Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has decried the dislocation in Nigeria’s education system, linking the inconsistency to the high level of irregular migration and human trafficking in the country.
The governor, who spoke to journalists in Benin City, said his government was changing the narrative and has, over the past seven years, focused on reforming and strengthening the State’s education system using the Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation (EdoBEST).
He stated that the success recorded by his administration in the fight against human trafficking and illegal migration in the state was linked to reforms in the education sector as well as programmes and projects to equip and build the capacity of Edo youths to become globally competitive.
According to Obaseki, “Re-enacting basic education in the State has thrown up several issues and shows us the dislocation in our educational policies and how it’s affecting the whole chain. The breakdown of our basic education is one of the root causes of irregular migration and has led to human trafficking in the state.”
The governor noted: “We embarked on EdoBEST to change the narrative. We decided to set up an education fund to encourage more students to go to school. We also focused on teachers to improve the learning standards. Five years on, we can now see a reversal and rapid improvement in learning outcomes.”
On efforts by his administration to transform the state’s tertiary education system following the success recorded at the basic and secondary education level, Obaseki noted, “We are committed to sustaining the revamp in our tertiary education system. All our local government areas have been connected with fiber as we have almost 2,000km of fiber across Edo State. It’s our priority that tertiary schools in the State are connected as it supports distance learning.”
He further stated: “We have to focus on what tertiary education should be and how we should rethink tertiary education to provide the manpower that we urgently need to improve productivity. We should wake up as a nation as our problem in Nigeria is not the exchange rate but productivity. We are not training our children to understand this and be productive.”
