8th February, 2012
Chairman, Amuwo Odofin Local Government Area of Lagos State, southwest Nigeria, Ayodele Adewale has distributed 500 free Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, forms to students in the area.
This brings to 1,500 JAMB forms that he had distributed to students of the area in the last three years.
Adewale also established free tutorial classes for the students to prepare them for the coming examination.
“We decided to do this in order to create chances for our teeming youths to be properly situated in our contemporar competitive world,” Adewale said at the distribution ceremony held at the Amuwo Odofin Local Government secretariat yesterday.
“Education is the currency of the information age, no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success but a pre-requisite. There simply aren’t as many jobs today that can support a family where only a secondary school certificate is required,” he added.
He attributed the falling standard of education in the nation to the unserious disposition of the federal government to education, coupled with ambiguous curricular and defective educational structure.
“To revamp this ailing sector, we must begin to take pragmatic steps and give the sector the seriousness it requires. We don’t have to accept a Nigeria where we do nothing about over six million students who are unable to attain higher education,” he stated.
Adewale urged the beneficiaries of the free JAMB forms to maximise the opportunity, given their important roles in the development of the county.
He urged the education department in the council to ensure effective monitoring of the beneficiaries from their performance in JAMB examinations to their period in higher institutions in order to be able to assess the project.
On his achievements, Adewale said in the last three years, his administration had renovated 17 secondary schools out of the 20 in the council, adding that15 modern toilets, boreholes and 6KVA generators to power the boreholes were provided for upland and coastal communities in the area.
“Other educational projects embarked upon include distribution of free 220,000 notebooks; 13,300 mathematical sets and 6,600 uniforms. It is also important to note that apart from the free JAMB forms, we have also been distributing free GCE forms every year in the last three years,” he said.
Adewale said his administration would continue to rehabilitate schools, provide notebooks and uniforms for pupils, build schools in the coastal communities, invest in Information Communication Technology, ICT, to help position the youths to face the competition of the jet age, among others.
“Presently, a team of experts is in Ghana to get details of a high selling ICT programme-Mobile Communication Engineering, in order to train 50 youths for a start on how to build GSM and laptops and the course is expected to gulp $1,000 per youth,” he added.
The Amuwo Odofin council boss added that the council would be introducing the road user charge scheme, to generate the needed fund to maintain “our roads and create about 6,000 jobs, among others.”
—Kazeem Ugbodaga