HowSanwo-Oluisrevamping educationinLagos–Wahab

Mr. Tokunbo Wahab is the Special Adviser to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Education. In this interview to mark his 50th birthday, he x-rayed the numerous achievement and successes the current government has recorded in the area of education in Lagos.

For two years and nine months, we had set out to change the narrative as encapsulated in the agenda of the Governor, where you have education in the middle and with education, we must work the monstrous work that has to be done From primary to secondary which is where the honorable commissioner holds forth and then to tertiary. The Governor didn’t hold anything back, he started from the foundation. From day one, he said to us “let’s go to the primary schools”, “why are we like this? what’s happening here?” And the Governor approved the EKOEXCEL project and for secondary schools, long term reforms were introduced and I can speak to the fact that the WAEC result of this year rose from 29% to 79% courtesy of the reform carried out by the Ministry of Education through TESCOM

LASU became a global brand by virtue of our collaboration with Conel, one of the ivy leagues in the world We didn’t stop at that because we know LASU had invitations in respect to carrying capacity for admission seekers and our theory is that for you to have proper education, you must have access to education and you must have proper education; they have to go together.

To that end, I want to thank the Governor thank my colleagues in exco and thank my honorable Speaker of the Lagos State

House of Assembly, Honorable Mudashiru Obasa, who with the House, deemed it fit that this executive bill is timely, is expeditious and saw to it that the law was passed timely and then, we accented to it February 8 this year. On February 11th, we were in Abuja to get to license from NUC. So, technically speaking, we have three universities in Lagos State; one conventional university and two specialized universities Now, these are legacies that would mark out Mr Governor’s tenure in many years to come If you know the history of LASU, LASU will be 40 years next year, serving a population that’s about 22 million, the conventional centre of the country and the fifth largest economy in Africa It goes to common sense and good vision to say it’s time for Us to have a new tech here, a new process More so, when we heard two of these institutions were not doing well, NCE has become outdated, then we had to create something that is new, creative and acceptable. That also took the burden off LASU into these two new systems and then for the former polytechnic that is now a university for science and technology, is only very timely for those that know the history of the dichotomy and discrimination between the university and polytechnic graduates

Beyond that, we are doing real projects, we are revving up a technology space, an IT space So for that also is very timely While these are going on, we also had interventions; as at the close of the last year, we had 243 library interventions, libraries that were updated and upgraded with IT learning facilities to go with them in our schools That means we take up public schools, give them a new library, put conventional books, and then set up a proper IT infrastructure within that same library. So that gives the hybrid of using a system for soft copy or through the normal system of reading hardcovers and we have done 243 and I know we are doing 60 now to add to the number. Our target is, by the end