Press Releases

Fashola Advocates National Policy On Free Education

Dec 8, 2009 - Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), Wednesday night called for a National Policy that will compel the Government of the Federation to sponsor free education in all the states of the country.

Governor Fashola, who spoke at the Lagos House, Marina venue of a Dinner which the State Government hosted in honour of the secretariat of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum currently on tour of the country, also called for a more efficient and speedy means to do government business saying no state government would function unless attention is paid to this critical aspect of public service.

The Governor who said Lagos State has become a victim of its own success, declared, “Irrespective of party affiliation, it should be a National Policy of this country to say there should be free education sponsored by the state government in every state of the Federation”.

Governor Fashola said as a result of the policy and practice of free education in Lagos State, it has fallen victim of its own successes by having to absorb and finance the education of large numbers of children who migrate to Lagos from other states across the country where the policy is not in place to take advantage of the State’s free education policy.

According to him, this has put pressure on the existing educational infrastructure of the State which, according to him, has suffered a thirty year slow-down in putting educational infrastructure in place, a period which terminated only in 1999 with the advent of democratic governance and the administration of the immediate past Governor of the State, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

He said in spite of what the State Government is doing in this sector “which is quite expensive”, the administration has started an audit, “to see what it has done, to compare it with what exists and to see what the difference is”, adding that when one is trying to make up for a thirty-year deficit one is bound to be running deficit at all times.

On the need for a greater speed and efficiency in doing government business, Governor Fashola said unless more attention is paid to this area in the public service in terms of reading, studying and treating files, government administration would grind to a halt in many states.

He declared, “In addressing the issue of capacity, I will say very clearly without equivocation that the way the public service of Nigeria is being run, in terms of movement of files, in spite of the computerization in some offices, no public service will function. And, therefore, no state will function if more attention is not directed to reading, studying and treading files”.

“Every road construction, every school and water project involves preparation of memoranda, files analysis, measurements, allocations before you see the contractor at work. The quicker you treat those files, the quicker the projects will takeoff”, Governor Fashola said.

In Lagos, according to the Governor, “we spend a lot of our time in the offices. People move with their paper work stored on their laptops. I don’t see any member of our team traveling without his files. No time is lost. We try to move as best we can with the time”.

According to him, “One of the things we started at the out start was to evaluate how much time every officer in the State’s Public Service is worth. and that brought us to the question that if the taxpayers employed us to do a certain job, how much time do we have?”, adding that this is the underlying philosophy of the Government’s periodic 100 days report.

“It is a measure of what we have done and what is left to be done”, Governor Fashola said adding, “I can assure you that time is one asset that we do not have in any sufficient quantity here”.

He explained that in attempting to deal with the problem of urbanization the administration has concentrated attention on creating model cities and making life more conducive for rural dwellers so that there would be a wider spread of the population and less congestion, adding that transportation has and other systems have been modernized to raise the quality of life of the people.

Other areas through which Government is enhancing the quality of life of the people, the Governor said is in the establishment of micro financing and issuing title deeds to property owners to enable them use such properties to access loan to further their businesses and further grow the economy.

The Governor said Government in its efforts to widen the scope of participation in governance, has created partnership with the Private Sector which, according to him, has responded quite strongly to the development of the State in many other areas including security.

Governor Fashola expressed delight at the initiative that gave rise to the tour of the Governors Forum and the fact that some states are actually making tremendous progress adding, “I think it reinforces, in my own view that the situation in our country is not as bad as people think it is. Clearly, it is an on-going journey and we must walk it together so that we can reach the destination”.

He said the fact that some states will run faster than others underscores the need for all to understand the underlying bases why Federal arrangement is the best arrangement for achieving the both individual and collective potentials.

In his opening remarks earlier, the Director General of the Forum, Mr. Asishana Okauru, had said that in all the 18 states visited so far, including Lagos State, the Forum has identified something quite unique to some states adding that this has been of immense importance to the development of the country in general.

In his remarks, the policy consultant to the Forum on Health, Dr. Dale Ogunbayo commended Governor Fashola and his Cabinet describing what is going on in Lagos in terms of development as “combination of brain and money”. He, however, wanted to know how Government intends to sustain its free healthcare policy, which he described as very qualitative, especially beyond its tenure.

The Forum’s policy consultant on Education, Mr. Oluwafemi Aduwo in his remark said Lagos stands out in terms of Education while policy consultant on Small Scale Industries commended the Government on the Skill Acquisition Centres initiative.

Commenting about Lagos, however, the Director General declared, “Lagos has been everything rolled into one. In everything every state we have gone to, we have seen something unique. But here the scope has been quite overwhelming. Lagos State is just whao”.

Also present at the Dinner were members of the State Executive Council and other top government functionaries. .

The nine-member Nigerian Governors’ Forum arrived Lagos Sunday to begin a three-day Project Inspection and Familiarization tour of the State in continuation of their tour of the country aimed at assessing the performance of all the 36 state governors.

Activities began same Sunday at the Banquet Hall of the Lagos House Alausa with the briefing and presentation of Ministerial responsibilities and programmes by all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of Government which took turns to address the Forum.