[wysija_form id=”1″]March 12, 2015 -, Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola today condemned the concept of Almajiri schools in the North, stressing that the schools have no feasible end gains.
Fashola who was speaking at ‘Support Our Schools’ breakfast meeting at City Hall, Lagos said the purpose of training is for an individual to use the knowledge and skills acquired to his benefits and benefit of the society, adding that there is no competitive advantage for graduates of Almajiri schools in the present scheme of things.
“If you train people to acquire certain skills, you must develop avenue where the skills will be useful, that will be the end gain. We have thought this through and as graduates of our technical and vocational colleges, they will become our major contractors.
“And so, it worries me, what is the end gain of products of the Almajiri schools? Will you put your child there? Will company looking through its job appraisal consider such graduates from Almajiri schools? What chance will the product of the Almajiri school have working for multinational company. Are we giving the children a fighting and survival chance when we segregate them into Almajiri schools; think about it.”
Fashola said as part of measures to encourage vocational and technical education in the state, his government has issued over 600 contracts as annual maintenance projects of Lagos Schools.
“We have issued maintenance contract to all our schools. We have issued about 600 contracts of annual maintenance of our schools and they ranged between N2million to N4million per annum. Our graduate are in technical and vocational colleges will be the substantial beneficiaries of the contracts. We now want to ensure that every school in Lagos has regular and uninterrupted power supply.
“Ideally if you build a school and you don’t have responsibility for electricity, really you should take electricity for granted, but unfortunately, we the people in power, electricity is not something you can take for granted. We engage a strategic partner and we are installing solar panel in 172 school in the first round after which we will commence the second round.”
Earlier, Commissioner for Education, Olayinka Oladunjoye said the Lagos State Government has decided to focus on technical and vocational education since there is a strong link between education and industrialisation.
