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By Stephen Adeleye.
The Kogi Government is to employ science, technical and vocational teachers in secondary schools, and to create enabling environment for students to acquire prerequisite skills to be self-reliant.
The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Mrs Rosemary Osikoya, disclosed this during inauguration of the maiden competition of “21 Young Scientist Governor’s Award (KYSGA-21)” on Friday in Lokoja.
Osikoya said that the ministry did a human resource mapping in terms of the number of teachers in public secondary schools, which indicated that the state had deficit of science, technical and vocational teachers.
She added that the ministry proposed the recruitment of more science, technical and vocational teachers for secondary schools in the 2019 state budget, “and we are happy that the process has already commenced.
“The State Executive Council has also approved the establishment of additional 17 science and technical colleges across the state to complement the existing four.
“This will enable the 21 local government areas of the state to have one technical college each, which we have already identified.”
The commissioner said that the state government was also focusing on capacity building for teachers through training and retraining, which would be done before the end of this year.
She restated the commitment of Gov. Yahaya Bello’s administration to continually support technical institutions to produce technically sound graduates for nation building.
She said that the KYSGA-21 competiton was to get the best scientists in each local council of the state, who would undergo another competition at the senatorial level, and then finally at the state.
“The competion is also aimed at encouraging and developing the interest of students in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI).
“The finalists of all our competition are required to represent the state at all national and international competition, including the “774 Young Nigerian Scientists Presidential Award (YONSPA) 2018” at the national level.
“All winner scientists at LGAs and State levels will recieve Governor’s Award and other benefits such as laptop computers, sets of Science textbook, Plague of Academic Honour, among others,” she said
In his remarks, Mr Onoja Michael, the Project Director, Kogi Wide Academic Excellence Competition (K-WAEC), the event facilitor, commended Gov. Bello for the support and patronage in ensuring continuation of their mandate.
He said “the credit goes to the commissioner and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, for giving us the privilege of collaborating and organising this level of competition.”
One of the students from Army Day Secondary School, Lokoja, Victor Gideon, said: “I feel happy about the competition because it gives us the chance to express ourselves intellectually”.
(NAN)
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