Gov. Godwin Obaseki of Edo says his administration will spend N6 billion on rebuilding secondary schools in the state between May 2023 and Sept. 2024.
Obaseki stated this on Sunday in Benin while answering questions from newsmen to end the 2023 Edo Education Week.
He noted that he wanted to leave behind an articulated plan and direction on what needs to be done and when to do it in the state education system.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the governorship election will hold in Edo by September 2024 and Obaseki is serving his second tenure which he started in September 2020.
Obaseki explained that it would be unfair to expect that his administration in five or eight years would solve the problem of the state’s schools that had accumulated for over two or three generations.
“Between May 1 and September next year, all the funds I used for roads for Seaport project will now go to secondary schools and this is in excess of N6 billion for secondary alone.
“Unlike basic schools and junior schools, we don’t have federal support for secondary schools.
“We have Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) supporting State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) but for secondary schools, there is no support.
”So, we have to put up mechanism to rebuild all our secondary schools. But we will not be able to finish all the schools but we have started by having a financing plan
“What we have done is to start the process and set direction and hope that the citizens will hold the government accountable and responsible by ensuring that they deliver on what they expect within available resources,” he said.
The governor said that it is humanly impossible to rebuild all the schools and classrooms, as well as putting furniture and have all the textbooks as required.
He said his government had started making significant progress and demonstrated that changing the education system is possible and not rocket science.
“We expect that the last phase of the project is to be able to have measures for learning outcomes, we have hired all the teachers and so on. This would enable us to measure what the children have learnt,” he said. (NAN)
