Kamarudeen Ogundele
Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose,
and the All Progressives Congress in the state are at loggerheads over
the success recorded by pupils in the state in the recently released
results of the 2016 National Examination Council.
The NECO on Friday released the results
of the Senior School Certificate Examination it conducted between June
and July this year, with Ekiti State topping other states with 96.48 per
cent, followed by Edo State with 96.31 per cent.
Fayose attributed the success of the
candidates to the “immense efforts” of his administration in education,
which committed N411.7m to pay 5,130 core subject teachers.
The governor, in a statement by his
Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Idowu Adelusi, on Saturday, said the pupils’
feat was an indication that efforts of his administration to reposition
education in the state were already yielding results.
“I recall that Mr. Fayose was the first
Ekiti State governor to organise an ‘Education Summit’ in 2003 during
his first tenure, the result of which was that the state ranked seventh
in the country and first in the South-West then. It is, however,
unfortunate that the successive administrations failed to follow the
trend, hence the failures that greeted such wicked oversight,” the
statement said.
The statement added that part of the
strategies employed by the governor upon being sworn-in for a second
term in October 2014 was to introduce a special salary for teachers that
handled core subjects across the state, as well as providing all the
required teaching aids in all schools.
But the APC, which had earlier issued a
statement, attributed the feat to the sound education policy of former
Governor Kayode Fayemi, “which provided incentives for good learning
environment and provision of educational items that enhanced learning
among the students.”
The Ekiti State APC Publicity Secretary,
Taiwo Olatunbosun, in a statement on Saturday, stated that Fayemi while
in office organised an education summit to develop a roadmap for
quality education, which he implemented to the letter.
“The foundation laid by the
administration created environment for learning as never before,
resulting in the latest incredible performance by the students. The
current success did not happen overnight. It was the result of long-term
planning by Fayemi between 2011 and 2014.
“Fayemi gave each pupil a laptop that
exposed them to study online and eradicated ‘miracle centres’ while
providing incentive for teachers, including renovation of schools to
enhance good learning environment, and also approved special allowances
for core subjects and rural postings for teachers. Fayemi’s giant
strides in education made Ekiti one of the three states in the
federation that benefitted from the World Bank’s $50m State Education
Programme Investment Project,” the statement said.
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