Cross River Has Spent N5b on Education – Deputy Governor

by crossriverwatch admin

The Cross River State Government says it has spent the sum of 3billion Naira on secondary and 2.7billion Naira on primary education since the inception of the Senator Liyel Imoke administration in 2007.
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Mr. Efiok Cobham, the deputy governor of the state made the revelation in Calabar on Monday while declaring open a workshop on ICT for secondary schools in the state.

Cobham said the government has invested over N6b for the funding of secondary schools operating in the State between 2007 to 2013.

He added that the workshop was organized as a training retreat by the State Ministry of Education in conjunction with EDUComp Solutions Limited, India to train teachers on the use of computers.

He said the state was emphasizing e-learning for pupils and students of the state since the world has become a global village where a child in the state is expected to be able to compete with a child in Malaysia.

Mr. Cobham added that the government was living up to its responsibility in funding education at the primary level and has sunk the sum of N2.7billion Naira as its counterpart funding for various educational programs in the state and has rehabilitated over 500 class room blocks in primary schools.

He said government had also established five new secondary schools and three primary schools to expand access to primary and secondary education to ensure that school-age children are not denied access to qualitative education.

According to him, this has translated to an increase of 25% to 30% enrollment in public primary and secondary schools stressing that investment in the education sector included manpower development through scholarships, printing of textbook for primary and secondary schools at subsidized rate, payment of WAEC and NAPTEB registration fees which according to him have also impacted positively on generality of the people.

Also speaking Commissioner for Education Prof. Offiong Offiong said that the training became necessary since government had distributed over 10,000 laptops/computers to teachers at primary and secondary schools.

Offiong who also spoke on the importance of the retreat pointed out that the retreat came at a time when 60 secondary schools under comprehensive renovation of schools phase 1 are being installed with state of the art computers systems adding that the State educational system intend to introduce digital literacy models before 2015 which would help train student in both primary and post primary schools.

Offiong said that his Ministry also resolved to implement the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with EDUComp Solution Limited which he hopes would revolutionize the education delivery in the State adding that in the last six years, the Imoke led administration has committed so much into that sector just to take education to a higher pedestal.

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