Multichoice, Nigeria’s leading pay TV operator, has commissioned 10 educational resource centres in Katsina, bringing to 81 its total number of educational resource centres across Nigeria. The Multichoice educational resource centres are technological resource facilities by which Multichoice helps to enhance learning and development in secondary schools across Nigeria.

According to Joseph Hundah, the company’s managing director, ‘as part of the Multichoice Resource Centre project, Multichoice makes available to secondary schools, physical hardware including television sets, decoders and satellite dishes, learning boards, laboratory tables and chairs, generators, video recorders as well as a bouquet of learning and educational channels’.

"These educational and learning channels are customized to this special project and are not available commercially," he said. The objective he stated, is to assist schools in making the process of learning more vivid and empirical and therefore create more impact. "Students, in schools where scientific laboratories do not exist for instance, can witness scientific experiments being carried out and in the process get valuable insights they could never have gotten if all they had to do was to imagine how these processes take place," he said.

Hundah added that feedback from the dozens of schools across Nigeria where the Multichoice Resource Centre project has been implemented has been overwhelmingly positive as teachers as well as students have expressed immense satisfaction with the additional value that the resource centres add to their quest to teach and learn, respectively.

States that have so far benefited in the Multichoice Resource Centre project which is targeted at the entire country include Lagos, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Cross River, Abia, Ekiti, Bauchi, Katsina and Abuja, respectively, in four different phases. The fifth phase is expected to commence shortly.

Speaking at the launch in Katsina, Dr. Ismail Tsigi, the State Commissioner for Education, commended Multichoice for the Resource Centre Initiative, describing it as a laudable private sector initiative that will contribute to significantly in enhancing Nigeria’s educational development.

He added that the Katsina State Ministry of Education will spearhead a crusade to help ensure that the facilities at the Multichoice Resource Centres are used judiciously by school principals, teachers and students through close monitoring to ensure that the state derives optimal benefit from the facilities.

Mr. Ade Adefeko, the company’s head of corporate communications and public affairs said that the Resource Centre Project is a corporate social investment initiative by Multichoice. "We realize that knowledge is pivotal to Nigeria’s social and economic development and indeed key to Nigeria retaining a competitive edge in today’s world which is driven by intellectual capital. This is the reason that we will continue to commit resources into ensuring that as much as we can, we help to empower thousands of young people with the knowledge and skill with which to be relevant and make a real difference in the future," he stated.

Multichoice, he stated, works in partnership with the NGO, SchoolNet Nigeria and various state Ministries of Education in implementing the Multichoice Resource Centre Project.

In the case of the Katsina Multichoice Resource Centre project as with all other projects, SchoolNet, Adefeko disclosed, carried out a need assessment and subsequent training of teachers in beneficiary schools prior to the commencement of the project, in order to enhance their capacity to integrate the new learning bouquet into their traditional teaching and learning environment.

In his speech, Dr. Bashir Galadanci, acting chairman of SchoolNet Nigeria, , said the MultiChoice Resource project embodies a partnership between a diverse range of public and private sector interests aimed at mobilizing Nigeria’s human and financial resources to the singular purpose of transforming the education system in Nigeria into one which participates in and benefits from the global knowledge society.