General News
Low Broadband Penetration an Obstacle to E-learning Programmes – Dungo
DungorNwike Charles, Partnership Implementation Manager at Skool Media is an experienced project manager with a demonstrated history of working in the development industry.
Charles is skilled in negotiation, budgeting and sales, strong program and project management professional with an MA Business Studies with emphasis on corporate strategy and business growth.
Prior to joining Skool Media, Charles spent several years as Project Manager at Lagos Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
In this interview with UgoOnwuaso, Charles talked about what Skool Media is doing to change the educational landscape in Nigeria.
About Skool Media
At Skool Media we are basically passionate about changing the landscape of the educational space and for reasons of doubt,Skool Media is an ICT organization that is focused around changing the narrative on how the educational system functions in Nigeria with the adoption of technology and the focus on e-learning to improve or position the average Nigerian child for competitiveness in the global space. So that’s really what we are all about as a business.
e-learningas new system of learning
Of course it has not been easy as we all know Nigeria is an underdeveloped economy, so there is a level at which knowledge is being dispersed among different regions. We are privileged to be in Lagos as one of the regions but we must as well know that there are six geo political zones in the country and in that sense there are reasons to say there are difficulties around knowledge base. So, it’s not an easy task having to spread that gospel of education advancement within these several regions.
Fortunately, for Skool Media as a business, we are positioned around these six geo- political zones in having to offer these services to Unity schools, which is, federal government schools, so what we seek to do is to offer Technical Experience Centres and also offer infrastructure around those unity schools.
Over the next few months, we will be delivering our resources to twenty three unity schools, cutting across the six geo political zones and what we will do in those schools is to provide a platform that could advance this product called e-learning in our educational system.
So, for these centers we have what is called experience centres, the center is more or less like an ICT center where you are able to engage in critical thinking among students and teachers,
We are also trying to breach the gap between teachers and students and also to give student their opportunities and privilege to expand their knowledge base by assessing e-learning materials.
At Skool Media, we’ve commenced installation of tech equipment in some of these schools; projector screens, laptops, and software around educational materials inside those laptops, we also have what we called our Skool Media tablets which we’ve also been able to disperse around these schools to students that want to do further studies and engage themselves in further learning’s on that space.
So it’s not been exactly easy but it’s doable because the system is now adopting it, it’s been tough over the years with students having to engage with computer as means to equipping themselves basically, we are coming from a narrative where students are use to what the teachers teaches you and what you should present to what the teachers teach and having to engage your minds around it and improve on that learning you’ve learnt in the class.
So that’s why we offer this infrastructures and support systems to unity schools across the regions. So I will say over time things will improve because the transformation is ongoing and it’s cutting across these regions, so I believe over the next couple of years e-learning should be ready and steady in the country as a whole.
Do you have the resources and infrastructure to accommodate private schools or is it exclusive to unity schools only?
Yes we do. We are in partnership with federal ministry of education and hence the decision to kick off with the unity schools, so basically we’ve also developed a platform, which is Edufirst.ng,it’s expected to address engagements with private stakeholders as well as private schools, so it’s all encompassing both the unity schools and private schools but what I would say is the level of engagements differs, so the level of engagement we are having currently at unity schools, some of these private schools have been privileged to kick off with them.
So, our engagements with them are in different e-learning services as oppose to what we are currently offering to the unity schools, so that’s also a very possible engagement with private schools as well as private stakeholders.
Offering different services to unity schools and private schools
Like I said initially for the regions we need to put to perspective what the regions offer, if you put in the knowledge base in the northern region its quite different from the knowledge base from the southern region. For us as a business, we are working on faith and hope, so we are expecting engagements to be all encompassing in the future years, so we believe that as a vision of the business not to seclude private sector engagements in the advancement of the business overtime. So that’s why we’ve used terminologies to say we are expanding the business overtime and in that perspective expansion will be an adoption to the private schools as well.
