An ICT expert, Mrs Ngozi, Nonyelu, has called on the Federal Government to encourage the establishment of robotics laboratories in secondary schools.
Nonyelu, the Managing Director of Baun Robotics Educational Solutions gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday.
She said robotics was an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and science that include mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, and others.
“We want government to have robotics laboratories in all of the major schools so that students can learn new innovations.
“Our organisation has been engaging in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) robotics training in some schools.
“We have partnered with some private schools where we are teaching their children STEM robotics after school.
“We are also hoping that government can improve on school curriculum and include STEM robotics in it so that our students and teacher can learn about it.
“We need to develop our robotics base to enable our country to compete globally. This is what we don’t have in schools.’’
She said Baun Solutions had been going to schools to educate students on STEM robotics by providing all the kits they needed to work with.
According to Nonyelu, with the STEM Robotics, students will learn how to programme robots because the teaching is practical application of theory lessons.
She said with STEM Robotics, the students would understand technology that would inspire them to be innovators and creators.
“There is robotics in almost everything we do today and we have observed that our schools are not doing enough to expose the children to this kind of education.
“Students in other part of the world are already learning it. Their mates in the developed countries are creating new things such as Facebook and Instagram,’’ she said.
According to her, some of these things are developed by students in the developed world while they were in schools.
Nonyelu said the focus of the organisation was on girl-child education; “girls are the foundation of everything in all our programmes’’.
She said there was a special discount for girls who would be participating in the programmes.
“We want to encourage girls to be innovators, learn creativity and logical thinking,’’ she said.