Barely two days into his administration, the new Governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki has conducted a tour of the Benin technical College and vowed to rebuild it to drive industrial revolution in the state.
Inspecting facilities in the school, he decried the level of rot, recalling that the institution was one of the two technical school build and donated to Africa, about 40 years ago by the Canadian government to push early industrial development in Africa.
He hinted that the second one was built in Tanzania and the school is the best in that country.
Sighting the level of rot, he said “Look at what we have, it’s unacceptable. We will take very drastic measures in the next few weeks. We have to rebuild this institution and we have to bring it up so that it becomes the basis for training technical manpower we need to drive our industrial revolution in the state.”
Governor Obaseki said, “in our election promise, you recall, we said emphasizes was going to be on jobs. And to create jobs, you have to have facilities and institutions where you train people on practical knowledge on how to create work and create things and that is why we felt that the first point of call should be to find out what happened to our technical college which is supposed to be the institution to train skilled technical man-power and I’m sure, you will agree with me, that this is pitiable. It’s really sad.”
“If you could see the quality of the infrastructure that was built 40 years ago, two of these institutions were donated by the Canadian Government to two African countries 40 years ago. If you look at the equivalent of this institution in Tanzania, it is producing highly qualified technical manpower in that country.”
For immediate action, he told the Principal of the School, Mrs. Bose Imafidon, who conducted the Governor and his entourage round the school, to submit the survey plan of the property through the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education to the Governor’s Office.
Obaseki also visited the technical session, Junior Secondary School and its extension, welding and technical workshop, which accommodates various machines and other equipment.
Other sections include the Radio and Television, Electrical, Information and Communication workshops as well as staff quarters and the swimming pool, its pavilion and dressing room which were already over-grown by weeds.
