Japan To Build 500 New Classrooms

About 500 classrooms are to be built by the Japanese government in the second phase of the Grant Aid Project it had embarked upon  in  Nigeria .   
Seven states; Adamawa, Borno, Ebonyi, Gombe Kano, Katsina and Oyo, were proposed to benefit from the project, which is expected to be completed within  three  years.   
Regional Director of Urban and Regional Development Division, one of Japan's International Co-operation Agency (JICA), Mr. Maekawa Kenji, said the assistance from  the JICA was to help Nigeria provide infrastructure to accelerate the development of education  at the  basic  level.
Kenji, who disclosed their intention, while on a courtesy visit to the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) in Abuja, noted that he and his team were on a feasibility study mission to Nigeria to determine where to  site  the  classrooms.   
Depending on the area of the need, he said, engineers would be hired to do the construction.   
To ensure quality output of the project, he explained that the Japanese government would be directly involved in the supervision of  the  work.
It would be recalled that the JICA had earlier provided a total of 498 classrooms at the cost of N1.8 billion  across 70 schools in  Niger , Kaduna and  Plateau  states.   
Executive Secretary of the UBEC, Dr. Ahmed Modibbo Umar, expressed gratitude for the gesture, saying it boosted the Federal government's move to tackle the challenges in  the  education  sector.   
He explained that he had already submitted a list of states for consideration, adding that the project should be scaled up to at least six instead  of  three  states.