The executive Governor of Edo state, Godwin Obaseki, has advised the Nigerian federal government to implore the use of basic education to end banditry in the country. ayokinews.com reports
Governor Obaseki, made this known when he met the the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, on Wednesday in Benin.
Obaseki stated that many uneducated Nigerians are currently leaving the country to do menial jobs abroad, by taking life threatening risks.
He said, “First, if we do not focus on basic education and restore quality into our basic educational system, what we are having today as banditry will be a joke in another 10 to 20 years time.
“What was the Edo miracle? The first was to tell ourselves the truth that the structure of SUBEB we met was not working. So, I had to post out everybody we met and recruited fresh ones into the system. We focused on training our teachers as part of our reforms in transforming our education.
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“For us in Edo, we had no choice, because you find children leaving secondary schools, either working as barbers or something else. Some even sell whatever they have because someone has promised them a job in Europe or travel to Libya.
“At one point in time, we had about 30,000 young men and women from Edo in Libya, waiting to cross to Europe. If they had education and could think, read and write, they would ask more questions before deciding to embark on such a risk.
“For us, that was a wake-up call. For my brothers in the north-east and north-west, with the rising wave of banditry, I think the wakeup call is to bring these children back to school and get them to learn.”
