The Minister of State for Education, Goodluck Nanah Opiah, has assured the National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) Ondo, that definite and concrete steps will be taken by the ministry to ensure that the institute is repositioned legally and structurally using the resources at the disposal of his office.
Opiah said this when he received the Management of NIEPA at the headquarters of the ministry in Abuja, to brief him on the mandate of the institute.
The minister told his visitors that upon assuming office, he pledged to make the education sector better than he met it, therefore all hands must be on deck.
“As a former speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly and former member of the House of Representatives, I know how these things work. I will liaise with all organs of government necessary to ensure that NIEPA’s bill is passed into law,” Opiah said.
Speaking on behalf of the Chief Executive of the institute, Professor Olivet Jagusah, the Bursar, Mr Olukayode Osinuga, outlined the mission, vision and philosophy behind the formation of NIEPA, saying the institute, saying it was established in 1992 by the Federal Government in collaboration with UNESCO-IIEP, Paris, with a mandate to develop a critical mass of education sector planners, managers and administrators.
He prayed the minister to use his “good office to ensure that the institute’s enabling instrument is signed into law to enable it to perform its capacity-building role in Nigeria and the West Africa sub-region.
Also speaking, the head Training and Research department of the institute, Dr Sunday Adegbesan, briefed the Minister about NIEPA’s achievements in the training of education sector planners and managers, noting that the institute can deliver on its mandate if the right atmosphere is created by the ministry.
Adegbesan said the National Policy on Education empowers only NIEPA to build the capacity of education sector planners and managers and that it had delivered successfully on this mandate over the years to include the private sector, and education workers.
According to him, the institute, only recently, successfully delivered the assessment and verification of the 36 states and FCT’s Medium Term Basic Education Sector Plans (SMTBESPs), a programme sponsored by the World Bank and said this was to show that NIEPA could carry out impact assessment and research activities too.
The Technical Assistant to the Minister of State, Education, Mrs Clarice Ujah, affirmed NIEPA’s strides and consistency in the education sector over the years and enjoined the Minister of State to help reposition NIEPA to its leadership position, a position re-echoed by the Minister’s Special Assistant on Administration, Dr Uzor Amaka A.
