By Ngozi Nwankwo
The Cross River State Government has solicited support from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund to build an edifice to house all practical skills for its state-owned university of Education and Entrepreneurship.
The state governor, Bassey Otu, who made the appeal during a visit to TETFund on Wednesday in Abuja, stressed the importance of human capital development in confronting challenges of underdevelopment, poverty and unemployment.
Otu who also commended the Fund under the leadership of Arch Sonny Echono on the visible infrastructural development in the country, noted that the state requires support for its newly converted College of Education to university of education and Entrepreneurship where craftsmen, bricklayers, welders, and others will be trained.
“Let me on the same note, start by commending you highly, because what you’re doing in terms of infrastructure in our universities, in our tertiary institutions, is very visible, particularly under the leadership of the present executive secretary. We’ve seen and noticed a lot of changes”,
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“It is not very easy to put in this number of years in the service without blemish. It’s normally not very easy, but to come on untouched and still looks this young.
” We are here, actually today, to put it on record that you’ve been doing well, and we do need your help and support. Nigeria has a very big problem, apart from the fact that other entities and realms have moved beyond in terms of education, Nigeria, education is one of the problems where we find ourselves, where we are today. You’ll agree with me that even when you visit a country as close as Ghana here to introduce Nigerian professor as a professor from Nigeria, while other professors are introduced as professors”.
“And we know because in my days in school, like too many international students, even the South Africans that are very hostile to Nigerians today, all went through here with very good education”.
“I think somewhere along the line, we lost it, probably in terms of priority, like they say, always, it was always better late than never. It is time to give, if not this our generation, some hope you give the young one coming so that can make Nigeria proud.
” Actually, the College of Education, we are upgrading it to University of education and entrepreneurship. This is going to be the first one in the country. That’s why we here soliciting for very genuine and strong support.
“I say so because we continue to produce 1000s of graduates that are not employable, they can’t be engaged anywhere. And we also agree that most of the times, things that you learn or study in schools are not things you practice outside”.
” You can only apply the knowledge which you gather from there to you to do it, and the day to day ruling of affairs. So we’ve gotten to that point which we have to change it. And we want every student that goes out of this university to be able to have at least not less than two skills, and he should be able to define two thesis, one in education and the other one or two in the skills which he has acquired”.
In his response, Echono assured the governor of support stressing that such support is one of TETFund obligations to the states.
“On behalf of our management and especially the Board of Trustees, that we will offer support to this initiative. We are aware of the guidelines and the procedures and all of that for enlistment, but we are also flexible, because the board of trustees have taken the position that we must meet our obligations to states, what we refer to as equality of states, and the resources that we have must go equally to all the states of the Federation through their institutions”.
“So we find creative ways of ensuring that we do that, and that is one of the reasons why we believe that we have this type of synergy. We do everything to encourage it” he said
“The issue of the conversion of the College of Education to a specialized University of Education and ICT, I think it is a profound and again, it’s consistent with the type of thinking that we have. I felt so happy hearing you because I sees there’s a whole lot of similarity between your vision and that of the president”.
“Mr president gave us a task to ensure that every Nigerian child graduating from our tertiary institutions must have proficiency in ICT and technology skills in addition to whatever course that they will study in the university. And we have been taking steps towards this, especially by promoting various digital resources that we want to make available to students in our beneficial institutions”.
“We must make the right investments. We must review entirely our curriculum and the delivery systems to ensure that the people we are producing, the graduates we are producing, not only have the skills, but our global citizens that can work anywhere, that can work from anywhere, for anybody”, he added.