Delta state today and beyond to be equipped with market ready skills through education

One of the iconic leaders that is often cited all over the world as anexemplar, is Lee Kuan Yew, who was the prime minister of Singapore that owes much of his fame to the legacy of a phenomenal, rapid and systematic development of the small island nation in a manner that it leapt from 3rd to 1st world over a relatively short period.

And the accomplishment of the development feat in Singapore was achieved partly through the concerted and strategic efforts of providing qualitative education to young Singaporeans who were to later take over the mantle of leadership from Lee Kuan Yew and his epoch making team.

All that is documented in a seminal book authoredby the former prime minister titled“From Third World To First.The Singapore Story: 1965-2000”

Since childhood , l had learnt from my mother that it is education that makes the difference between the cleaner and the doctor in the same hospital.

Both are human beings. They may even be from the same womb, village or clan. But the doctor obviously acquired education by attending schools to obtain the relevant skill set , while the cleaner did not. Hence both of them ended up in their respective stations in life.

In other words, the doctor functions in an exalted position, while the cleaner occupies a lowly position , simply because he/she did not seek or obtain the requisite education that could have stood him/her in better stead.

And who can better personify or embody the metaphor and analogy of the doctor and the cleaner in the hospital than Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa? He is the son of a nurse and a school teacher(both parents are now of blessed memory) who trained him as a medical doctor, before hebecame a dyed-in-the-wool politician , practically climbing up from the bottom of the ladder of all the public offices before emerging the current governor of Delta state.

Without educational opportunities, Okowa might not have attained the position of authority that he occupies today.

So having been a youth with ambition, he knows how critical it is for the youths of Delta state today and beyond to be equipped with market ready skills through education .

That’s why, as soon as l heard the good news about the proposed conversion of the three colleges of education, agriculture and polytechnic into universities, l reckonedthat it must be a product of alchemy between education and prosperity which l was convinced must be very clear to Okowa as a governor and a conscientious politician.

Keeping in mind the foregoing, l concluded that the governor must have decided to expand and deepen the infrastructure for education in the state to provide opportunities for the burgeoning number of youths that are bristling with hope to acquire the knowledge that would enable them be up-skilled for the rapidly evolving new age market.

Unbeknownst to me, the decision to upgrade the college of education, school of agriculture and polytechnic into universities is not so much a product of political calculations or machinations, neither is it because the governor and his cabinet are abhorrent of polytechnic and monotechnic education.

Rather it is an initiative borne out of the fact that Delta youths whose quest for education has been insatiable because of their renown high lnteligence Quotient (lQ), were actively rejecting polytechnics and colleges of education as pathway to higher education. And that was being reflected by the dwindling number of applicants to such institutions; compared to the deluge of applications into the lone university in the state that has surpassed its capacity by over fourfolds .

So upgrading the college of education, school of agriculture and polytechnic is basically driven by the wisdom in the idiom “necessity is the mother of invention”.