The Federal Government has distributed three million copies of MDGs branded free exercise books to indigent pupils across the country.
The initiative, the Federal Government says, is to meet the Millennium Development Goal 2 target in line with the United Nations declaration on Universal Basic Education.
According to the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, Dr. Precious Gbeneol, the aim is to ease the burden of the poor as well as stimulate the interest of the pupils in education.
Gbeneol, who spoke during the presentation exercise in Abuja, said the government’s contributions to education were yielding positive results.
The National Bureau of Statistics report of the sector in 2012, the presidential aide said, showed that primary school attendance ratio was 71.0 per cent, a figure, she added, represented 10 per cent improvement when compared to the 2008 record.
She added that in achieving Goal 2, the government had deployed Debit Relief Gains in fund projects and initiatives in order to improve on education quality, capacity, access and relevance.
Gbeneol also noted that through another MDGs initiative, the National Teachers Institute and UBEC trained no fewer than 672, 135 primary school teachers from 2006 till date. According to her, the scheme provides the beneficiaries with requisite skills to enable them to impart the same to their pupils.
Gbeneol added that via the MDGs, the Federal Ministry of Education had received over N113.75bn from 2006 to date to implement various programmes and projects bordering on the girl-child education.
