A prestigious institution, Charterhouse Lagos, hosted the Lagos State Government, comprising some Commissioners, who toured the school’s world-class campus.

​The delegation included the Commissioner, of Ministry of Commerce, Cooperatives, Trade and Investment, Folashade Ambrose; Commissioner, Youth and Social Development Bolaji Ogunlende; the Commissioner for Basic Education, Tolani Ali Balogun, duly represented by the Director of Policy, Planning, Research & Statistics, Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, Martins Opeyemi and Head Investment, Ministry of Commerce, Cooperatives, Trade and Investment, Suileman Abolore.

​A statement by the school said that during the visit, discussions centred on innovative approaches to enhance educational opportunities for children and youth, equip teachers with advanced skills, and address the evolving needs of Nigeria’s educational landscape.

Oando Foundation, in collaboration with Sumitomo Chemical, Lagos and Plateau State Universal Basic Education Boards, and GreenHubAfrica, has marked a significant milestone in environmental advocacy with the successful implementation of its Clean Our World project.

This initiative has reached over 69,500 pupils across 70 public primary schools in Lagos and Plateau States, promoting environmental education and sustainable practices. The Clean Our World initiative addresses Nigeria’s waste management challenges, particularly its annual generation of 32 million tonnes of solid waste, 2.5 million tonnes of which is plastic.

By focusing on integrating environmental education into public schools and communities, the project aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4.7, which emphasises education for sustainable development and climate action.

Ndubueze Mbah, Enugu State Commissioner for Education, has raised concerns over the acute shortage of skilled and technical teachers in Nigeria, describing the situation as a ‘state of emergency’ that threatens the quality of education across the country.

Speaking at a National Stakeholders’ workshop for the Validation of the Reviewed National Education Policy (NTEP) on Wednesday In Abuja, the commissioner pointed out that Nigeria is facing a critical shortage of qualified educators, with fewer than 4,000 technical teachers nationwide.

This shortage, he stressed, has been exacerbated by the alarming trend of recruiting teacher trainees who have failed in other academic fields, often without meeting minimum entry requirements. “We have learned that across the nation, we have no more than 4,000 technical teachers. So the teacher shortage and the quality is a state of emergency. And we need help.

Amidst the increase in number of bullying cases across primary and secondary schools nationwide, the Federal Ministry of Education on Wednesday announced plans to launch a platform where whistleblowers can report cases of bullying anonymously. The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Alausa, made this known during a press briefing in Abuja.

Alausa who expressed deep concern over the rising cases of bullying, violence, and other vices in secondary schools across the country emphasised the devastating impact of these issues on students’ academic performance, mental health, and moral values.

The minister highlighted the alarming consequences of bullying and violence, including declining academic performance, mental health challenges, dropouts, and erosion of moral values.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities said it will embark on a strike action if the tax reform bill is implemented for tertiary education institutions. This was in response to provisions within the Nigeria Tax Reform Bill 2024, currently before the National Assembly.

The bill includes a key issue in Section 59 (3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024, which details how the Development Levy, an education tax that currently funds TETFund, will be distributed starting in 2025. According to the proposed bill, TETFund will receive 50 per cent of the Development Levy in 2025 and 2026, with NITDA, NASENI, and NELFUND receiving the remaining percentages.

However, by 2030, NELFUND is set to receive 100 per cent of the levy, while TETFund, NASENI, and NITDA will receive nothing. National President, ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, in an interview with our correspondent, stated that if the proposed bill, which included plans to phase out TETFund by 2030, was implemented, Nigerian public universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education would become defunct.

When former president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the Harvard University-trained leader, ascended to power in Liberia in 2005, her compatriots celebrated her intention to consign the country's poor educational standards to history.

Eight years later, during her second six-year mandate in 2013, she made a dramatic turnaround, dubbing the country's education system a "mess". By the time she ended her second term in 2019, stakeholders noted that the system remained at the same level as when she first took office.

Benjamin Wehye, a prominent Liberian educator and president of Licosess College of Education in the suburbs of Monrovia, reflected on the state of education during President Sirleaf's tenure. He recalled that in 2013, when the ex-president criticised the education system, an estimated 25,000 Liberian students who sat for the West African Examination Council (WAEC) exams and the University of Liberia entrance exams failed to obtain a passing grade.

