Over the years, Africa as a whole has been crawling on its knees educationally due to little or no attention to quality education. Government at the Federal level has been consistently accused of poor appropriation towards resuscitating the suffocated educational system, bad policies, poor support towards research and inadequate manpower.

The resultant effect has been the annual exodus of our best brains to overseas popularly refered to as the brain drain syndrome and patronizing of foreign schools by the rich in society while our schools are left unattended to and a dumping ground for those considered to be poor in society.

However, there are some exceptions as some schools have tried to live up to the expectation of its founding fathers. But the question of unemployability has been a major bane of societal underdevelopment as most graduates can hardly transmogrify the knowledge gained in school to benefit the society.

This became a great concern to Gov. Udom Emmanuel who since the inception of his administration has made quality education a pivotal focus in the completion agenda. This informs why he has embarked on over 1000 projects in schools across the state, plus equipping of many schools with computers and science facilities and creating of enabling environment for academic excellence.

In his recent comment on this subject, Gov. Udom Emmanuel noted with dismay that his greatest concern is the greatest challenge of Nigeria in particular and Africa in general, which is not employment but education.

He noted that the day Nigeria takes education to its right direction, unemployment would be a thing of the past.

In order to fix the educational system to what it should be, especially in the area of churning out employable graduates, Gov. Emmanuel has sought for the wealth of experiences of educationists and professors who are Akwa Ibom indigenes to come up with workable plan and curricular that would make our graduates employable, as it is done in developed countries of the world. This think tank made up of academic dons are to work in line with the Federal Government curricular for education coupled with their experiences so far to fashion out educational policies that would students compete with those from the Asian Tigers.

This is the first of its kind in the history of the state, and has been seen by stakeholders as the best thing that has ever happened to Akwa Ibom State education wise.

Beyond this effort towards remodeling our education system, the concern of Governor Emmanuel also include the need for teachers to be trained and retrained for effective service delivery. This he has addressed through his administration's policy of employing only qualified teachers in schools. According to the Governor, the work of a teacher is not only to teach and impart knowledge, but also to be able to impart character and good attitudes on the pupils inorder to influence society positively which would equally lead to100 percent abolition of cultism in our tertiary institutions.

Furthermore, to achieve our dream of quality education at all levels, education stakeholders according to the Governor must ensure that facilities provided by Government are preserved to stand the test of time. The Governor equally lamented about poor maintenance culture that has robbed most schools of equipment provided by the government. He called on Parents Teachers Association of schools, school heads, students and other stakeholders to ensure that assets provided by Government are preserved for the overall good of society.

Gov. Emmanuel who spoke at the recent swearing in of Government Appointees into different Ministries, Agencies and Parastatal debunked rumours making the rounds that he has a hand in the Local Government Primaries in the state, re-emphasizing that he doesn't interfere with such issues.

The governor reiterated his commitment towards returning power to the people through democratic practices at both the local government and state levels.

(c) Richard Peters

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Education in Nigeria is like a bake flour waiting for an oven, you can't rely on it, if you do na shame go catch you. Our engineers who spent their days in the university drawing engines most times solving plank theory are now private school teachers. Me sef wer de comment na biochemistry I study, but right now I don 4get simple polymers, and proteins chains. Na information technology na I de use pay house rent now.

No one should blame me after my degree add M.sc join no body employ me and I realised that most doctors and pharmacist were still looking for jobs in the society an ordinary biochemist like me shouldn't bother, so I went straight to NIIT and Admas Computers na dere my career starts. My pharmacist friend is now a fashion designer

las las its when you are done with ur b.s.c cert dts you would realize hw useless it is bcoz u go follow enter streets to beg people wey u leave go skul to help employ you..