AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, the Kwara State Governor, on Wednesday, appealed to the management of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) for support in the upgrade of the three colleges of education to universities of education.
The governor, while disclosing this during a courtesy visit to the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono in Abuja solicited the cooperation of the Fund for the conversion of the three colleges of education, which include Kwara State College of Education, Oro; Kwara State College of Education (Technical), Lafiagi and Kwara State College of Education, Ilorin into universities of education.
AbdulRazaq, while appealing to Arc. Sonny Echono also revealed that most of the state-owned colleges were faced with management challenges, including infrastructure, poor investment, and lopsidedness, where the non-teaching staff are far more than the academic staff of the institutions.
He commended TETFund for its massive interventions in both Federal and State public tertiary institutions nationwide. He said when one visits any universities in the states, it is as if the institutions are TETFund Universities because of replete of the Fund’s projects, adding that he was not at the TETFund to complain about marginalisation but to thank the Executive Secretary and his management team for impactful interventions in Kwara state and indeed in the entire public tertiary institutions in the country.
He said it was on record that Kwara has one of the best University libraries in the whole of West Africa courtesy of TETFund’s intervention.
“Mainly, this visit is to say you are doing a good job, and on behalf of the people and government of Kwara state, we say thank you for the job you have done, and we appreciate you.
“But we need more support. By and large, we intend to convert all our colleges of education to Universities of education, and so we need your assistance to do that. It is easy to do that because the structures are there,” he said.
Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, in his response, pledged to increase its intervention in tertiary institutions in the State while also pledging to help the state actualise its dream of converting some of the Colleges of Education in the state into Universities.
Echono commended Kwara state for leading the north in education right from the Colonial period, which has been reflected even in the number of institutions in the state.
On the issue of insecurity facing schools in the country, Echono said the Fund has been engaging with security agencies, the Ministry of Education and others to ensure a safe education for the children.
According to him, “We are doing everything possible to avoid the recurrence of the last week’s incident in Kaduna. We are upgrading security infrastructure in our beneficiary institutions and looking at all the various areas of security.”
He continued, “Kwara has been very useful to the country in providing institutions that train teachers from the basic level of education.
“On our end, we have introduced a new intervention line last year where we try to upgrade security facilities in our beneficiary institutions.
“We are doing something about it, and Kwara will be featured in that equation. So I really want to appreciate His Excellency for taking the time to come,” he said.