Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo state, on Monday, inaugurated à 13-man state Education Trust Fund Committee, saying that the essence of setting up the committee was for the sustainability of the free education programme beyond 2019 when he will be leaving as the governor of the state.
He added that there should be need to institutionalise the policy in the overall interest of the state.
He said: “As governor, I am poised to see that the free education programme is sustained in the state beyond 2019. There is no greater gift you can give to a child than education. Education remains the pivot upon which the wheel of every success in life rotates. We must do everything as a people and government to keep the free education programme alive.
“In 2011 the poverty rate in the state was 57% according to UNESCO. Four years after it came to 14%. This was made possible because most parents who were selling their valued possessions to pay the school fees of their children and wards do not sell them again since the introduction of free education. This is why the poverty rate in the state has drastically reduced. So, there is no going back on free education.”
According to him, “the lives of our children born and yet unborn are very important. So this is the time to secure the future of our children and children yet unborn by saving for their education. Every child must go to school and education must be made free so that the children of the poorest of the poor can go to school as we don’t know where the person who may change the face of the state or the nation will come from.”
