Anambra State governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo has advocated for a regional education board to fashion a curriculum for the South East region, noting that states in the region can come together and set up a teacher certification institute to certify teachers for schools in the region.
Soludo stated this on Friday while reacting to recommendations and policy documents unveiled by technocrats during the South East regional conference on human capital development.
The conference, themed, “Changing the Narrative: Towards Entrenching Human Capital Development in South East Nigeria,” was attended by participants from all five South-eastern states and representatives of the governors of the states.
Soludo in his statement to the conference said: “Your recommendations are excellent. I will read them with keen interest and see which of them we can take. We have little land mass in the South East. We are actually the smallest with Lagos State, but while Lagos is reclaiming land from the sea, we are losing our land to gully erosion.
“Anambra is the world’s gully erosion capital. In the South-east, we are landlocked, and we have the least mineral resources. Our only boost is human capital.
“Human capital naturally is our only dependable resource. It has been so yesterday and today and will remain so tomorrow. This conference is pivotal to who we are. And if we do not mind human resources, then we are going nowhere. We must work on that.”
Speaking on recommendations made on education, Soludo said: “I listened to your recommendations on education, but who said the South Eeast cannot set up a regional education board to fashion out a curriculum for students in the region? Must we always use what others are using? Who knows, you may fashion out a curriculum that will attract the interest of other people, and the world at large.”
He then advocated: “The various governments of the South East can come together and set up a teacher certification institute to certify teachers for schools in the region too.
“We have heard in the past when some governments of the South-east had to send home some workers, saying they are not from our state. We just recruited 5,000 teachers in Anambra State, but I told the ministry not to accept if I recommend anybody to them. We employed people from every state.
“All I need is for the best teachers to be employed. Our children deserve the best teachers, and all they hope to get is the very best, no matter where the teachers come from.
“In my own eyes, I don’t see those boundaries and for the greatness of Nigeria, we must not see those boundaries.”
The governor also reiterated his call for the patronage of locally manufactured goods, saying that is the only way to boost the economy.
“How do you get the farmers to go and produce food, how do you encourage the graduate to go into farming and the rest, if you do not patronize them?
I wear Akwaete, a local fabric, which is handmade. To me, it is not just fashion, but a bold statement, and today, if you go to Akwaete in Abia State where the materials are produced, the demand have gone up, and the women producing them are happy,” he said.