BENIN CITY – President Muhammadu Buhari says the history of Edo State will not be complete without the inclusion of the laudable achievements of Edo State Governor Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, adding that the has associated him with success.
Speaking at the commissioning ceremony of the Samuel Ogbemudia College, Benin City, President Buhari said, “Once more, I have to thank the Governor for the quality infrastructure he has been doing, whether it is roads, schools or hospital and I thank him so many times for associating me with his successes because this is the 3rd time he has invited me and each time, we are commissioning projects that are very well executed and he has built a history for himself and I keep on congratulating him and I mean it.”
President Buhari added, “I thank you very much your Excellency, and I believe the history of Edo will not be complete without your term and I hope that with this quality of building, there will be serious effort to maintain it and raise the standard of academics itself. Thank you very much and I wish you the best of luck and I wish that the teachers will have the time to teach thoroughly and bring out quality students that will go into medicine, engineering and other professions that we are lacking relatively compared to our population.”
Also speaking, Governor Adams Oshiomhole said. He said, “Your Excellency, the school you have seen was built some 30 years ago by the former Military Governor, Dr. Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia. But like several other public facilities, it was run down completely over the years. I paid an unscheduled visit to this school and one of the students asked me to transform their school the way we had transform other schools and I promised we will not only transform it, we will build a complete new school rather than renovate the old one.”
According to Governor Oshiomhole, there is no private school that can be compared with Samuel Ogbemudia College. He said, “Through this intervention, we have tried to make a statement, restoring integrity to public school so that the children of the poor and the children of the rich can have the same environment to be taught and to learn. As far as our records show, there is no private school in this state that can compare in any way with this school and our approach in rebuilding our schools is informed by our strategic calculation that the best way to reduce out of school population is to make schools more attractive than the private residence of the average poor person. When children find out that the school is more attractive even than their parents’ homes, they will look forward to going to school, and staying in school.”
He noted, “Your Excellency, in this state, in order to give full meaning to your commitment to free basic education, we also provide free bus ride for children on uniform when going to, or returning from school in addition to abolishing all fees, all charges, including examination fees. So in Edo state, we can truly talk of free, basic, qualitative education which includes free primary school, free junior secondary school and free senior secondary school.”
Finally, Oshiomhole said, “As you can see from the faces of these your daughters, it cannot be better and today, they are very fortunate and would be able to say that while they were students here, they had the rare honor of receiving into their school for the purpose of commissioning this edifice, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Thank you for this honor, Mr. President.”
The highpoint was the official commissioning of the college consisting of 2000-sitting capacity ultra-modern multi-purpose hall, blocks of classrooms, laboratories, library, staff room and offices with a courtyard dotted with concrete chairs and tables by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Before the commissioning ceremony, President Buhari had earlier inspected the Queen Ede gully erosion control, land reclamation and road construction project site which Edo State Government had executed.
The event was witnessed by a large turn out of school children, teachers and people.