The grand finale of the Innovation to Market (I2M) Incubator Program 2024, held at the University of Lagos Innovation and Technology Management Office has supported 24 entrepreneurs with funding and mentorship.

The six-week program culminated with 24 entrepreneurs from the second cohort pitching their innovations to a panel of judges. The incubator program aims to support entrepreneurs around the nation not just at the University of Lagos, to bridge the gap between research and market-ready products.

The showcased innovations spanned diverse sectors, including agriculture, nutrition, solar-powered devices, and transaction solutions. The project director, Mrs Abiodun Gbenga-Ilori, stated that proof of concept was a necessity for the innovators to provide.

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund, an intervention agency set up by the Federal Government, projected on Tuesday, that the beneficiaries of student loans may hit an estimated 2.1 million. The Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this at the inauguration and induction of members of the SERVICOM unit and committee in Abuja.

His projection comes one week after data obtained from NELFUND showed that it has disbursed over N104bn to 613,734 students from Nigerian tertiary institutions since inception. The disbursed funds encompass institutional fees paid directly to the institutions of applicants and upkeep loans paid directly to the account number provided by the applicants.

Addressing newsmen in Abuja, Sawyerr explained that with the admission of about 400,000 new entrants this year, the Fund may be anticipating its total number of registrants to reach 2.1 million students. “It is an estimate and it gets bigger than that when we start our skills programme. That is because there we have a lot more. We are expecting that about 400,000 students will be starting this new session.”

The ambition of Nigerian academics to study abroad with the help of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, or TETFund, has been dealt a blow following the suspension of the fund’s foreign scholarship programme.

Several lecturers told University World News the TETFund’s decision would deprive Nigerian scholars of international exposure and global competitiveness in learning and research, but the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) backed the suspension.

The fund, according to a memo by Sonny Echono, the executive secretary, dated 25 November, and addressed to university vice-chancellors, rectors and provosts of the beneficiary institutions, premised the suspension of the foreign component of the TETFund Scholarship for Academic Staff intervention “on the high cost of training and the abscondment of scholars on getting abroad”.

Zimbabwe’s government has allocated about US$6 million in its 2025 national budget to address the country’s critical skills needs by aligning scholarships to sectors with skills deficits, formulating a national skills strategy and updating its national skills audit report.

Presenting the national budget in the country’s parliament in November, Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube said the government undertook consultative workshops and meetings throughout the country to understand the skills landscape. Subsequently, the government was aligning scholarships towards critical skills needs and was prioritising the skills agenda across all the economic sectors.

“This process will culminate in the updated National Critical Skills Audit Report, which will facilitate the formulation of a National Skills Policy and Strategy, spelling out policies and programmes that [will] enable the country to adapt to and benefit from the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Ncube said.

A former Kwara state governorship aspirant, Pastor Engineer Sunday Adebayo Babalola, has urged the Federal Government to give education a sufficient share of N47.9trn 2025 budget. He added that the 20 million estimated for the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is an unpleasant development.

In his goodwill message while receiving an award as The Outstanding Philanthropist 2024 by The Progressive Magazine in Abuja, Babalola said that all tiers of government, corporate organizations, donor agencies and other philanthropists should be committed to reducing the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria.

Stating that the menace posed security and developmental challenges, he added that it became more heartbreaking when considering that the out-of-school children in Nigeria, about 10.5 million of them, aged 5-14 years are not in school as recorded by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 2020.

The Nigeria Union of Teachers, Oyo State, has commended Governor Seyi Makinde-led government for recruiting 19,500 teachers in five years. The union said the ripple effects of the recruitment were that it would address the problems of inadequate manpower in the education sector and promote teaching and learning.

The union, in a statement signed by the NUT Chairman, Oladimeji Raji and the Secretary, Salami Olukayode, noted that the appointment of 5,000 teachers in his first term and 14,500 since the inception of his second term into the state primary and secondary schools was noteworthy.

The statement read, “Your disposition towards turning the tide of the education system of Oyo State remains unprecedented and unmatched not only in the annals of recruitment history of our dear state in recent times but also across the entire 36 states of the Federation including the Federal Capital Territory.