Taraba State Governor, Kefas Agbu, has urged the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to establish e-library, entrepreneurship training centres in higher education institutions in the state.
Agbu made this known when he paid a courtesy call on the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono in Abuja, on Friday.
He solicited for the establishment of Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres in the state.
“I am here to solicit for establishment entrepreneurship centres in Taraba State to be able to train our youths to be self-employed.
” Also to ask for Computer Based Test centres to be able to accommodate more of our students in writing JAMB and other computer based exams in Taraba as well to ask for e-library in Taraba,” he said.
Agbu commended TETFund for its massive intervention projects across tertiary education institutions in the country, while saying that he is fully committed to transform the education sector in Taraba.
” In my agenda, the priority is education, and if you look at our region educationally there is a major problem.
”We have huge human resources that are untapped and I have discovered that one of the huge reasons for insecurity is lack of education.
” They said in Taraba we have one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children, so if at the primary and secondary levels, we don’t harvest these children, we can’t even invest in the higher institution.
”You will also discover that your own job will be affected and that is why I declared free and compulsory primary and secondary school education in Taraba.
”And by the grace of God when I am done with the plans I have on ground, I will like you to come and see what we are doing there,” he said.
The governor noted that a lot of children that their parents cannot afford to pay their school fees were dropping out of school, increasing the number of out-of-school children .
He said the state had reduced school fees to half in the tertiary institutions to give room for students who cannot pay school fees to return to classes.
Responding, Executive Secretary of TETFund, Echono, commended the governor for the various efforts to uplift education in the state.
Echono, while promising to look into the requests of the governor, said TETFund had continued to deliver various intervention projects in both federal and state tertiary institutions in Taraba.
“We have been making our contributions to tertiary institutions in your state, in terms of physical infrastructure, academic staff training and development.
”And some of your institutions have also done well in accessing our national research grant as well as in the publication of books and journals.
“As far back as 2018, we have some major impact projects implemented there and this year, one of the few institutions with high impact intervention is Federal University Wukari.
” I think we made N3 billion available to them to execute high impact projects and that is being done as I speak,” he said.
On Taraba State polytechnic, Suntai, the executive secretary said the fund was focusing on the issue of security so that staff and students would be secured.
