Centre Seals Deal For Online School, Targets Nigerians Worldwide

The Citizenship and Leadership Training Centre (CLTC) has entered into a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) with Sapphital Learning to establish an online school to expand access to civic education and leadership training for Nigerians at home and abroad.

The partnership was formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the director-general of CLTC, Rinsola Abiola and the group chief executive officer of Sapphital, Amu Ogbeide.

Under the agreement, Sapphital will make the initial investment required to develop the CLTC Online School and cooperate with the platform alongside the centre.

Abiola described the arrangement as a practical solution that would allow the centre to achieve its strategic objectives without placing additional financial pressure on public resources.

She said the concept of a digital learning platform dated back to her time as senior special assistant to the President on Citizenship and Leadership, when she identified the limitations of depending solely on physical training centres to fulfil CLTC’s mandate.

“The centre’s mandate, civic education and youth leadership development, is a national one, and a functional online platform, complementing our physical training centres, is key to fully delivering on it.

Financial constraints meant we could not invest directly in an online platform, so we pursued a different path,” she said.

Sapphital, a Nigerian digital learning company, has developed e-learning solutions for public and private institutions. The company currently manages the Nigeria Youth Academy (NiYA), an online skills acquisition initiative created in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Youth Development.

When operational, the CLTC Online School is expected to remove geographical and logistical barriers that have limited participation in the centre’s programmes. It will provide Nigerians, especially young people in underserved communities and those living in the diaspora, access to CLTC’s training and capacity-building programmes from anywhere in the world.