EDO State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, is seeking collaboration with the Indian government to train more teachers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, to groom more youths on technical and vocational skills, as well as boost the capacity of civil and public servants.
Obaseki, who said this when he received top Indian government officials led by the Consul General of India, Mr Chandramouli Kern, on a courtesy visit to Benin City recently, said that the opportunity is to improve the human capacity development of youths in the state.
According to him, his government was exploring investment opportunities with the Indian Government to sustain the recorded gains by his administration in boosting Technical Education and Vocational Training, TVET.
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How the opportunity will benefit Youths
“We want to start with programmes that already exist so that we can quickly key into it and start our relationship from there. We are a subnational and we have seen opportunities in working with Indian sub-nationals.” Obaseki said.
“We are looking at seeing how we can get to some states or sub-nationals who have their own programmes because it is faster rather than wait for the Federal Government of India and the Federal Government of Nigeria to agree in terms of some bilateral arrangements before we can move ahead.
“We want to explore and talk with you to quickly bridge the gap in sourcing teachers to train students in technical subjects in our schools. We would like to seek specific opportunities in STEM and technical education, looking at the iLearn scheme which you have.
“Also, at the federal level, we would like to collaborate with you in the area of bureaucracy. India and Nigeria have the same Commonwealth tradition in terms of bureaucracy but we know that India has undertaken a lot of transformation using technology in upscaling its bureaucracy and also providing services to its citizens.
“We have about 19 million square kilometers of land spread from swamp to rainforest and savannah. So, we have a land suitable for a wide variety of crops and some of our produce are unique to the tropics like oil palm.” he explained.