Abiodun signs education, skills trust fund bill into law

•Law creates new funding window for education, skills development

Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, on Friday has signed into law the State Education and Skills Trust Fund Bill, creating a framework for sustainable funding and improved management of the state’s education and skills development sector.

Speaking with journalists after the signing ceremony at the Governor’s Office, Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta, the Speaker of the Ogun State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Oludaisi Elemide, said the law would strengthen the delivery of quality education and improve outcomes across the state’s education system.

Elemide said the legislation was designed to make education “more meaningful, more qualitative and more constructive,” adding that it followed extensive consultations with members of the public and stakeholders.

“We are just trying to make education more meaningful, more qualitative and more constructive. It will be more encompassing; that is what the bill is all about,” he said.

The Speaker expressed optimism that the full implementation of the law would further strengthen Ogun’s education sector and sustain the state’s position as a leading education destination in the country.

He, however, stressed the need for greater private-sector participation, noting that the huge resources required to effectively fund education could not be provided by government alone.

“The private people too need to contribute. After all, they are the ones that will inherit these people after being educated,” Elemide said.

Also speaking, the Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Prof. Abayomi Arigbabu, said the Trust Fund would cover both formal and informal education, with particular emphasis on skills acquisition and vocational development.

He said the fund would provide an additional source of financing beyond the normal budgetary allocation and support critical areas including school infrastructure, bursaries, teacher support and maintenance.

“In other words, we have put in place a mechanism of ensuring that education can also still be funded through another source different from the normal budgetary allocation,” Arigbabu said.

The Commissioner explained that the state had been operating under an executive bill signed by the governor three years ago, adding that the passage of the legislation by the House of Assembly would provide stronger legal backing for the Trust Fund.

According to him, the law would also facilitate the integration of informal education into the state’s education system through the re-engineering of the traditional apprenticeship model.

Arigbabu disclosed that more than 9,000 youths had so far been trained in various vocations under the state’s skills-development initiatives.

He said the Education and Skills Trust Fund would therefore serve as an additional funding mechanism for the sector, particularly in expanding informal education, vocational training and other skills-development programmes across Ogun State

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