Broadband deployment challenge in the deployment of these services
Well like for the internet availability, it’s still not available around the regions, what we have done on our e-learning services is to actually have these things offline so as to be acceptable by all, like we all know, in Nigeria currently, the cost of having to engage with wireless orWiFi services is not as cheap as you would expect it, but I believe the system is getting there, there are a lot of new businesses, there are a lot of emerging businesses as well as established ones that are trying to reduce the cost on having to access internet services, so I believe, what we’ve done in having to bridge that gap and to still spore growth in the educational space is to provide educational materials in an offline basis.
So instance, if you go to our regional centers that cuts across our e-learning centers you would find out that some of the materials you see on the laptops and some of the materials that we used to disperse knowledge are offline materials, so there are no restrictions and there are no segregation between regions.
Offering students in urban areas the opportunity to explore more with internet
We engage with both those that have access to the internet and those that are unable to access the internet directly. How do we engage with them? We have what we called the Skool Media tablets, in those tablets are educational materials that are both offline and are accessible for you to engage with online service.
So we try to disperse information via that same platform but what we do is to make it convenient for both those that are unable to access internet facility and those that are able to, so there is no exact gap in the knowledge base from both stems.
What we’ve also done is to improve on these thing through trainings, we do trainings at those e-learning centers, so some of our project team members are actually dispersed at these centers to conduct training like internet of things, Microsoft offices, trainings on Google, so students are able to gather on the ground knowledge on how to research and get educational materials for themselves.
We obviously can’t at this stage have gotten to every nook and cranny of what we are trying to achieve but we believe that with the core skills being in place people are able to go back and engage with the knowledge they’ve learnt during the training programs.
We do lots of training in those e-learning centers, so it’s not just to have the facilities on ground we also have our project team on ground as well to educate and to enlighten people on how to use them.
EdufirstPlatform
The Edufirst platform is meant to address the gap in the educational space, part of what we are doing on the Edufirst platform is to create a school portal management system that allows you to have good interactions, student /teachers interactions, parent/ teachers interactions, stakeholders interactions as well.
The portal is also useful for parents to access performance of their children in school, and conversations with teachers on how displeased or pleased they are with their children performance.
Under that platform we also have what we tagEdufirst blog. The blog is designed to have conversationon trends occurring in the education system both indigenous and global as well, so the platform is quite big and its meant to be all encompassing to all key participant provided you are an individual that have passion for one level of education or you are a school proprietress you will get access to signing up on the blog.
We’re also trying to develop on that platform what we call scholarship schemes. So the platform will also help students to be able to access on the spot scholarships with certain partnerships we’ve built with, so the partnerships will be for both institutions, universities at this point, universities both indigenous and international as well that are trying to get scholarships, it’s also suppose to be like a support scheme Edufirst is offering to the general public.
E-learning program roadblocks for unity schools
For us one key challenge has being the growing trend of attention span that cut across student and individual, you will find out that people are no longer having critical studies or having extended studies on their own.
So what we’ve tried to do is to ensure that knowledge is fun, so you will see that part of the topics or the thematic areas in which we are engaging on our platform will be interactive and also visibly educative to the mind.So it’s something that should be engaging for student to work with.
Skool Media is a member of Nigerian British Chamber of Commerce and we are partnerships the Lagos State Chamber of Commerce and Industry to see how best we can advocate for improved quality education that will cut across Nigeria to ensure that e-learning is being adopted into the curricular of schools because it’s something that we are passionate about and it’s something we believe that will reposition Nigeria in the long term to be among the developed economies of this world.
Capacity to support expanded portfolio
We do have, you should understand that the concept of e-learning has to do with the ability to engage, it also has to do with technology and the capacity has to do with learning. we have core staff that have the ability to deliver this things at the beck and call of the business, it’s something that we’ve been on like you rightly said, it’s been on for a few years and it’s something we’ve developed overtime.
We are currently in twenty three unity schools as I speak and we are currently serving as much as over ten thousand students that cut across over these unity schools. So the capacity in house to expand or engage with the state’s schools is very viable, it’s actually something we are looking at in having to expand the portfolio of business of Skool Media.
