Gov Yuguda urges new media as Chevron donates science labs to schools

Bauchi State governor Isa Yuguda has urged for new learning media and skill to teach children.

“It is our collective responsibility to scout for means to bridge the gaps with additional technology to support manpower, skill acquisition and development,” Gov Yuguda said in Abuja.

He spoke as Bauchi, Kebbi, Kaduna and Jigawa took over science laboratory complexes donated by Chevron and its Agbami partners to one school each in the four states.

They include Government Girls Secondary School, Lima in Bauchi, State Haruna Rasheed College, Birnin-Kebbi in Kebbi, Government Science Secondary School, Ikara in Kaduna, and Academy for the Gifted, Bamaina in Jigawa.

The Agbami partners are firms that operate Agbami Field, considered Chevron’s single largest oil find in deepwater West Africa, some 113 kilometres offshore, with an estimated 900 million barrels of recoverable reserves.

They include Star Deepwater, Famfa Oil, NNPC, Statoil and PetroleoBrasileiro.

Star Deepwater director Jeffrey Ewing said the partners chose states several hundred kilometers from the hub of Nigeria’s oil and gas exploration activities because they considered the entire country as the Agbami community.

“The projects constitute an aspect of the strategic intervention plan of the Agbami partners in the education and health sectors,” he added.

Last year, Agbami awarded scholarships to 71 students combined from the four states.

The science laboratories are “projects to assist the government in providing qualitative education to the people,” said Dorcas Akpowa, representative of the managing director of Statoil, an Agbami partner.

“We believe access to quality education holds the key to the development of the country,” she added.

Kaduna state deputy governor Nuhu Bajega said the complexes would help boost efforts to improve education standards but complained that despite improvements, “we still find we are lagging behind in our efforts” to change education standards.