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The Commissioner of Education in Adamawa State, Umar Pella, said Nigeria is spending so much money to try to curb insecurity because it failed in the recent past to spend enough money to provide functional education.
Pella, who made the assertion at an event in Yola Monday afternoon, noted that education is the greatest victim of the Boko Haram insurgency that has been troubling much of the Northeast.
Umar Pella, a lecturer before his appointment as commissioner, spoke in Yola during the commemoration of this year’s International Day to Protect Education from Attack, organized by his ministry and an NGO, Education in Emergencies Working Group.
According to him, Nigeria’s large pool of uneducated or poorly educated people always provides ready hands for entrepreneurs of destruction.
He said, “When you deny education to a child, you attack education. As a country, we spend so much on insecurity because we didn’t pay enough to develop education. People who are neglected educationally are the ones used for mayhem.”
He added that Boko Haram, whose very name proclaims that education is evil, has always by its doctrine and physical attacks done much destruction to education.
He explained that the image of education, which Boko Haram tainted, and the direct attacks it launched on educational infrastructure, slowed education delivery across the affected states.
Also speaking at the event, which was held at the Banquet Hall of Government House, Yola, the Focal Person of the Education in Emergencies Working Group, Stephen Medugu, identified other forms of attacks on education as frequent abduction of students, encroachments on school lands, as well as natural disasters such as flooding that often affect educational structures and facilities.
Mr Medugu charged the Adamawa State Government to do more to deliver education to the people, such as increasing access to technical and vocational education to empower citizens for self-employment.
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