Posted by By LUCKY NWANKWERE, Abuja on
The Federal Government has approved the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model policy in the administration and management of the 102 unity schools in the country.
The Federal Government has approved the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model policy in the administration and management of the 102 unity schools in the country. The implementation of the new policy, expected to take-off in March, is said to be an antidote to the present decay in the schools and inefficiency in the management system which led to the general dilapidation of physical infrastructure and poor academic performance of the students.
This is one of the major decisions taken at Wednesday Federal Executive Council meeting which was presided over by President Olusegun Obasanjo in Abuja.
The Minister of Education, Mrs Obiageli Ezekwesili, who briefed State House correspondents on the outcome of the meeting said the Council also approved the setting up of a Unity School Trust (UST) that will serve as a 'holding body" for the institutions.
Members of the trust, according to her, would be drawn from the public and private sectors; organised labour, the Parent Teachers Association (PTA) and other stakeholders while the schools would be funded through periodic grants from the government.
Ezekwesili equally said the Council approved that every unity school would have a governing board which would be community based and would be empowered to monitor the management organisation of each school.
She also announced the Council's ratification of the N4 billion said to have been expended last year by her ministry on the in-service training of 145,000 teachers in a determined effort to improve the quality of teachers in the school system.
She equally announced the approval of an action plan for the orphans and other vulnerable children in Nigeria as a way of reducing the pains of the over seven million Nigerian children said to be orphans, with 1.2 million of them orphaned by HIV/AIDS.
The Minister of Energy, Dr. Edmund Dakorou announced the approval of $ 117 million (about N14.9 billion) for a long term service contract for the power sector which he said would see to the manufacturing and fabrication of major components and spare parts required by the power sector.
The Minister of Transportation, Chief Cornelius Adebayo disclosed that about N3.5 billion contract was awarded for the resurfacing of the runway of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport , Lagos and that an agreement for direct air flight from Lagos to China was also ratified at the meeting.
The council approved N2 billion contract for the Shagari Earth Dam in Sokoto State with contracts worth billions of naira for the construction and rehabilitation of a number of roads across the country also approved.