Training is universally thought-about to be pivotal in societal growth and foundational to a brighter future. Most particularly, public training equivalent to obtained in main and secondary colleges is sort of invaluable. But, this identical important public training sector has suffered cumulative deterioration beneath the APC authorities in Lagos State. The deplorable scenario provides the Labour Social gathering Guber Candidate Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour (GRV) a lot trigger for concern, and is among the vital areas he needs to sort out significantly when elected Lagos State governor in 2023.
A random go to to most public main and secondary colleges in Lagos reveals a deep stage of poor requirements of training throughout the state. Within the days of the Lateef Jakande-led authorities (and even within the 70s and 80s), most public colleges within the state have been at par with the non-public colleges. This allowed kids from deprived households to take pleasure in entry to sound high quality training that resulted within the nation producing a number of the greatest civil servants and captains of trade Nigeria ever had. The pattern helped create a balancing act and foster a brighter future for the little children of artisans, market ladies, carpenters, drivers, mechanics, clerks, and so on to change into
world-class professionals and wealth creators.
Nevertheless, it’s saddening that the final twenty years of the AD, ACN and APC governments have eroded the standard of training in Lagos State. Particularly, lecturers are now not motivated, school rooms in most components of the state lack fashionable educating amenities, many faculties don’t have snug furnishings for the scholars or snug workplaces for the lecturers. In the identical vein, there was an enormous enhance in examination malpractices, leading to abysmal college students’ failure charges in all the general public colleges within the state.
However because the decline in training requirements spreads throughout public colleges in Lagos, the youngsters of the elite are buying high class training in choose elite non-public main and secondary colleges. This permits them to promptly acquire admissions to greater establishments and full their college training quicker than kids from lower-class houses who find yourself lagging behind and even dropping out.
Now, training is a serious plank of GRV’s imaginative and prescient for Lagos State. Gbadebo as a public coverage knowledgeable and his deputy guber candidate will inside the first 30 days of their authorities run a complete analysis of the state of training in all main, secondary and tertiary colleges within the state with particular deal with the standard of training within the deprived areas of the state. On completion of this analysis, the GRV authorities will declare a state of emergency within the academic sector after which facilitate the training of indigent college students with particular bursaries and different assist initiatives to make sure no baby is left behind in entry to high quality training. As well as, the potential of giving a meal a day to all the youngsters to enhance their dietary wants will likely be explored. And naturally, a GRV authorities may even undertake a complete upward overview of salaries, welfare packages and capability constructing programmes for lecturers to be optimally motivated.
Somebody could ask: how will the GRV adminstration fund all these noble and people-centred public training revamping insurance policies enumerated above? Properly, the insurance policies will likely be funded by blocking all of the loopholes in state funds, equivalent to obnoxious lease searching for by the elites, over 50 billion naira payable yearly to unscrupulous consultants, large land fraud by the cabals, and bogus inflated contract practices which have change into the conduit pipe used to divert the commonwealth of Lagosians.
In all, a Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour-led authorities will uphold integrity and accountability as a state coverage by introducing an open and clear contracting system within the state that can carry the general public alongside on the associated fee implications of each main venture. GRV assures that that is the start of the great wind of change that’s coming to blow away the a long time of decay beneath APC authorities and restore academic glory to long-suffering Lagosians.