By Abdul-Ganiyy Akanbi

The Yoruba Council of Elders, YCE, has condemned the coordinated abduction of over 45 pupils, students, and teachers from three schools in Oriire Local Government Area, Oyo State, on Friday, 15th May, 2026.

The affected schools are Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Yaworan, Community Grammar School, Esiele, and L. A. Primary School.

In a statement signed by its Secretary-General, Chief Oladipo Oyewole, YCE described the attack as “not just a crime against Oyo State, but an assault on the conscience of Nigeria, on the future of the Southwest, and on the sacred right of every child to learn in safety.”

The pan-Yoruba sociocultural organization said schools must never become hunting grounds for kidnappers and bandits.

“In the face of this ugly occurrence, we call on the Federal Government of Nigeria to immediately deploy special forces, intelligence assets, and logistics support to ensure the safe and unconditional release of all abducted victims,” the statement said.

YCE further called on the Governors of the six Southwest states – Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti and Lagos – to rise above partisan boundaries and deploy all available strategic resources through inter-state cooperation to secure lives and property.

“Without gainsaying, Yorubaland cannot afford to become the next frontier of mass abduction,” Oyewole stated.

The group said the Oyo incident is a symptom of a deeper national security crisis, and therefore, called for the strengthening of community and regional security architecture across Yorubaland.

YCE urged Southwest governments to immediately provide necessary materials for the Amotekun Corps, give them more training, better equipment, and legal backing for intelligence-led operations.

The Council also said it is necessary at this period for the six governors to recognize the statutory roles of the office of the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, alongside the contributions of Chief Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, in promoting peace in Yorubaland.

“The six Southwest governors should therefore engage them, along with similar indigenous security groups and other well-meaning persons and organizations in the Southwest, to spread their dragnet in the protection of our territories,” YCE said.

The group further called on the Governor of Oyo State to quickly establish a joint security task force for real-time intelligence sharing across the six states to prevent cross-border movement of criminals.

YCE also recommended the deployment of Armed School Protection Units in high-risk Local Government Areas, especially those bordering forest reserves.

“Our children all over Yorubaland are not to be used as collateral damage. Every day we delay on this decisive action, we may lose another child’s future and another parent’s peace of mind,” the statement added.

The Council said it stands with the families of the abducted students and sympathizes with the family of the Mathematics teacher who was reportedly killed by the bandits during the attack.

YCE prayed that the Almighty God would grant all those directly affected strength and fortitude to bear the irreparable loss.

The abductions have renewed calls for urgent reforms in school security and regional collaboration across the Southwest.

By Abdul-Ganiyy Akanbi

The Imam of the National Mosque of Nigeria, Abuja, Dr. Abdulkadir Jumuah Salman Solagberu, has commended the Registrar/Chief Executive of the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board, JAMB, Prof. Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede, for raising the board’s standard in probity and service delivery.

In a statement, Solagberu described Oloyede’s tenure as “the golden age in the annals” of the examinations body.

He said the JAMB boss had taken the board to a level where it is now Nigeria’s most credible and admirable examinations body, and a model for other public institutions.

Solagberu, who is also the Malami Ubandoma of Ilorin and proprietor of the proposed Darul Kitab University, Ilorin, said the former University of Ilorin vice chancellor had been a good ambassador of the Nigerian Muslim community.

“The renowned academic has not disappointed his primary constituency and the nation either as an academic or administrator,” he said.

He urged Oloyede, who is also Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA and Kuliyan Sokoto, to sustain his efforts, adding that his place in the history of Nigeria’s public service was secure.

Solagberu also called on Nigerians, particularly Muslims, to emulate Oloyede’s patriotism and creativity so the country could achieve its full potential.

The Imam prayed for Oloyede’s long life, sound health, and happiness to enable him to continue serving Allah and humanity.

By Our Correspondent

In abid to embed entrepreneurship training in the nation’s educational system,the Federal Government has moved to put Nigeria’s fragmented education data under one roof with the rollout of the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure, NEDI, a platform designed to track learners from nursery to university, cut the number of out-of-school children, and embed entrepreneurship training across higher institutions.

Speaking at the Stakeholders’ Workshop on NEDI in Abuja, Hon. Minister of Education, Dr. Morufu Olatunji Alausa, said the initiative will serve as “a single, reliable source of educational data” for basic, secondary, and tertiary levels, consolidating inputs from agencies and examination bodies to drive evidence-based policy and accountability.

“For two and a half years ago, all our educational data was fragmented. We don’t even know the number of kids in our primary school,” Alausa said. “Today, that’s gone. I can tell you today, the primary school in the state, the number of students there, the number of boys, the number of girls, the number of teachers, the concentration of those teachers. And I can tell you the facilities in that primary school, just sitting in my office.”

The Minister said the he ministry has engaged Ernst & Young to design the system architecture and integration framework linking key education data sources nationwide. NEDI will aggregate data from pre-primary, primary, junior and senior secondary schools up to tertiary institutions, mapping it from school level to local government, state, and national levels.

