Dogara Ties Northern Progress to Investment in Education

*Acting gov of Gombe decries effect of insurgency

James Emejo in Abuja and Segun Awofadeji in Gombe

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara has said tackling illiteracy remained crucial for the country’s progress particularly in the northern region.

Speaking in Kano while unveiling blocks of classrooms named after him in Duka Wuya Special Primary School, Gwale Local Government Area, Kano State, he noted that education remained the bedrock of any meaningful progress and development.

Dogara further commended the member representing Gwale Federal constituency, Hon. Garba Mohammed Ibrahim for facilitating the project.

He said: “I want to thank you for embarking on this project which has to do with the education of our young ones. If we must make progress, we will have to deal with the problem of illiteracy. Of recent that has been the debate in Nigeria, we all know where we are as a people in terms of education and we pray that we will be able to catch up with the rest of the country in terms of the delivery of quality education to our citizens, but this is the starting point.”

He said except children are educated from a tender age, it would be very difficult to educate or train them after they have grown up, and therefore emphasised on the need for proper training and upbringing of children as future leaders.

According to him, “As it is said; a child that is not trained cannot be traced; once you fail to train your child, he cannot be traced. So if our younger generation is to be traced in the future, we would have to educate them. I want to thank you for focusing on education; that is one of the cheapest things that we will do in order to bring success to our region.”

The Speaker also stressed the need to focus attention on health, saying, “The next thing is health, the health and education of the people, once we sort these out it will establish that even in the practice of religion, they will perform better if they are healthy. And in terms of managing our resources; people will do well if they are educated farmers.

“That’s one of the areas that we have to go through in this region, so we want to thank you for bringing us here and this is the kind of project that we would love to be identified with in this Eighth Assembly in the House of Representatives. So if you have more programmes, more projects to do on education, healthcare or agriculture; anytime, any day invite us, we will come here and celebrate it with you”, Dogara added.

In a related development, Gombe State acting Governor, Hon. Charles Iliya has corroborated recent claims of the utter backwardness of the North-east when he lamented that “insurgency has made our bad situation worst in the North-east.”

Iliya, who was responding to a call by the Vice-Chairman of the Presidential Committee on North-East Initiative (PCNI), Alhaji Tijjani Musa Tumsa, yesterday during a courtesy call in Gombe for the State to engage the committee on its areas of priority needs, said “even before the insurgency, our region had been reported to be the most backward in Nigeria in many aspects.”

He stated that “this situation had grown from bad to worst following the calamities brought about by insurgency”. He added that, “in Gombe State, we’ve had our own bad share of the Boko Haram activities of bombings in our markets, motor parks, schools, hospitals, banks security outfits, many loss of lives among others.”

He commended President Muhammadu Buhari for the initiative, which he said was aimed at bringing back life to the region that has suffered economically, socially, educationally and in many other aspects of human endeavour.

“We thank the President for not leaving the region just like that after the insurgency. This issue we are discussing now wouldn’t have been discussed easily in the past, but foremost will be how to protect ourselves.”

Speaking earlier, Tumsa, who represented the Chairman of the Committee, General Theophilus Y. Danjuma (rtd.), said the committee was in the State to engage the Gombe State government and highlight areas of the committee’s responsibilities and special priorities of the state government.

Danjuma said the committee has a task of charting a way forward in terms of resettlement of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) under the “Buhari Plan” which seeks to harmonise the activities of all the five sub-committees into action. The five sub-committees are security, humanitarian, finance, economy and education.

He commended the Gombe State government over the way it handled the IDPs in the state through resettling them into the society and promised to continue to partner with the State Government.

The position or priorities of the Gombe State government is said to be in a documented form which was presented to the Federal Government during the North-East Economic Forum, hosted by the State in November 2013.