28th October, 2022
Former Governor of Enugu State, Chimaroke Nnamani has thrown light into what he knew of the APC’s Presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu when they were both governors in 1999.
He said Tinubu was the most successful among the Class of 1999 governors, as he was able to deploy the best brains to tackle the rots left behind by the military.
Nnamani, in a statement, on Friday in Abuja, said the class of 1999 Governors had it rough in the beginning because most of them inherited a state that had all of its sectors in poor conditions as a result of several years of military rule.
According to him, all they had was pure joy in the electorates’ hearts because they had a democratically elected governor.
He said from health to education to the economy and security, Lagos State and many other states were in turmoil as a result of years of military rule but that Tinubu made the most progress out of them all in reforms of various sectors, with Enugu State coming in second.
Nnamani explained that this large progress came as a result of assembling 23 best brains in Lagos State to examine each sector of Lagos’s economy and provide a workable solution to its unique challenges.
According to him, in the education sector under Tinubu, they discovered that out of the 7,877 classrooms that were available, 5,908 needed renovation.
He said that with 682,000 students, the 7,877 classrooms were insufficient due to the UNESCO standard of 1:25 students per classroom.
Nnamani added that the Tinubu-led administration was tasked with figuring out how to add 5,768 more classrooms to the existing ones, saying that he rose to the challenges by erecting new elementary, junior secondary and senior secondary schools in Lagos between 1999 and 2007 to address this issue.
“Asiwaju-led government consequently embarked on human capital development to guarantee that pupils received the finest education possible with a series of staff training and development programs in various courses, seminars, and workshops.
“Numerous principals were sponsored to travel to Cape Town, Nairobi, and Auckland between 1999 and 2007. In total, more than 100 instructors received training in Nigeria and other French-speaking African nations.
“Provision of computer systems to the ministry, SUBEB, TEPO, and six school districts. In order to keep up with the most recent global educational trends, Lagos State under Tinubu funded the training of 1,400 teachers to teach the recently introduced family life health education by the National Council on Education,” he stated.