrastructure funds now carrying dedicated allocations for emerging-market infrastructure, and a pattern emerges that rarely makes it into a headline: the world is not short of capital for infrastructure. It has capital in historic abundance, sitting adjacent to a historic infrastructure gap, unable to cross the distance between the two. 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The first condition is met, overwhelmingly, across nearly every category of capital that matters to infrastructure. The second is met by only a small fraction of the projects competing for it. The result is a market that looks, from the outside, like a financing gap, and functions, from the inside, like a conversion problem: an abundance of capital on one side, an abundance of infrastructure need on the other, and an underbuilt set of mechanisms in between capable of turning one into the other at any meaningful scale. Where the Conversion Breaks  The break does not happen at the ends of the process. It happens in the middle, in the unglamorous sequence of work that turns a plausible concept into an instrument a fiduciary can sign. A promising transmission project needs a feasibility study rigorous enough to survive institutional scrutiny rather than optimistic enough to attract early interest. It needs offtake arrangements that hold up under real counterparty and currency risk, not the counterparty risk assumed in a base case. It needs environmental and social documentation calibrated to the standards of the institutions being asked to fund it, not the standards of the jurisdiction hosting it. It needs a legal and commercial structure that allocates risk in ways a commercial lender, not only a development financier, will accept. It needs a sponsor capable of executing what has been proposed, not merely capable of proposing it. 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