Development Communications (DevComs) Network in a two-day capacity building in Abuja, has successfully trained 19 finalist out of the 40 journalists who attended the  State Capacity Building in Kaduna and Lagos in October 2012.
The workshop which took place at WestPoint Hotels Limited on the 8th and 9th May 2013, was tagged National Capacity Building for Education Reporters. It is an activity under the Journalism Development Programme (JDP 2) embarked upon in June 2013.

The workshop was an avenue for the participants to share experience on education reporting across seven states in Nigeria. The participants were selected from the 40 journalists earlier trained at the state level in Kaduna and Lagos State. Also in attendance were 5 facilitators, an observer from Evidence for Action (E4A), a JDP graduate and two other staff of DevComs and ESSPIN.

Mr. Ola Seyi Ayodele, ESSPIN CSI Specialist, Kaduna, spoke on ‘the role of State Government involvement in the achievement of Education for All’ said the role of the state government in education is co-ordination. ‘The target of Education for All is the child so the government has to create a conducive atmosphere for access and equity by following a framework that permeates the Local government through the community to the child’, he said.

Omokide Chikodi, CSACEFA, lamented the low budgetary allocation to education in the Nigeria compared to other developing countries in the world. According to her,  Nigeria allocates 8.7% of total budget in 2013 to education whereas, smaller African countries like  Kenya  allocate 23.0%, Botswana 19.0% Swaziland,24.6% Lesotho 16.8% Cote d Ivoire 30.0% Burkina Faso 16.8% Ghana 31% , Uganda 27.0% Tunisia ,17.0%  Morocco 17.7 %.

It was gathered that inadequate monitoring of schools and allocated funds  is predominant among factors responsible for low quality of education in the country.

Journalism Development Programme (JDP) has so far reached 280 journalists in Lagos, kwara, Enugu, Abuja, Kano, Kaduna and Jigawa from 2010 to date.