The Islamic Development Bank Group (IDB) is to invest $98milion (N19.5 billion) in Bilingual Education Project in Nigeria (BEP) in nine states of the country, President of the group, Dr. Ahmad Mohammed Ali has said. The project is meant to bridge the gap between formal and informal education using Arabic and English.

It is also to encourage and expand enrolment into schools and integrate students of informal education to the formal education classrooms. Dr Ali made the disclosure yesterday when he led other executives of the bank to host the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II at the organisation's headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

States to benefit from the investment are Adamawa, Borno, Gombe, Kaduna, Kano, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger and Osun. According to him, the project was successful in Niger and Chad republics where the Madrasa and Quranic schools were worked upon in such a way that it facilitated the graduates of the schools to enrol in public schools.

The president said the programme would help Nigeria overcome some of its education challenges and also to enable those that learned in the Madrasa to be integrated into public schools.

He however emphasized that the board of the bank has approved the investment and that the final green light lies with the appropriate authorities in Nigeria. The project would lead to the building of 30 modern schools with 720 classrooms, 30 ICT labs, training of 1800 teachers and provision of 1.7 million textbooks among others as benefits of the investments.

Responding, the Emir of Kano accompanied by the Emir of Shonga, Kwara State, Dr. Aliyu Yahaya among other officials, said he would take the project as a personal responsibility and work towards getting the necessary approvals and its actualization in the interest of the country.