“Children’s learning is a critical open society issue, as poorly educated children typically become marginalized adult citizens who face a lifetime of limited income and employment opportunities and, in turn, constrict their own children’s opportunities for success in life. For such children, poverty becomes a cycle.”

LET’S TALK ABOUT IMO’S FADING SCHOOL SYSTEM

Teachers Welfare

I strongly believe that teaching is an honorable, and perhaps the most important profession. In developed economies, no one toys with teachers’ welfare, our governments shouldn’t either.  Teachers must be motivated and encouraged to maximize their efforts. Teachers should not only be paid on time, but also receive various work incentives including regular salary reviews, training and development opportunities.

Primary Education:

Primary education is a right and not a privilege. What a child absorbs in her/ his early years of development goes a long way to detect her/ his future. We must invest in primary schools with more beautiful environments (play grounds, beautifully flowered premises, etc) and better teaching facilities (roofed classrooms, teaching aids, free children books). We must provide incentives to encourage local authors to get into children books, teaching aids, cartoon books, Afro-centric story books, etc. Every primary school must have a fully equipped physical education facility. We cannot afford to look down on the physical and mental development of our children.

Secondary Education:

Our focus in secondary education should be on equipping students with the necessary practical and technical skills that can help them make a descent living even if they don’t make it through a post-secondary education. The emphases, unequivocally, should be on hands-on computer education, and technical training.  We will also create a sate scholarship program to benefit our secondary school students.

Tertiary Education/Research and Development Program (R&D):

I have a vision to develop an integrated scientific and social basis for decision-making on sustainability issues; develop tools and methods that promote sustainability. The incubator for this is our higher institutions. The state must restore the quality of higher education through encouraging and empowering professors, lecturers, and doctoral candidates towards active participation and involvement in innovations, science, technology, research and development (R&D). There will be a ‘Research Grant Facility’ funded by the state for lecturers and doctoral candidates in our state institutions to tap into. We will also encourage successful businesses operating within and outside Imo State to contribute to this facility.

This program will engage a diverse group of doctoral, master’s, and undergraduate students in an education/research training program to understand, explore, and develop ideas and models relevant to our state. One goal of the program is to enhance research by integrating multi-disciplinary works to produce professionals who can serve as catalysts for achieving future environmental, industrial, and societal sustainability. Accordingly, all lecturers and students participating in the program are expected to focus efforts in relevant areas to our state including engineering, art, environmental science, social sciences, business, and international development. Their researches and final year projects will be incorporated to make this a multi-disciplinary endeavour. These will only be possible within well-funded and developed higher institutions. We will invest in our schools to ensure these.

The state will embark on development projects based on defined deliverables and will be selecting projects by means of tendering procedures characterized by networking between these individual/ multi-disciplinary researches and needs (not wants). Simply put, the state will spend on areas of greatest impacts and not political objectives.