Former
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says there are ongoing discussions
with the Federal Government to secure global funds to address the
education challenges in the Northeast.
Brown,
the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, told the Correspondent of
the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York on Wednesday that
discussions had been held recently with Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.
“President
(Jakaya) Kikwete, formerly President of Tanzania, met the Vice
President of Nigeria (Yemi Osinbajo) and talked to him about the
education challenges that Nigeria faces.
“He
(Kikwete) was doing this as part of the work of the commission that I
chair – the Commission on Financing Education Opportunity.
“And
we want to offer Nigeria new contract between the international
community and Nigeria whereby we want to give more funds to help
Nigerian education move forward.
“The
Safe Schools Initiative is something that was initiated by the business
sector in Nigeria and the government with the support of the
international community.
“So
the next stage is further talks with the Nigerian government to see
whether we can create our international finance facility for education
and make it work for a country like Nigeria that needs a huge amount of
new investment in education.
“(Nigeria)
needs to do more itself but also needs the international support to
bring the education system up to the standard we want.”
NAN
reports that the Safe Schools Initiative is a 30 million dollars
project launched in 2014 at the World Economic Forum in Abuja, weeks
after Chibok schoolgirls were abducted.
Working
with Brown, the project brought together Nigerian businesses, the
government, donors and humanitarian agencies and raised 30 million
dollars in funding.
Brown
has continued to call on the international community to support the
project, which he described as laudable and a novel idea to alleviate
the huge impacts of Boko Haram violence on education in Nigeria.
In
April 2016, two years after, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported
the initiative had seen 213,985 internally displaced and vulnerable
children enrolled in schools in camps and host communities.
The
initiative has also trained more than 550 teachers, established
112 temporary learning spaces and created state co-ordination committees
for education in the northern states most affected by the Boko Haram
insurgency, UNICEF said.
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