Last week, the Federal Government Of Nigeria’s Ministry OF Education in partnership with UNICEF, the European Union , the United Kingdom and the Norwegian Embassy in Abuja publicly kicked off the Digitalized Nigeria Education Management Information System (DNEMIS). It was launched as a tool to aid in the educational sector by enabling the collection of education data by the managers, monitor the schools safety and also aid the tracking of students progress. As this initiative will enable the Nigerian child to learn, grow and thrive, we look back at the current situation in the classrooms.
As we popularly say:”We live to learn”, the present day Nigerian child cant boldly say this as they are in schools where they may have only one laptop in their school library ( aside from the principals personal laptop).We haven’t forgotten that some of these Kubwa schools don’t have electricity and the school buildings are so dilapidated that keeping a laptop overnight means that the laptop would be easily stolen or that rain would damage it(thanks to their leaking roofs).You may think its just the government schools that have this problem. I have been to a private school in Kubwa that their school fees is high and yet there are inadequate number of computers to learn with and for the teachers to use. Such situations exist with a couple of private schools outside Kubwa.
Indivdually, some parents cant afford to buy computers for their kids whom are in primary or secondary school. Some of these children go their neighbor house or a close friends house to use theirs but sadly these children are not learning. During such screen times, the children use the laptops to play games, snap selfies and other pictures or worse still watch movies on Youtube.
It’s a sad situation that a primary school or secondary school student in Kubwa cant even use google map (which is the basics of digital skills. To make matters worse, some don’t know how to search things online and so when they are given assignments, they pass it on to cybercafes /business centers who capitalize on the parents and childs ignorance of digital skills to extort them at the slightest opportunity.
It is our hope that with DNEMIS, we will have students who will adapt more to digital skills, more improvement in their digitally related courses and we will also have smart and innovative teachers that will indeed make the school environment a safe yet fun learning environment where the child will be digitally sharpened in character and in learning.
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