Oyo state Governor, Engineer Seyi Makinde has assured that the state government will soon recommence the suspended process of recruiting teachers into its public schools.
He said this on Wednesday in Ipapo, a town in the Oke Ogun area of the state during the commissioning of project as part of activities marking his one year in office.
He said: “My father often told me that the only legacy he would give me is Education. For our children also, the right legacy that we can give to you is a good education. This is why we are commencing the one year in office achievement with the commissioning of this model school, Anwar-ul-Islamic Model School, Ipako, in Itesiwaju Local Government.
“I am sure that at this point in the history of our administration, it should be clear to everybody, even the doubting Thomases. Truth is, we will continue to make you happy so that you can continue to have joy.
“If you look at our policies and projects, you will notice that when we first came in, we met a bloated budget that we said it wasn’t implementable. We came in about this time last year and what we did was to align the budget with what we felt is implementable. We reduced the size of the budget. But one thing that you will notice is that, even though we reduced the budget by close to 57%, we increased the education budget from 3% to 10%. And when we had the opportunity to present our own budget at the end of 2019, we increased the budgetary allocation to education to 22.37%.
“In addition, we paid the outstanding UBEC Counterpart Fund for 2018 We have also paid for 2019 and just as I sat here, the SUBEB chairman told me that the Counterpart Funding for UBEC, federal government agency, just came in last week. So, I want to thank the representative of UBEC for that prompt payment. However, what this means to us is, we have the capacity to do more projects; renovate more schools and build new ones.
“The commissioning that we are doing today is just one out of the dozens of schools in every LGA that has benefitted from this administration. So, as we begin to open up the state and think of children returning to classrooms, you all can be assured that we will continue to invest not just in infrastructure but human capital development of our schools. The suspended recruitment at TESCOM will soon recommence.”