Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the governor of Ekiti State has expressed sadness over the state’s no 12 position in the 2019 West African Examination Council results, saying the state must be among the best five next year.
Fayemi spoke during the week while commissioning a block of the classrooms built by the Universal Basic Education Board at the Methodist Nursery/Primary School, Ikere Ekiti to mark the first year of his administration.
The Governor, represented by the Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Honourable Funminiyi Afuye, stated that “we are not comfortable with that 12th position. Education was on the bare ground in 2010 when we came for the first term. We lifted it to be one of the best before 2014″.
“We renovated about 182 public schools and substantial improvement came before 2014 before Ekiti went to sleep. There is a new sheriff in town, that is Dr. Kayode Fayemi and education will be back to its pride of place”.
“If you look at the trajectory of Ekiti, education is our pride. Education is coming back and we will be one digit in ranking in external examinations in Nigeria, if not first”.
“Ekiti was the least in enrollment in the southwest when I resumed office in 2018, but the first step I took was to stop all levies in public schools and took other multi-pronged approaches like construction of additional school buildings and I also keyed into the federal government’s school feeding project which has impacted positively on education and our economy”.
The governor reiterated that his administration would continue to do everything possible towards making public schools more attractive to parents.
The SUBEB chairman, Professor Francisca Aladejana, represented by Dr. Kayode Adeoye, said Ekiti has devised many initiatives to make public schools compete favorably with their private counterparts.
Aladejana revealed that the state government has paid a sum of N4billion as counterpart funds to UBEC to initiate educational programmes that will launch Ekiti back to reckoning as an academic hub of the nation.
Packaged by Emmanuel Adeniran
