The Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has attributed the high rate of youth unemployment in the country to its faulty educational policy and system.
Obaseki said this when he received Air Commodore Chidebere Obinna Obiabaka, who led Nigeria study tour participants from Armed Forces Command and Staff College, on a courtesy visit, to the Government House, in Benin City.
The team is one of the eight teams currently on tour of selected states of the federation as part of this year’s Nigeria Armed Forces Command and Staff College Environmental Study Tour for Students of Senior Course 45.
Obaseki said human capacity development especially in the educational sector is key for growth and development, noting that his administration is resetting the state’s educational system starting from the foundation.
He noted that “to check the growing tide of unemployment in the nation, my administration redirected its priority and investment to create hope for the future of our youths and education was the platform we utilized.”
The governor continued: “Our biggest problem today in Nigeria is that people are not trained for production and that is the fundamental problem. Youth unemployment has been created by a faulty educational policy and educational system. Until we fix that, we will not go far.
“In 2016, the state had a major crisis of human trafficking and irregular migration. At that time, we had over 30,000 young men and women in Libya trying to cross to Europe. But as an administration, we embarked on several programmes, including resetting the educational sector to correct this trend in the state. We have very inspirational youths as a nation who are very ambitious and doing everything to travel out of this country, taking all kinds of risks to leave the nation.
“You can’t talk about development and growth without developing the human capacity, which must be on a long term investment basis as you don’t get the benefits immediately.”
He added, “Our priority to address the huge numbers of unemployed youths was to properly fix education at the foundation, that is, at the basic level. Our focus was to retool our education system and invest in our teachers through training. We trained over 15,000 teachers using technology and we gave them tablets to teach and motivate our pupils. The most important thing we have done and will continue to do is resetting the educational system.”
Earlier, leader of delegation Air Commodore Obiabaka, stated, “When I come into the state, there are new developments. You are a man of vision and resilience. You have shown good governance; development and growth has become the order of the day.
“I am overwhelmed by your development style and will continue to visit the state and enjoy the hospitality, peace and calm nature of the state.”