SourcingSkool Media tablet that are given to students
We were in partnership with Samsung in offering that service to the educational landscape of Nigeria. Over the years we would be seeking to have our products indigenous, so we would be having what I would tag as made in Nigeria Skool Media tablets, which is what is currently in the pipeline and that will come to surface within the next few years but the tablets we have currently are Samsung developed tablet and based on our partnership with Samsung we’ve been able to have these tablets dispersed to our students to engage with their minds.
Contents in the tablets, are they approved by the federal ministry of education
For the tablets, what’s been done is that the hardware is what’s being developed by Samsung, so the content as well as the software is indigenously developed by Skool Media that aligns the partnership. Some of them or most of them are approved by the federal ministry of education but like I said because of what the strength of the tablet is meant to do, it is to explore your mind;it’s also to expand your mind.
General News
AFC Proffers Action Plans for Nigeria, Africa to Unlock $4trn from Investors to Grow Economy
Nigeria and other African nations can tap up to $4 trillion in capital from institutional investors, an amount that could be used to fund the continent’s infrastructural gaps and engineer much-needed economic growth, according to the Africa Finance Corporation.
While there are as investable domestic capital across banking assets, institutional funds, and reserves, the multilateral lender revealed on Thursday that funds are still being channeled into “low-risk and short-term instruments instead of being channelled into the real economy.”
“Redirecting more savings into the real economy is critical,” said Rita Babihuga-Nsanze, AFC chief economist and director of strategy, speaking during the AFC’s 2025 State of Africa’s Infrastructure briefing. “Africa must build its intermediation infrastructure to match its development needs.”
Nigeria is however demonstrating how Africa can unlock domestic capital for infrastructure, with its pension fund investments in the sector rising from just $6 million in 2015 to more than $155 million in less than a decade.
This milestone, driven largely by reforms and credit enhancement mechanisms like InfraCredit, underscores the growing role of pensions in financing long-term development on the continent.
Data from the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) shows that as of February 2025, Nigeria’s infrastructure-related pension assets had grown to N250.87 billion, representing 1 percent of total assets under management (AUM).
This is a sharp increase from the N1.19 billion recorded in 2015, which stood at just 0.02 percent of AUM.
A turning point came in 2017, with the launch of InfraCredit and Nigeria’s maiden corporate infrastructure bond. The credit guarantee initiative helped de-risk infrastructure projects, attracting conservative institutional investors like pension fund administrators (PFAs).
Chinua Azubike, managing director of InfraCredit said the credit-guarantee institution has helped facilitated bonds to build critical infrastructure, citing the bond raised for the construction of the Lagos Free Zone.
Azubike noted that while perception of risks persists, the company has “zero default rate” despite being involved in well over 12 sectors.
But while Nigeria’s growth is notable, pension allocations across Africa remain largely skewed toward low-risk, short-term instruments such as government securities and money market funds.
In countries like Ghana and Uganda, over 75 percent of pension assets are held in government bonds. Nigeria itself still holds 63 percent of its pension assets in these instruments.
This conservative stance, analysts say, reflects both regulatory caution and the underdevelopment of local capital markets.
In contrast, economies like India and OECD countries show a more balanced allocation, with significant exposure to corporate debt, real estate, and alternative investments. For example, OECD pension funds allocate nearly 20 percent to alternatives, according to AFC data.
To replicate Nigeria’s model, experts are calling for a coordinated effort to deepen capital markets, build risk assessment capacity, and create vehicles that can intermediate long-term finance effectively.
Beyond returns, pension investments in infrastructure have the added benefit of creating jobs, boosting productivity, and supporting economic resilience, critical needs in a post-pandemic, climate-vulnerable Africa.
Association of Set-Top Box Manufacturers of Nigeria (STBMAN) has accused the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) of sidelining indigenous manufacturers and flouting a subsisting court order in its push to launch a new satellite-driven Digital Switch Over (DSO) scheme, tagged ‘The Big Picture’.
