Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, disclosed on Wednesday that all the state-owned colleges of education will be converted to universities.
To this end, he has appealed to the management of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, for support in the upgrade of the three colleges of education to universities of education.
AbdulRazaq, who disclosed this during a courtesy visit to the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono in Abuja, solicited the cooperation of the Fund to do that.
He listed the three colleges of education for conversion into universities: Kwara State College of Education, Oro; Kwara State College of Education (Technical), Lafiagi and Kwara State College of Education, Ilorin.
AbdulRazaq revealed that most of the colleges of education which are state-owned were faced with management challenges including infrastructure, poor investment, and lopsidedness where the non-teaching staff are far more than the academic staff of the institutions.
He commended TETFund for its massive interventions in both Federal and State public tertiary institutions across the country. He said when one visits any universities in the states, it is as if the institutions are TETFund Universities because of the replete of the Fund’s projects.
He said he was not at the TETFund to complain about marginalization but to thank the Executive Secretary and his management team for impactful interventions in Kwara state and indeed in the entire public tertiary institutions in the country.
He said it was on record that Kwara has one of the best University libraries in the whole of West Africa courtesy of TETFund’s intervention.
“Mainly, this visit is to say you are doing a good job and on behalf of the people and government of Kwara state, we say thank you for the job you have done and we appreciate you.
“But we need more support. By and large, we intend to convert all our colleges of education to Universities of education and so we need your assistance to do that. It is easy to do that because the structures are there,” he said.
Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, in his response, pledged to increase its intervention in tertiary institutions in the State.
He also pledged to help the state actualize its dream of converting some of the Colleges of Education in the state into Universities.
Echono commended Kwara state for leading the north in education right from the Colonial period, which has been reflected even in the number of institutions in the state.
On the issue of insecurity facing schools in the country, Echono said the Fund has been engaging with security agencies, the Ministry of Education and others to ensure give safe education for the children.
According to him, “We are doing everything possible to avoid the recurrence of last week’s incident in Kaduna. We are upgrading security infrastructure in our beneficiary institutions and looking at all the various areas of security.”
He continued; “Kwara has been very useful to the country in providing institutions that train teachers from the basic level of education.
“On our end, we have introduced a new intervention line last year where we try to upgrade security facilities in our beneficiary institutions.
“We are doing something about it and Kwara will be featured in that equation. So I want to appreciate His Excellency for taking the time to come,” he said.
