Kayode Fayemi, the executive governor of Ekiti State has stated that the education of the populace is vital to achieving human capital development.
Fayemi made the revelation during a plenary session on day 2 of the Nigerian Economic Summit 2021 held at Abuja.
The governor said quality education is the fierce urgency of now in Nigeria.
“In quality education, I mean the quality of the infrastructure, learning environments, teachers’ quality, quality of education managers and funding,” he said.
Fayemi said he would rather go for a programme for results approach than running around for a partner funding approach in achieving quality education.
Ibrahim Sanusi, the former emir of Kano, however, reiterated that for quality education to have maximum effect on the citizenry, there is a need for population control policy from the government. And this he said will help reduce poverty in the country.
“Population policy is needed to address poverty in the country,” he said.
The one time governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) maintained that if the citizens are not guided in this line, they will continue to bear children they will not be able to cater for, thereby making the education policy non-effects because the people will always outnumber the provisions available.
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This he stated is not a population decision to take but he insisted that it is better to take result-oriented decisions than to take popular ones.
“At times you make decisions that are not popular but are right,” he said.
Sanusi disclosed that the government needs to decide where to spend the national resources. He insisted that the focus of government spending should be on people.
He revealed that as the emir of Kano, on his part, he drafted a template that will help the goal especially in the northern region and that he sent a copy to the chairman of the Northern Governor Forum but nothing has come out of it.
Sanusi reaffirms that to secure the future of Nigeria; there is an urgent need to create shifters to create the needed paradigm shifts.