Explaining further, he said the platform will also track infrastructure down to usable classrooms, computers, and washbasins, giving planners real-time visibility to direct investment and monitor outcomes.

Alausa disclosed that 80% of development partner and development bank financing over the last decade went to two geopolitical zones that simultaneously recorded the lowest reduction in out-of-school children.

“If we had used data before, we would have known where the investment needs to go,” he said. “Today, I’m happy to tell you that core practice is gone completely.”

He highlighted that central to NEDI is the introduction of a national Learner Identification Number, aligned with the National Identity Number system. The unique ID will contain the learner’s state, local government, school ID, year of admission, and serial number.

“Once they get into school, they have this unique ID number that will make the mutual to their national identity number,” Alausa explained. “So if a student started school in a new school today, and the parents move to Lagos, we know that this student started at this school, in this local government, at this school.”

The Minister said the system will make “miracle centers” and exam fraud unsustainable. Nigeria’s 250,000 schools will be geotagged, and officials will proactively intervene when a child drops out, instead of reacting after millions are lost to the system.

All candidates sitting for NECO and WAEC this year will receive a Learner ID, with a retroactive rollout starting from February 1. NYSC participants are also being enrolled immediately, the Minister said.

Linking Education to Jobs and Entrepreneurship, the Minister said NEDI will feed into a national skills gap analysis, matching student admissions to labor market needs at local government, state, and federal levels.

“We want to be able to guide them; What are the kind of jobs they need? Doctors, nurses, software engineers, scientists,” Alausa said. “A student in Niger State will be able to say, oh, there’s so much need for nursing, so much need for software engineering. So they’ll decide their career based on the quality of life they want.”

He announced that at the tertiary level, the Ministry is introducing entrepreneurship integration and business certification across all courses. A chemical engineering student, for example, will take entrepreneurship training throughout their five-year program.

“You want to create entrepreneurs as well as students, not job-seekers,” the Minister said. He cited recent reforms, including the elimination of the UTME requirement for Colleges of Education offering agricultural technology courses, as part of a push to widen access and raise teacher quality.

Alausa highlighted a shift in gender performance, noting that more women than men sat for the most recent JAMB exams. “Women are performing wonders in the country,” he said, addressing the Minister of Women Affairs. “This is very refreshing news.”

He thanked development partners, singling out UNICEF for saving 18 months on the digitalization agenda, and called on state commissioners, NYSC, the Federal Character Commission, and examination bodies like NECO and WAEC to ensure clean, timely data feeds into the platform.

“This will give us more improved governance. Education stands at the center of human capital development. It will be the backbone of any national economy,” Alausa said.

“We have a huge population. 70% of the population is young. We need to balance it. And what we need to do to do that is to take that very well, and if we want to take that very well, we need to have data at the center of everything we do today.”

The workshop included presentations by the NEDI coordinator and Ernst & Young on data collection, aggregation, disaggregation, and use cases. Stakeholders were invited to provide feedback before full national implementation.

The Minister says NEDI will be open to the public once fully deployed, with AI tools allowing users to query the data directly: “Whatever information you want, you just ask it.”

Speaking in her good will message, the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hon. Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, commended the Federal Ministry of Education for convening a Stakeholders’ Workshop on the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure (NEDI), describing it as a strategic step to strengthen the country’s education sector.

Sulaiman-Ibrahim said the workshop’s timing is significant, coming on the eve of the International Day of Families on May 15 and ahead of the 2026 National Children’s Day on May 27.

She noted that the period underscores the link between strong educational systems, stable family structures, and protected childhoods as foundations for national transformation.

The minister highlighted NEDI as a visionary initiative to reposition Nigeria’s education sector through integrated, credible, and technology-driven data governance. She said such a system would improve national planning, learning outcomes, and inclusive educational development across all levels.

Sulaiman-Ibrahim stressed that in a country of over 230 million people, where children and young persons form a large share of the population, a harmonised education data ecosystem is critical.

She added that education remains a key tool for social protection, noting global evidence that each additional year of schooling for a girl improves health outcomes, reduces child marriage, and boosts lifetime earnings.

She pointed to the urgency of the initiative against Nigeria’s challenge of over 10 million out-of-school children, saying reliable and actionable data is needed to guide targeted interventions, equitable resource allocation, and stronger child protection mechanisms.

The minister linked NEDI to the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, particularly the Renewed Hope Social Impact Intervention (RHSII-774) under the Human Capital Development and Social Investment pillar.

She also noted that the Federal Government’s declaration of 2026 as the Year of Family and Social Development further reinforces the initiative’s relevance.

Sulaiman-Ibrahim called the workshop more than a technical engagement, framing it as a national conversation on the future of Nigeria’s children, families, and human capital.

She reaffirmed her ministry’s commitment to collaborating with development partners and stakeholders to advance inclusive education, gender equality, child protection, and social development.

“What we do with data today determines the opportunities we create for children tomorrow,” she said, urging that the workshop mark a milestone toward ensuring “no child is invisible, no family is forgotten.”