THE British Council has reiterated on
its readiness and willingness to collaborate with the Nigeria government
towards ensuring that the country achieves its goals and aspirations
particularly in the culture, education and security sectors of the nation.
The Chief Executive Officer of the
Council, Claran Devane disclosed this in Abuja on Wednesday during a dinner
hosted in his honour when he led a delegation of the British Council and United
Kingdom Parliament including journalists and Vice Chancellors of leading
universities in the United Kingdom to Nigeria.
In his address, Devane stated that Nigeria
occupies a good position in the heart of the British government due to the
cordial bilateral relationship between the two countries over the years adding
that the Council has numerous programmes toward boosting the security situation
in Nigeria especially in the area of mobile policing and other viable
initiatives.
“I am leading a delegation to Nigeria
from the British Council and UK Parliament involving journalist and Vice
Chancellors of leading UK universities. We are here in Nigeria to look at
collaborations British Council has with Nigeria in culture sector, education sector,
decuriy and education.
“We want to see what is going on and
what we can learn from, which we can carry to other parts of the world. But
going forward, we need to think of what is good for modern Nigeria in some
ways.
“We need to think how we can work
through the education system which is growing rapidly and training the 500,000
teachers the government plans to hire. We will be doing more, making new things
like Lagos Festival.
“We have a lot of experience from
other countries and we work with teachers who become trainers. But then, a lot
can be done digitally like in Pakistan, where teachers learn from different
cities. In Europe and America, we have programmes with supporting classrooms
and training methodology will be another input.
“With the number of young people
joining the school system in Nigeria, whatever we can do to support the school
system, we will do.
“For me, Nigeria is one of the most
important countries in the world tp the British Government, the bigger and
fastest growing economy in Africa. Nigeria is going to be one of the powerful
drivers of economy in the future. For me, the connection is getting stronger;
the significance of Nigeria will only grow stronger as well.
Responding, the Minister of
Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed informed the audience that the
federal government had solicited for the UK’s training of about 500,000
teachers it intends to add to the teaching workforce in the country so as to
meet up with the global standard, and therefore applauded the British Council
for giving the request utmost and rapid attention. In addition, the minister
stated that his ministry had met with other stakeholders towards developing the
local creative industry which he said was aimed at creating employment
opportunities in the country.
“We have earlier sought the
cooperation of the British Council on recruitment of 500,000 teachers, which
has had experience on this in training teachers because one of the things the
Council offers is capacity building in these areas.
“This partnership is an ongoing
partnership. I have had the opportunity of meeting with the Country Director of
British Council and we both agreed to develop the local creative industry.
“The Council did offer assistance in
capacity building for the creative industry. They are leveraging on the
experience in the UK just like in Nigeria, there are some countries that depend
on coal to grow their economy around their culture.
“It is a good development that the British Council has
offered to assist Nigeria in changing the negative narrative in UK and to put
across government’s position in fighting insurgency. The narrative out there is
not a good narrative. It will be a welcome development if they can do that”,
Mohammed said.
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