Setting the record straight on Citizensreporters’ counterfactual, fact-negative reporting of Arikime, by Yusuf Ali
Although, the media, whether it is the most popular news media sites that we all know or the emerging cheap digital technology revolutionising the way news is gathered, disseminated, and perceived, its role is for the development of society through factual reporting of issues as it affects the people’s lives.
But that’s not the case with ‘The Citizens Reporters’, a shadowy media site we don’t even know and never heard of that published on Arikime Primary School without recourse to the basic journalistic tenets of fact-checking, verification, and balance.
It is most disgusting, misleading, completely inaccurate, and professionally reckless to mention figures without contacting the school authority and critical stakeholders of Basic and Secondary Education in Yobe State.
The claim that Arikime Primary School is not receiving the desired attention under the well-thought-out and action-packed state of emergency in education by Governor Mai Mala Buni’s administration, was a deliberate lie to paint the Yobe State Government in a bad light.
The Citizenreporters agreeing to the state government’s annual budget allocation of NN28.7 billion (17.5% of the total budget) to education is not only true but a statement of fact. The assertion that the educational sector in Yobe State has remained stalled is a flat lie from the pit of hell. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The Arikime Primary School is the largest school not only in Yobe but in the whole of Northern Nigeria, it’s challenges are age-long because of the growing population of students as parents in Potiskum and all the adjoining communities all come to be enrolled in Arikime school.
For the records, since Governor Mai Mala Buni’s administration came into office in 2019 and declared a state of emergency in the education sector, a lot of efforts and interventions have been made to address some of the challenges in the Arikime school.
A decade-long challenge coupled with the devastating effects of the Boko Haram insurgency cannot be tackled overnight. But even at that, the Buni administration has demonstrated commitment to addressing it.
According to the Chairman Yobe State Universal Basic Education Board (YSUBEB), Professor Musa Alabe, 54 new classes were built under the state of emergency to take care of the growing population of students and expansion. 107 new toilets were also built with water facilities being provided. The class management has gone from 250 to 150 pupils per class.
He said efforts are currently been made to deploy serving Corps Members to take on the increasing number of students in the school and more interventions are underway as education remains the topmost priority of the Governor Mai Mala Buni administration.
As the state of emergency continues to receive a boost, the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, YETFund, SUBEB fully strategised and energised with development partners and critical stakeholders keying into the interventions, His Excellency Governor Mai Mala Buni assures parents, students, and teachers that his administration will continue to give the educational development of the state the highest possible attention.
Yusuf Ali is the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) on Digital & Strategic Communications to Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe State.
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