Alausa charges NESRI coordinators to transform Tinubu’s education reforms to measurable results
By Uji A Iliyasu, Abuja
Minister of Education, Dr Maruf Tunji Alausa, has directed coordinators and officials overseeing the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative (NESRI) to sustain the momentum of ongoing reforms and ensure that outstanding commitments translate into measurable results across the country’s education sector.
Dr Alausa gave the charge on Friday at the Ministerial Deliverables Meeting on NESRI in Abuja, where officials carried out a six-month review of progress recorded since the last NESRI retreat held in February.
The meeting agreed on concrete actions to strengthen implementation of the education reform agenda going forward.
The review focused on four key areas: verification of completed deliverables, examination of pending tasks and the bottlenecks delaying them, the setting of timelines for outstanding assignments, and consideration of new priorities requiring the ministry’s attention.
Officials scrutinised assignments earlier reported as completed to confirm whether they had achieved their full scope and could genuinely be closed out, an exercise designed to guard against deliverables being marked as finished simply because activities had commenced or partial milestones had been reached.
Programme coordinators and responsible officials were also required to identify specific obstacles preventing completion of outstanding tasks and to propose practical measures for resolving them, while realistic timelines were established to strengthen accountability for agreed targets.
Speaking at the meeting, Dr Alausa said the exercise was not intended to celebrate achievements but to take honest stock of what had been accomplished and what remained to be done.
He commended officials for their contributions to the reform agenda, noting that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had shown strong political commitment to education and continued to provide the support needed to improve access, quality and relevance across the system.
He said his mandate, alongside that of the Minister of State for Education, was to ensure every Nigerian child has access to quality education, and cautioned against complacency, stressing that each achievement must build momentum for the next phase of delivery.
The NESRI agenda spans Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), STEM, the out-of-school children challenge, girl-child education, quality assurance, data and digitalisation, among other priorities.
Dr Alausa said the ministry’s performance would ultimately be judged not by programmes launched or meetings held, but by tangible improvements Nigerians experience in schools nationwide.