Charles Ebuebu, director-general, NBC
The group is calling on President Bola Tinubu to urgently intervene.
STBMAN, in a statement issued by Sir Godfrey Ohuabunwa, its chairman, described the NBC’s approach as “incoherent and unfair”, alleging a consistent pattern of disregard for existing agreements and stakeholders.
“It is becoming routine for the Commission to embark on a course without the slightest consideration to agreements and for key stakeholders in the DSO ecosystem,” the group stated.
The manufacturers expressed concern over NBC’s plan to import five million hybrid set-top boxes from China, despite a presidential executive order promoting local content in procurement.
They argue this move contradicts the “Nigeria First Policy” and undermines years of local investment.
“NBC should therefore be a promoter of economic activities and not a destroyer of ideas and investments,” STBMAN said, highlighting that its members still hold unsold boxes manufactured to NBC’s original specifications.
READ THE FULL STATEMENT BELOW:
PRESS RELEASE BY THE ASSOCIATION OF SET TOP BOX MANUFACTURERS OF NIGERIA, ON THE JOINT PRESS RELEASE BY THE DIRECTORS GENERAL OF THE NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMMISSION (NBC) AND NIGCOMSAT ON THE UNVEILING OF SATELLITE DRIVEN DIGITAL SWITCH OVER (DSO) TAGGED ‘‘THE BIG PICTURE’’.
The Association of Set Top Box Manufacturers of Nigeria (STBMAN)is once again compelled to issue a statement on the very incoherent and unfair practices being pursued by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC)in its implementation of the FGN’s policy on the migration from analogue to digital broadcasting. Regrettably, it is becoming routine for the Commission to embark on a course without the slightest consideration to agreements and for key stakeholders in the DSO ecosystem.
The public is invited to note that STBMAN is a body of technology driven businesses and is not averse to the introduction and use of new technologies.
Similarly, it should be noted that the Association is not alluding to any inference that it should be the ultimate determiner of how the project is implanted.
For any keen follower of the DSO since its conception by the DigiTeam, it is not far- fetched to recall its decision on the adoption of the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) option as against the DTH on grounds of the cost that will be difficult to bear by the larger part of the TV viewing population.
Secondly, as at today the Federal Government of Nigeria has spent close to over N60Billion on DSO program, excluding Millions of Dollars spent by Broadcast Signal Distributors, local DTT factories and other stakeholders who have deployed DTT Infrastructure. This is not minding the over 10 million Poor Television Households that will be impacted by mindless action of hybrid box.
As we are not averse to any change of any government policy, it is on record that STBMAN at various times have encouraged NBC to partner with NIGCOMSAT to provide the necessary signal transmission/ coverage to ameliorate the heavy cost that was being paid to foreign satellite distribution/ carriers but the NBC outrightly refused to consider this.
It is heart-warming to note finally that NIGCOMSAT is now the latest and best to provide signal coverage.
Curiously, the Press Release stated that local manufacturers would be engaged to produce hybrid compliant reception devices yearly, yet there has been no form of engagement with the 13 licensed STB manufacturers who have committed huge financial cost in the manufacture of DTT boxes specifically ordered and made to specifications provided by the NBC/ Digiteam.
It is imperative for the public to note that the STB manufacturers have toiled and sacrificed for the success of the DSO but at each turn, there appears to be deliberate and calculated move to scuttle their efforts and investments.
For almost 10 years, members of STBMAN have been left with scores of boxes in their warehouses without being able to sell because of NBC’s inability to deliver on its obligations and contractual agreements.
The least that any well-meaning governmental body that cares for the growth of its economy should have done, would have been an engagement with the existing licensed manufacturers to work out an acceptable arrangement, considering the financial investments as well as the changes in technology that have become necessary to undertake.
