Africa-Press – Nigeria. The senator representing Ogun Central senatorial district in Ogun State, Shuaib Salisu, has urged traditional rulers to become education advocates in order to tackle the growing menace of out-of-school children in the state.
Salisu, who is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on ICT and Cyber Security, spoke on Monday, during a capacity-building workshop for monarchs held at Ake Palace, Abeokuta.
He maintained that as custodians of culture, traditional rulers must focus on education, stating that, it remains the cornerstone for sustainable development and only way to fight poverty.
The workshop, themed “Improving Secondary School Enrollment through Community Engagement,” was organised in collaboration with the National Senior Secondary Education Commission, NSSEC, and Ampersand Development Partners.
The senator, while lamenting that the enrollment trend is decreasing, pointed out that the monarchs must also extol the virtues of character, and hard work.
He said, “ If you look at it critically now, you will notice that the quest for education is waning. Enrollment trend is going down; in 10 years, 20 years time, are we going to be able to say as Ogun State or as Ogun Central that we are still in a prominent position as we used to be? I, therefore, want to address the problem at the root.
“First, by employing our traditional rulers to serve as education advancement champions, meaning that our traditional rulers now begin the campaign of saying, yes, there could be challenges of people going to school and not getting jobs, yet, but when the jobs become available, they are not going to give them to people who are not educated.
“I am extremely distressed as Chairman of the Senate Committee on ICT and Cyber Security to hear news on Yahoo, Yahoo boys in my senatorial district. When I was growing up in this town, the Omoluabi ethos was strong; poems and poetry extol the virtues of character, the virtues of hard work, but what you notice is that our values have also been degraded.
“So the second part of this workshop is to also appeal to our traditional rulers as custodians of our culture, as the embodiment of our values, to say, let us focus on education, and the value system.”
In his remarks, the Alake and paramount ruler of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, stated that traditional rulers are the closest to the grassroots and the people would accept and follow whatever guidance they are given without hesitation.
His words, “Without education, everything else that you have is going to fade totally. It’s not fake, it’s the genuine way to development.
“And because of the position of traditional rulers as being number one in their respective areas and are very close to the grassroots, whatever they tell their people, whatever guidance they give, they will follow it, and we have no hesitation.”
In his welcome address, the state’s Commissioner for Education, Abayomi Arigbabu, asserted that most of the out-of-school children are a result of child labour, poverty and early marriage, maintaining that the government cannot fight the menace alone.
Speaking on behalf of all local government chairmen in Ogun Central senatorial district, the chairman of Odeda Local Government, Folasade Adeyemo, described the workshop as a demonstration of grassroots development and pledged their continuous collaboration with the traditional rulers and the sitting senator.
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