At the South-South Human Capital Development Conference, efforts by the Governor Godwin Obaseki-led administration to restructure Edo State’s education sector and address learning poverty were highlighted, with other state governments applauding the governor’s investment in the education sector.
The theme of the 2023 South-South Human Capital Development (HCD) Conference, “Accelerating HCD in the South-South of Nigeria,” held in Benin City, the capital of the Edo State.
HCD teams from all around Nigeria, Education Commissioners, and other senior South-South government officials will be present for the two-day session on January 17 and 18, 2023.
During a panel discussion, the Bayelsa State commissioner for education, Hon. Gentle Emelah, lauded the radical transformation made to Edo’s educational system by Governor Obaseki, saying that Edo has served as a model for other states.
She stated that Bayelsa is currently implementing a comprehensive overhaul of its educational system through the Bayelsa Prime initiative after understudying the Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation (EdoBEST) program.
According to Hon. Emelah, “1,300 teachers are currently undergoing training to help improve their capacities as these teachers will help the state launch the Bayelsa Prime program, which we copied from the EdoBEST programme to improve the educational abilities and knowledge of our pupils and students in Bayelsa State.”
Governor Obaseki, according to Edo State Commissioner for Education Dr. Joan Osa-Oviawe, is passionate about fostering human capital development and is leveraging the sector of education to advance his goals.
She discussed the edoBEST program’s success, which was introduced in 2018 and has since been expanded into EdoBest 2.0 in 2021 to include elementary and secondary pupils.
According to the Commissioner, the initiative is built around five revolutionary pillars: governance system, professional development for teachers, learning for skills, school environment and values.
“Governor Obaseki will soon announce the Edo State Learning Agenda,” she stated. In our tertiary institutions, we wish to set specific goals ranging from fundamental literacy to competency-based pedagogy.
Since we began the EdoBEST reforms, other states and nations have visited Edo to learn about what we are doing, including, Lagos, Ondo, Bayelsa, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone, among others. The fact that what we are doing in Edo is in accordance with the HCD thematic area of education excites us here in Edo.