The North East Development Commission (NEDC), on Saturday, announced plans to bridge gaps in teacher training within the region’s schools, which have been blamed for years of insurgency.

Dr Mohammed Alkali, the managing director of the NEDC, made this known at the graduation ceremony of the 100 Tsangaya and Islamiyya teachers at the Nigeria Arabic Language Village Ngala (NALV), Maiduguri.

The commission has pledged to sponsor 600 Tsangaya and Islamiyya teachers for training across the north-eastern states which started with the first 100 from Borno.

The training was organised by the Nigeria Arabic Language Village Ngala (NALV) in collaboration with the NEDC.

The objective of the two weeks programme, organised by NALV in collaboration with NEDC, was to improve the teaching standard of Islamic and Arabic education.

Mr Alkali, however, lamented that the region had lost more than 20,000 teachers from the beginning of insurgency to date, noting that it would be very difficult for the region to recover such professional teachers within a short time.

The managing director said that when the commission was inaugurated in 2017, it was also discovered that the region has a large number of unemployed youth, hence the danger of ignoring them without supporting them with skills acquisition related training.

Mr Alkali said that it was based on that the commission’s board decided to solve the problem of the youth then by coming up with the idea of creating ITC centres across the states under it which had so far trained 2,000 youths on various skills.

He also said that the commission is planning to consider building some modern Tsangaya schools to complement the efforts of some state governments to further increase employment opportunities in the region.

He, however, assured that the NEDC would continue to engage the services of  NALV in tackling training related gap in the region’s schools and as well support those participating in the programme with starter packs.

The managing director, therefore, directed the management of NALV to immediately commence the training of the 2rd batch of training for the second set of the 100 Tsangaya and Islamiyya Teachers from the remaining 500 scheduled for the training.

Earlier in his welcome address, Ibrahim Muhammad, director NALV, said that the participants were not only trained on various skills acquisition but were also equipped with the necessary tools to work with on their graduation.

He observed that what the village was doing for Tsangaya and Islamiyya teachers had similarity but in an advanced way with what Gov. Babagana Zulum of Borno was doing in his Tsangaya transformation programme.

Mr Muhammad said without the intervention of the commission, the participants wouldn’t have been at the village to tap from the rare training opportunities offered.

He lauded the contribution of NEDC in the training of the Tsangaya and Islamiyya teachers who would further train their students.

He said that the programme, when fully implemented, would go a long way in reducing the menace of street begging among the Tsangaya and Islamiyya pupils in the region.

Mr Muhammad also said that the training was well captured in line with the renewed hope agenda of President Bola Tinubu toward  addressing the out-of-school children issue in the country.

In his remarks, Musa Yashi, the executive director, humanitarian affairs at the NEDC, said that the importance of both capital and human investment in the North-east cannot be overemphasised, especially when looking at the urgent need for the revival of peaceful coexistence among its communities.

Mr Yashi noted that the Alaramma (Tsangaya teacher) and Almajiri (his disciple) have been neglected by the society for too long, hence the need to enhance their capacity for employment generation, income enhancement and improve their lives.

“This group of people have been neglected and undeserved, denied access to government support for a long period and by the special grace of the Almighty God, the North-east zone has bounced back to life and will occupy its position as one of the leading geopolitical zone in terms of socio-economic development in the nation, that is why we are here today,” he said.

(NAN)