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NOUN’s Education Programme for Prisoners Fetches $20,000 UNESCO Prize for NPS

An education programme for prisoners being facilitated by the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) has delivered the 2018 UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy to the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS).

The NPS, which was selected as one of the five winners of this year’s prize, got the laurel in recognition of its innovative literacy programme of equipping prisoners with useful skills and professions to facilitate income-generation upon discharge and discourage future crime, a press release signed by the director of media and publicity of NOUN, Mr Ibrahim Sheme, said.

The NPS will pick $20, 000 prize money along with other benefits at a ceremony in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris on September 7. UNESCO has invited both the comptroller-general of the NPS, Mr Ja’afaru Ahmed Ahmed, and the vice-chancellor of NOUN, Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, to the award ceremony.

NOUN, which Sheme described as “Africa’s top open and distance learning (ODL) institute”, has for years been running the education programme in Nigerian prisons without charging any fees.

The Confucius Prize was jointly instituted by UNESCO and the People’s Republic of China in 2007 to reward outstanding individuals, governments and NGOs working to promote literacy for rural adults and out-of-school young people, particularly women and girls.

It was named after Confucius (551-479 BC), the Chinese educator and philosopher and one of the most famous historical and cultural figures, whose thinking still has great influence on education in China and the world today.

Winners of the prize are awarded a silver medal, a diploma and US$20,000 prize money, as well as a trip to the birthplace of Confucius.

Sheme also revealed that a letter from Nigeria’s permanent delegate to UNESCO, Ambassador Miriam Y. Katagum, informed the minister of education, Malam Adamu Adamu, that UNESCO recognised that the NPS’ education programme “is effective through the establishment of prisons study centres by the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN)” and that “NOUN should therefore be congratulated as the facilitator of the programme that won the Nigerian Prisons Service this important UNESCO prize”.

UNESCO’s assistant director-general for education, Stefania Giannini, said in a letter to the NPS’ Ahmed that the Confucius Prize will be given at an award ceremony for the UNESCO International Literacy Prizes scheduled to take place at the organisation’s headquarters in Paris on September 7, 2018.

An elated Prof. Adamu, VC of NOUN, said in response to the news: “Glory be to God for this recognition of our programme to empower prisoners and provide totally free education to them from undergraduate all the way to PhD.

“We are also ready making plans to recruit those who finished their PhDs as facilitators and supervisors for other inmates. This will be made easier with our proposed forthcoming Directorate of Learning Management System (DLMS).”

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