The Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, says it has renovated over 4,000 classrooms and commissioned 1,074 digital learning centres nationwide, bringing the number established under the administration of President Bola Tinubu to over 2,000.
Executive Secretary of UBEC, Dr Aisha Garba, disclosed this on Wednesday, during a tour of renovated schools and a digital learning centre at Basic and Secondary School Nyanya Hausawa, and Model Girls Junior Secondary School AMAC Estate, Aco, in Abuja.
According to Garba, the renovation work became necessary to improve learning conditions and establish minimum standards for basic education infrastructure, which is also meant to compliment effort of states and the FCT in basic education.
She said the interventions were part of reforms aimed at providing Nigerian children with safe learning environments and access to modern educational technology.
The UBEC boss said UBEC had adopted a whole-school approach, based on newly developed minimum standards, to ensure that renovation projects addressed the full needs of schools rather than isolated infrastructure gaps.
“We are no longer going to renovate a window or put in one chair and leave other hundreds of students sitting on the floor,” Garba said.
Under the new model, she said, schools requiring intervention would have their needs assessed comprehensively, including classrooms, furniture, toilets, water, electricity and security.
“Any school that government is going to renovate, whether it’s federal government or state government or local government, they must follow that minimum standard,” she said.
Facilitators of the project said the Digital Learning Centres are technology-enabled learning facilities established to expand access to digital education and enhance the quality of teaching and learning in basic education schools.
They are equipped with ICT devices, digital learning resources, internet connectivity and other supporting infrastructure, to provide an enabling environment for teachers and learners to access and effectively use technology for educational purposes.
Corroborating the Executive Secretary, Director of Physical Planning, UBEC, Arch Nura Ibrahim, explained that targeted schools are those located in a remote, forested area which were suffering from serious infrastructural deficiencies.
He said UBEC carried out condition assessment before the intervention to determine the extent of work required.
“The first thing we observed was that some of the buildings were completely defective and had lost their structural integrity. Some of the classrooms were unsafe. The beams were cracked and some parts had already fallen apart,” Ibrahim said.
According to the rehabilitation brief, the Nyanya Hausawa project was executed under UBEC’s 2025 Direct Intervention Project and covered the rehabilitation, furnishing and equipping of the LEA Nursery and Primary School and Government Junior Secondary School.
The Principal of the school, Gideon Isah, described the commissioning of the renovated facilities as a historic occasion, recalling the poor condition of the school before the intervention.
He said some pupils had previously been forced to sit on bare floors because there were not enough chairs.
