Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo says his administration will spend N6 billion on rebuilding secondary schools in the state between May 2023 and September 2024.
Mr Obaseki stated this on Sunday in Benin while answering questions from journalists at the 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 governorship election will be held in Edo by September 2024, and Mr Obaseki is serving his second tenure, which he started in September 2020.
Mr 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 the 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 the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) supporting the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), but for secondary schools, there is no support,” he said.
The governor said that it is humanly impossible to rebuild all the schools and classrooms, as well as put in 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.
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