The public is invited to note further that it was on grounds of this and NBC’s attempt to undermine the agreement and the exclusivity granted the pioneer manufacturers that the Association took out a Writ of Summons in Suit No: FCT/HC/GAR/CV/442/2024 to protect its interest by seeking Court intervention to stop any attempt at licensing new manufacturers of STBs. It is *instructive to emphasis here that on the 11th day of September 2024, the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, sitting in Abuja made interim orders restraining NBC from taking any further step in relation to the reliefs being sought by the Claimants.
Notwithstanding the fact that NBC is not only seized of the pendency of the case/ action but has joined issues with the Claimants, it has chosen the path of contempt to short circuit the ends of justice.
An order of court, whether valid or not must be obeyed if it is subsisting by all no matter how lowly or lightly placed in society until it is set aside. This is what the rule of law is all about.
As if NBC is running a different Government, in the press release, they intend to import 5,000,000 Hybrid/DTH Set Top Boxes from China, in total disregard of the Presidential Executive Order “The Nigeria First Policy’ which makes it mandatory, that Nigeria comes first in all procurement processes.
No foreign goods or devices that are already produced locally will be procured without a clear justified reason. Accordingly, the policy reflects the vision of President Ahmed Tinubu GCFR in industrializing Nigeria, shielding the economy from global shocks and building sustainable local capacity. NBC should therefore be a promoter of economic activities and not a destroyer of ideas and investments.
In the light of the foregoing, we call on Mr. President, Alh. Bola A. Tinubu GCFR to urgently wage in and stop this rather dangerous trend sought to be perpetrated by the NBC leadership and its advisers.
Thank you.
For: ASSOCIATION OF LICENCED SET TOP BOX MANUFACTURERS OF NIGERIA. (STBMAN)
SIR GODFREY N. OHUABUNWA
CHAIRMAN
Jumia, Africa’s e-commerce platform, is celebrating 13 years of transforming the way Nigerians shop. Since its launch in 2012, Jumia has evolved into more than just an online shopping destination. It has become a catalyst for economic growth, digital inclusion, and everyday convenience for millions of Nigerians.
From small business owners and rural consumers, Jumia has played a key role in shaping a more inclusive digital marketplace. Over the past decade, the platform has helped hundreds of local and international brands reach customers across the country, while also supporting thousands of sellers with tools, training, and access to logistics and digital payments.
To commemorate this milestone, Jumia is launching the 2025 Anniversary Campaign under the theme “Enjoyment Overload”, running from June 2 to June 22. While the campaign will feature attractive deals from Nivea, Xiaomi, Itel, Diageo, Ecoflow, Skyrun, Oraimo, Adidas, Reebok, Unilever, Reckitt, and more, it also reflects a deeper celebration of the brand’s enduring impact.
“We are proud of the journey so far, not just in terms of business growth, but in the real-life stories of empowerment and access that Jumia has made possible. With this anniversary campaign, we’re pulling out all the stops to create a celebration that rewards loyalty, excites new users, and showcases the very best of what e-commerce can offer.
This is our way of saying thank you to the millions of Nigerians who have grown with us, challenged us, and inspired us every step of the way,” said Sunil Natraj, CEO, Jumia Nigeria.
“Beiersdorf Nigeria owner of Nivea Brand, is proud to partner with Jumia as the Platinum Sponsor for the 2025 Jumia Anniversary Celebration. This three-week event allows us to showcase our commitment to skincare innovation and reward consumers nationwide.
“NIVEA will highlight key innovations, including our new NIVEA SUNSCREEN – UV Face, re-launched Deep Maxx Tech Body Lotion, and Radiant & Beauty Even Glow, specially designed to meet the unique skincare needs of African skin.
“Through this partnership, we’re bringing trusted skincare solutions to more Nigerians, with exclusive discounts and a 4.5 million Naira grand prize for the top shoppers,” said Dele Adeyole, Country Manager, Beiersdorf Nivea Consumer Product Limited.
Shoppers can look forward to daily flash deals, brand days, games, treasure hunt, and exciting giveaways from Jumia and partner brands.
As Nigeria’s digital economy continues to evolve, Jumia remains committed to simplifying daily life through technology, innovation, and a customer-first approach.
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