Press Releases

Fashola Restates Commitment To The Future Of Children
…Advocates change in education curriculum

May 27, 2010 - Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN) on Thursday restated his administration's commitment to the total upliftment of the education and other social needs of children in the state.

Governor Babatunde Fashola restated this commitment while addressing pupils of Diran Memorial Academy, Alagbado-Lagos, International Green School, Maryland in Lagos and their counterparts from Ogun State- Al Hudat Model College, who were on an excursion to the Muritala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja as parts of the activities marking the 2010 Children's Day celebration in Lagos.

He told the students that the administration's first goal is to make them healthy by putting in place several health care provisions, malaria preventive and eradication measures including indoor residual spraying programme in order to prevent mosquitoes from biting the children.

He explained that once the issue of health needs are over, another cardinal programme the government had invested heavily in is good education for all in the state, like the one he had in Nigeria which will enable the children to compete anywhere in the world .

The Governor said that the administration has rebuilt classrooms, provided books and furniture and training of teachers, saying skilled teachers are vital to the training of the pupils and students for a bright future.

Said he: "We are also ensuring that it is not difficult for you to get to school and back, providing buses, building the roads, these are some of the ways we think we can help".

On the issue of high graduate unemployment in Nigeria, Governor Fashola stated that the administration has employed about 10,000 people into the Lagos State Public Service as a means of reducing unemployment in the state.

He explained that government could only employ that much because of the limited resources to discharge its responsibilities in terms of salaries and pensions since there are other computing duties such as carting of refuse, provision of security and government must maintain a balance in carrying its different tasks.

Governor Fashola however attributed the unemployment rate in the country to the lull in Nation's economy, saying there is need to grow the economy.

He said: "As our economy grows, as we have electricity, there would be more jobs. I assure that the Federal Government is working on that".

The Lagos State Governor also called for a change in the education curriculum that will focus producing graduates that the country needs in meeting her several challenges.

He explained that the education curriculum should be fashioned out to produce graduates who can help extract oil and graduates who can generate electricity for the nation because that is where the people have needs and not just graduates who have only read the humanities.

In his words: "We have too many people chasing few jobs in areas that we already have enough people. And it's a good thing that you are coming to the airport because we are going to be seeing increased aviation business: we are going to need more pilots and engineers".