AbdulRazaq solicits TETFund’s support for upgrade of Kwara State COEs to varsities
By Uji A. Iliyasu
Abuja
Kwara state governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, has solicited the support of the management of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) for the upgrade of the three colleges of education in the state to universities of education.
AbdulRazaq made the call when he paid a working visit to the Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund Sonny Echono Wednesday in Abuja.
He listed the three colleges of education for conversion into universities to include: Kwara State College of Education, Oro; Kwara State College of Education (Technical), Lafiagi; and Kwara State College of Education, Ilorin.
The governor revealed that most of the colleges of education which are state-owned were faced with management challenges including infrastructure, poor investment, and lopsidedness where the non-teaching staff are far more than the academic staff of the institutions.
He commended TETFund for its massive interventions in both federal and state public tertiary institutions across the country. He said when one visits universities in the states, it was as if the institutions are TETFund universities because of ubiquitous presence of the fund’s projects.
He said he was not at the TETFund to complain about marginalisation but to thank the executive secretary and his management team for impactful interventions in Kwara state and indeed in the entire public tertiary institutions in the country, adding that it was on record that Kwara has one of the best university library in the whole of the West Africa, courtesy of TETFund’s intervention.
“Mainly, this visit is to say you are doing a good job and on behalf of the people and government of Kwara state we say thank you for the job you have done and we appreciate you.
“But we need more support. By and large we intend to convert all our colleges of education to universities of education and so we need your assistant to do that. It is easy to do that because the structures are there,” he said.
Executive Secretary of TETFund Sonny Echono, in his response, pledged to increase its intervention to tertiary institutions in the state.
He also pledged to help the state actualise its dream of converting some of the colleges of education in the state to universities.
Echono commended Kwara state for leading the north in education right from the colonial period, which has been reflected even in the number of institutions in the state.
On the issue of insecurity facing school in the country, Echono said the Fund has been engaging with security agencies, Ministry of Education and others to ensure safe education for the children.
“We are doing everything possible to avoid the recurrence of the last week incident in Kaduna. We are upgrading security infrastructure in our beneficiary institutions and looking at all the various areas of security.
“Kwara has been very useful to the country in providing institutions that train teachers from the basic level of education.
“On our end, we have introduced a new intervention line last year where we try to upgrade security facilities in our beneficiary institutions.
“We are doing something about it and Kwara will be featured in that equation. So, I really want to appreciate His Excellency for taking time to come,” Echono said.