The Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has said his government will sustain policies and projects as well as partnerships to promote and harness the state’s rich cultural heritage to attract tourism receipts and boost the state’s economy.
The governor said this when he received a delegation of the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), led by the Edo State Coordinator, Mrs. Edegbe Ramatu Umar, who were on a courtesy visit at the Government House, Benin City.
The governor, represented by his Chief of Staff, Osaigbovo Iyoha, reaffirmed the government’s commitment to repositioning the State as West Africa’s culture and tourism hub, urging the collaboration of all stakeholders.
He said, “Edo is poised to be the culture capital of West Africa and as a government, we will continue to support efforts to build and support infrastructure and programmes required to develop culture in our land.
“We want to actually begin a new era of economics, research and education to take advantage of this golden opportunity so that we can reignite global interest in our arts, culture and harness the opportunity our culture presents to us. The touristic opportunities must not be missed.
“We are building projects with the advantages we have in our cultural heritage which will mark the beginning of us trying to understand what these cultural nuances mean to us rather than continuing to rely on interpretations from outside here.”
The governor noted, “We want to make our education system in Edo to be purposive. We are tracking learning outcomes and analyzing the results of our learning agenda to drive our policies and reforms going forward so as to ensure quality in the education delivery in the whole education spectrum.
“Our education reform is geared to answer certain questions like are the teachers in school? If they are, are they teaching? If the teachers are teaching, are the students learning? If they are learning, how do we determine this?
“Also, we are setting many targets for foundational literacy and numeracy as well as robust remedial programmes to help students lagging behind to catch up.”
Earlier, the leader of the delegation, Edegbe Umar, said, “the essence of this courtesy visit is to shed more light on the institute’s programmes and establish a mutual relationship between the Institution and the state in order to harness culture for national development.”
