Former presidential aide, Laolu Akande, has called upon President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to prioritize investments in education and health alongside the ambitious Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road project.
Akande, who spoke on Friday during this week’s edition of the Channels TV’s programme Inside Sources With Laolu Akande, emphasised the necessity of investing in education and healthcare to lift the Nigerian population out of ignorance, poverty, and misery.
The veteran journalist said, “Human capital development ought to be one of our topmost, absolute priorities. It is important to build up the country for infrastructural development, but Human Capital Development ought to be a higher priority.
“This is simply because of the unrivalled transformative capacity that education has to impact more of our people and liberate huge populations from ignorance, poverty, and misery.”
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Commenting on the much-vaunted Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project launched by the Tinubu administration, Akande acknowledging the potential benefits of infrastructural development, but emphasized the need for a holistic approach to nation-building that prioritizes the well-being and development of the Nigerian people.
He noted, “We should give the President the benefit of the doubt in investing N15 trillion on the gargantuan infrastructural project. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt because we are persuaded the infrastructural project will bring significant economic benefits. But let us challenge the president to come up with an equal, if not, more audacious plan for the education and the health of our people.”
Commenting further on the urgency for more education funding in the face of dilapidated state of the sector, the fiery political commentator said the Tinubu administration needs to do more.
He noted, “In this country today, we still have pupils in their millions learning with their bellies on the floor in schools, because there are no chairs & desks!
“We have hundreds of pupils being taught in one class, perhaps with two or three teachers in all.
“We have classes where different categories are bunched-up without separation into Primary 1 or Primary 3 or 4 due to the insufficiency of space and inadequate number of qualified teachers.
“This is not to talk of pupils or children who don’t even go to school. We have over 20 million out-of-school children in Nigeria, according to UNESCO. Public education in Nigeria is now entirely on ground zero. So, why can’t we develop an irreducible plan, an audacious plan that reverses this shameful state of education and one that can deliver the much-needed educational revival,” Akande said.
The former presidential advisor stated further that if the Tinubu administration had to invest N15 trillion in the coastal project, the country can make such heavy investments in education and health also.
The Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project has become one of the biggest public discussions in recent times.
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