Gov. Okowa Recommends Funding Review, Increment on Education
By Trek Africa Newspaper
Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa
The Governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa, has recommended that funds allocated to boost the education system annually across the country should be reviewed upward, in order to expand its frontiers and mitigate challenges inhibiting its development.
Okowa said that the nation needed to invest more funds in the infrastructure, human resources, and equipment in the education sector, in a bid to ensure the availability of full internet services in every university.
The governor noted that it is important to fund the educational system but unfortunately the nation’s economy was challenged, which has over time affected its development.
According to him, a critical look at the national budget and most of the state budgets reveals that the Federal and State Governments are actually struggling and that when there are so many competing forces to deal with in an annual budget, it affects what goes into education.
However, he said that there was a need for the nation to find a way to prioritise education by looking at the sectors that should be given greater attention and funds.
Speaking during an inspection of facilities at Delta State University, Agbor axis of the state yesterday, the governor said there was a huge problem when all resource that was available outside borrowing went into recurrent expenditure.
“And that is why if you study the budget in full at the federal level in the individual sector such as education and health; there are very huge funds available for recurrent expenditure because of payment of salaries. At the end, you only have between 10 to 15 or maximum 20 percent for capital development; this in itself is a very huge problem,’’ he said.
He further said that it requires a lot of work and a lot of prioritisation to deal with the sectors that are most important.
