United States Plan Expansion of Bilateral Relations with Nigeria

The United States of America has disclosed plans to collaborate more closely with Nigeria towards the expansion of transnational education between both countries and Africa in general.

United States Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, Lee Satterfield made this known recently when she led a delegation of US officials on a working visit to the Federal Ministry of Education Abuja, where they met with Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman and the Minister of State, Dr. Yusuf Sununu.

Speaking at the meeting, Satterfield disclosed that her visit to Nigeria was a follow-up to the hosting of African leaders in Washington two years ago by United States President, Mr. Joe Biden.

“This visit is a follow up to President Biden’s hosting of African leaders in Washington in 2022. We saw more opportunities for closer collaboration in education and cultural diplomacy. Our Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken has been here twice already, as early as January to show our high-level support of bilateral relationship between our two countries.

“My visit is to highlight the ways we can expand that relationship and build on it, both on cultural diplomacy, creative industry, higher education, and other initiatives. We want to hear more about your vision and the various entities within the educational sector and see where we can partner and do more together,” she said.

While welcoming the delegation to Nigeria, Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman expressed appreciation to the United States government for its interest in expanding transnational education in Nigeria, adding that his ministry has a robust educational vision that would be beneficial to the country.

“The Federal Ministry of Education has a very robust vision that is crucial and significant to Nigerians. Education is a very important element of progress, and any country would embrace partnership on education. We have a President who is passionate about education and wants everything done very quickly,” he remarked.

Speaking on the vision of the Ministry, Prof. Mamman noted Nigeria’s commitment to reshaping its foundational education. According to him, only 25% of students who attend basic and secondary schools are able to transit to tertiary institutions, lamenting that the remaining 75% are outside of the education and school structure.

“In addressing this, we are focusing on giving those outside of the structure skills to contribute to the economy and gain sustainable livelihood. On out-of-school children, we have established Out-of-school Commission to capture and recapture children back to learning environments. It is essential to address the pool and primary factor breeding out-of-school crisis if we don’t want the numbers to keep piling. We are also determined to enhance technology for instructional and curriculum delivery, and train teachers to improve quality and delivery of learning processes.

“Also, we must integrate skills, soft skills that can breed thinkers and creativeness right from elementary level. This will promote interaction and activeness at that level of teaching. We as well plan to look at curriculum at all levels, so that as our people progress across various stages of education, we would have injected employability skills into them, that even when they don’t progress to tertiary level, they will be able to survive.

“The Ministry considers it paramount to gather data on the number of children that are out of school in elementary and secondary level, this is of great concern to us. We need to establish a baseline of information to keep track of challenges and progress,” Mamman disclosed.”

While revealing the nation’s drive to contribute globally in research, innovation and development, the Minister assured that his ministry is open to bilateral collaboration and partnership in addressing numerous challenges.

Also speaking at the event, Honourable Minister for State Education, Dr. Tanko Sununu registered the country’s openness in collaborating closely in areas of teacher capacity building, training and getting out-of-school children back in school.

While adding that there is also the need to collaborate closely on development of vocation, skills and reducing insecurity in schools, he disclosed that the Ministry and National Universities Commission (NUC) have come up with a policy on transnational education that would be shared with the delegation to create a framework for the collaboration.

Also present at the meeting were the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono and Ag. Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Dr. Chris Maiyaki who registered their agencies’ commitment to deepening collaboration on research fellowship, ICT and entrepreneurship.