By Rauf Oyewole
Speak Out Africa Initiative in partnership with Better Life Restoration Initiative has advocated for a review of the Nation's secondary school education curriculum to integrate digital skills and drug abuse prevention among youths.
The Speak Out Africa’s project ‘Skill N Skool 4 Naija’ seeks to integrate digital skills and drug abuse prevention in secondary school curriculum. It said that digital skills could be instilled in young and productive Nigerians to meet up with international trends where technological innovation determined the future.
During a one-day policy dialogue organised by the Organisation and BERI which is supported by CISS and funded by the European Union, the Project Manager of BERI, Nkem Ogbonna, yesterday explained that the project aimed to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to prevent drug abuse.
“We believe that the existing curriculum on drug abuse prevention is grossly inadequate and needs a review. The project is liaising with the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to come up with a curriculum that is in tune with modern reality.
“We have trained teachers and we have also had policy dialogue with school administrators, also we are working with the state ministries of education and other relevant institutions on how we can put heads together to address this issue.”
According to Ogbonna, stakeholders must take urgent action to prevent escalating drug abuse menace among the population, whom he said are falling into the key population category.
He said that drug abuse has become a disturbing practice among secondary school students while their peers in other climes are exploiting digital skills. “Many of those who are digitally savvy use it wrongly to defraud people, this is not good for our nation,” he said.
He called for urgent review of the Nigerian education curriculum to accommodate drug abuse prevention and digital skills to foster needed development.
Civil society organisations, education administrators, media and other relevant institutions were represented at the policy dialogue to suggest areas of review in the school curriculum.
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