Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson has urged the private sector, particularly corporate organisations and individuals, to make contributions to the State Education Development Trust Fund, to enable indigent children acquire free and qualitative education.
Dickson stated this when members of the board of the Education Development Trust Fund, led by its Chairman, Prof. Turner Isoun, presented the 2017 report of the board to him in Government House, Yenagoa.
The governor remarked that the programme is targeted at delivering what he calls “the democratisation of knowledge” in the state.
Calling on the people of the state to take ownership of the education programme, Dickson noted that, the trust fund is aimed at strengthening education, where children are drawn from indigent backgrounds towards increasing the literacy level in the State.
Commending the chairman and members of the board for prudent management of the funds, he directed the board, in collaboration with the Ministries of Information and Orientation, as well as Education, to work together in creating the needed awareness on the need for people to identity with the education policy.
“I call on our people to own this programme, which is for your benefit. This programme is to deepen education and deliver what, I always call, the democratisation of knowledge, where we are taking children from the underprivileged circumstances and backgrounds and putting them in boarding secondary schools and taking responsibility for their feeding, clothing books and everything.”
“We are doing that now and the schools are in all the local government areas and we are still working on more. I call on the board to increase their enlightenment. I want to direct the Commissioner for Education and Ministry of Information also to jointly, working together with the board, to increase the awareness on behalf of the people about the benefits of this programme and then, most importantly, about their duties.
“I also want to seize this opportunity to call on the private sector, especially, international oil companies that have been making billions of dollars on this soil without giving much back. I want to call for collaboration.
“I have mandated the chairman and the board to establish contacts with all local and international companies that are operating in this state to assess and impose a special levy.
“The law provides for the board to assess and levy individuals and leaders of this state irrespective of where they may reside. We expect the board to do more, especially in the area of increasing their dragnet.”