Speeches

Support Our Schools Breakfast/Appreciation Meeting With Partners

Sep 2, 2009 - Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, eminent Lagosians and Nigerians, slightly over a year ago, specifically on Tuesday August 5, 2008, I stood before you at the Adeyemi Bero Auditorium to appeal for your support in restoring quality and purpose to public education.

With the increasing population of Lagos and the attraction of her free education policy to migrants from across Nigeria, the responsibility for 1030 primary schools and 605 secondary schools is an enormous one for your Government that requires every patriot to playa role.

On that occasion, I reminded us of the roles these schools played in our lives, shaping and preparing us for the different roles we now play either as professionals, bureaucrats or plain businessmen who are self employed or employers of labour in your different stations of life.

Since that clarion call was made, your response has been inspiring and supportive. The journey to reclaim the ideal of our proud educational heritage has begun in earnest with men and women of goodwill braced for the task ahead.

Today we are here, to appreciate the level of response to that clarion call and appeal to those that are yet to heed the call to partner with us.

The impact of our economic underdevelopment is felt in our schools - and while there is much work to be done, I am happy to report that progress is being made.

Contrary to what cynics will have you believe, this is a journey with a clear road map, to achieve human, institutional and infrastructural reform including the reversal of about 3 (three) decades setback and to transform this into an irreversible push to prosperity and development through the rebirth of education.

This cannot be done by a magic wand. Only men and women of vision, character and courage like you can accept to be partners in such a daunting undertaking.

However, because there is a clear plan, what is daunting becomes achievable and sustainable if we are willing to endure.

We have since then undertaken projects aimed at reorienting our youths and children towards positive values in the society. Some of these initiatives include the Leadership conference for 3000 pupils in December last year at the National Stadium, Holiday vocational skills workshop for our students -and this will be held annually- and we have continually replaced teachers who retire or withdraw their services.

Just last month, we recruited over 1,500 teachers for our secondary schools and Technical colleges in our renewed efforts at endearing technical and vocational education to both pupils and parents. We have also embarked on massive infrastructural development in most of our schools.

As a way of imbuing these leaders of tomorrow with morals and sense of patriotism, we have re-Iaunched uniformed voluntary clubs and made participation in one of the activities compulsory for our students.

Indeed, the surfeit of technology available now challenges us to adequately prepare for the future because as we go ahead, something tells me that we will likely have intelligent and interactive, infrastructural facilities which will only be available for the use of only those compliant with the extant technology.

Please recall that at the launch of the initiative, I had appealed to you that your support was needed to revitalize our schools such that the children of the indigent members of our population would be able to get decent education and requisite skills to fit into the manpower requirements of the future as it is only by so doing that we would guarantee our own and our children's peace of mind.

Since the launch, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have had over 100 interventions of various and diverse forms ranging from the donation of a television set and DVD player to the office of one of our principals by a fellowship of the Anglican Church to the donation of W50 Million worth of school furniture to our schools by Chief Ade-Ojo, Chairman of Toyota Nigeria who is incidentally is the chairman of today's occasion.

We are therefore delighted today to make good our promise at the launch programme that we will recognize our partners in this journey by conferring on them CSR Awards, which is one of the reasons we are gathered here this morning.

As we honour those who have invested in the future of our State and country, I reiterate that intervention windows are still open in the areas of provision of school facilities, enhancement of students learning experiences, human capacity development for teachers, provision of scholarship/grants to students.

Eminent Ladies and Gentlemen, may I therefore on behalf of the Government and people of this great State, express our deep and profound appreciation to you for your support, believing that those who share the vision of giving back to the society would contribute as part of their personal and corporate social responsibility to the educational development of Lagos State and ultimately the future leaders of this nation, Nigeria.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you all once again for your continued support for our administration and wish you God's abundant blessings.

Eko o ni baje!

Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN)
Governor of Lagos State