BY Samad Uthman
Agbu Kefas, governor of Taraba, says he ordered the reduction of school fees for tertiary institution students by 50 percent to address the problem of out-of-school figures and drug abuse among youths in the state.
Kefas spoke on Friday during a meeting with Sonny Echono, the executive secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in Abuja.
” In my agenda, the priority is education, and if you look at our region educationally there is a major problem. We have huge human resources that are untapped and I have discovered that one of the huge reasons for insecurity is lack of education,” he said.
” They said in Taraba we have one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children, so if at the primary and secondary levels, we don’t harvest these children, we can’t even invest in the higher institution and you will discover too that your own job will be affected and that is why I declared free and compulsory primary and secondary school education in Taraba.
“And by the grace of God when I am done with the plans I have on the ground, I would like you to come and see what we are doing there.
“For the higher institutions, I have also discovered that a lot of our children that their parents cannot afford to pay their school fees, and some of them are dropping out of school.
“We have some students in school but they are not in school, they don’t attend classes, they are moving about taking all sorts of drugs, to reduce that I have to declare half of school fees in all our tertiary institutions.”
While commending TETFund for its massive intervention projects across tertiary education institutions in the country, the governor said he is fully committed to transforming the education sector in Taraba.
Kefas urged TETFund to establish e-library and entrepreneurship training centres in higher education institutions in Taraba to “train our youths to be self-employed”.
He also requested the establishment of computer-based test (CBT) centres in the state, which he said would “accommodate more of our students in writing JAMB”.
While speaking, the Echono commended the governor for his efforts to uplift education in the state.
Echono said TETFund has continued to deliver various intervention projects in both federal and state tertiary institutions in Taraba.
“We have been making our contributions to tertiary institutions in your state, in terms of physical infrastructure, academic staff training and development and some of your institutions have also done well in accessing our national research grant as well as in the publication of books and journals,” Echono said.
“As far back as 2018, we have some major impact projects implemented there and this year, one of the few institutions with high impact intervention is Federal University Wukari, I think we made N3 billion available to them to execute high impact projects and that is being done as I speak.
“The Taraba State College of Education, Zing, (that the provost is here), I want to commend him because he is up to date in accessing what has been made available to him and he also made some request which is being favourably considered.”
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