Chidimma UCHEGBU
Governor Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State has called on the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to help it transform the education sector of the state.
The governor, who made the call during a visit to TETFund’s Executive Secretary, Arc Sonny Echono, on Friday in Abuja, said Zamfara is not doing well in education, hence, the need to support the state.
“As you are all aware, Zamfara is a small state facing the challenge of insecurity, most importantly in the area of education. If you check all the statistics, you will agree with me that Zamfara is not doing too well and therefore we need to be encouraged.
“It is a known fact that without education, we will not be able to achieve anything and we will continue to be backward,” the governor said.
Governor Lawal, who assumed office exactly two months ago, said he had anchored his campaign on security and education during the 2023 general elections, saying he is, however, challenged with the few available financial resources to address the problems.
“Bearing in mind the financial resources of the state, I have a limitation, and this is the place the help will come from. ES (Executive Secretary) I am here. Zamfara needs help. I know you are doing very well but you can do better,” the governor said.
The governor commended TETFund for its various projects across tertiary education institutions in the country.
Responding, the TETFund boss congratulated the governor on his victory in the March 18 governorship election.
While saying that TETFund was very delighted with the governor’s passion for human capital development, Echono said Zamfara is rich in resources, and expressed the need to harness the potential of the state for its educational development.
On the request by the governor, the Executive Secretary said TETFund had already made provision on the issue of security as it affects public tertiary educational institutions.
“The number of institutions in Zamfara, the number one challenge they face over the years, especially in the last few years is the issue of insecurity. We did make some plans for most of the institutions because this year under our intervention we made provision for security infrastructure.
“We have harnessed the requests from the institutions. In fact, we started with one of them but we have about three that we believe we will be able to do something about in the next couple of weeks and we will be able to make allocations in that regard.
“We will also make other interventions based on the approved guidelines that we already have while those that will not come this year. We will prioritise them for the next disbursement cycle,” Echono said.
The Executive Secretary also commended the Zamfara government over the massive increase of candidates from the state in the national common entrance examination into Federal Government Colleges as recorded in recent years.
