20th Economic Summit to focus on education – Yuguda

The Supervising Minister of National Planning, Bashir Yuguda has said that the 20th Nigerian Economic Summit (NES#20) would focus on education as a vital sector for transforming the national economy to compete well at the global level.

Bashir Yuguda stated this in Lagos during the inauguration of a Joint Planning Committee (JPC) for the 20th Nigerian Economic Summit (NES#20) which is scheduled to hold from the 18th – 20th of March, 2014.
The theme for the NES#20, he noted is “Transforming Education through Partnerships for Global Competitiveness.

According to him, the summit is an annual event organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) on behalf of the private sector and the National Planning Commission on behalf of the public sector to stimulate the policy direction for the government and the private sector.
He described this year’s summit as particularly special for marking the 21st year of its coming on stage.

“The summit has grown to become the largest annual economic forum for policy-makers and captains of industries from the public and private sector as well as representatives of the academic, civil society organisations and development partners,” he said.

The Minister also informed that participants at the summit would have opportunities to discuss on key issues and challenges besetting the nation’s economy with a view to evolving common strategies and the policy frameworks for addressing them.

Yuguda disclosed that the PPP arrangement adopted over the years for the summit’s processes has yielded many positive results, particularly in the introduction of the Transformation Agenda and the Vision 20:2020 which he said are the living testimonies of the collaboration. He pointed out the successes of the NES#19 and some of the recommendations currently being implemented by the government.

The Chairman of NESG, Foluso Phillips said that the summit would take a cue from the success recorded in the last summit in the agricultural sector to create awareness around the education sector. “We want to create awareness around the sector and allow people and key stakeholders to focus on it. A lot of investment has been made in the agriculture sector as a result of the last summit,” he stated.

Also, the Director General of NESG, Frank Nweke espoused on the decision to hold the summit on education in order to redress the decline in the sector which are critical to economic development, saying the key objective of the summit is to strive towards having permanent structural changes that would allow the development of 21st century skills in Nigerian children.

He observed that the 61% adult literacy rate for Nigeria and the low level (10%) tertiary enrolment in 2010 portends a threat to the ability of Nigeria to become the 20th largest economy in the world by 2020.