Official says ministries of education, communication should upgrade curriculum on ICT

Mr Tony Ojobo, the Director, Public Affairs, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has urged stakeholders in the ministries communication and education to pull resources together to upgrade schools’ curriculum on ICT education.

Ojobo made the call in an interview with our reporter on Monday in Abuja.

He said that the stakeholders should work together to fashion out a way to upgrade schools’ curriculum from the primary school level to enhance ICT education.

He said that there was an urgent need to review schools’ curriculum to improve the content of ICT education to make the country to be at par with global standard.

“Advancement in technology’s today makes it expedient for the ministry of education to look into schools’ curriculum and improve the content of computer education to meet global trends.

“There is need for ministry of education to be involved so that we can look at the curriculum and involve ICT experts and professionals to improve and add things that will put pupils and students on the path of innovation.

“So there is need for capacity building, we also need to train trainers, capacity building is very important and we believe that this capacity should be built from the primary school level.

“And to secondary and the tertiary education, there should be a review of the content in the curriculum in such a way that it is progressive to the point that students will begin to apply technology tools.’’

Ojobo said that many developed countries started from the cradle to teach their young people about technology and they are also encouraged to create things on their own, “Nigeria should does the same’’.

“I’ve heard the minister of communication saying from time to time that oil is becoming scarce like a diamond, and ICT is the next oil.

“We have statistics that are coming from the ICT industry and I give you an example; Facebook for instance is a technology brand that started 12 years ago.

“Today Facebook is worth more than 350 billon dollars, a 12 year company, started by a 16 years-old boy.

“Now our entire reserve in terms of how much we have as a nation, the last result showed that we have about 31 billion dollars.

“We need to begin to shift our focus from the natural resources to our mental resources as the way forward and that will take us out of the woods and bring us to technological advancement,’’ he said.