Govt Charges School Heads To Utilise Live-in Facilities In Model Primary Schools

… Calls For Proper Maintenance Culture
By Bassey Nkponam 
ORON
The Akwa Ibom government has tasked heads of model primary schools, built across the State, to utilise the live-in facilities to enhance their care of the pupils and protection of the facilities in line with the aspirations of his administration’s ARISE Agenda, to create a learning environment that will entice children to want to attend the public schools.
Pastor Umo Eno who stated this, Wednesday, during the inauguration of Model Primary School, Uko-Oyukim, Stadium Road, in Oron Local Government Area, emphasised that any headmaster or headmistress found not living in the school premises or whose school facilities are not well managed would be replaced.
   Eno also charged heads of schools of other institutions to ensure the preservation of government infrastructures within their custody so that the intended benefits of government investments in the sector are delivered to the targeted beneficiaries.
He said government will work round the clock to ensure preservation of infrastructures in the education sector and that the intended benefits of government investment of the people’s funds are delivered to the targeted beneficiaries optimally.
Eno announced that a special education monitoring team would soon be constituted to liaise with commissioners in ensuring that all the facilities are intact, and the right information provided. 
The governor tasked the Akwa Ibom State Infrastructure and Assets Management and Maintenance Agency to step up its vigilance over the educational facilities, expressing  his willingness to bring to bear his private business experience as a hotelier where he would work round the clock to ensure every guest enjoys utmost comfort, to make Akwa Ibom children receive the best from government investment in the education sector.
“Very soon, we are setting up education monitoring teams, and the team will help us ensure that all of these facilities are intact. They will monitor all these schools we are opening, from the washroom to the classrooms, all the facilities, the curriculum and all of the work they are doing.
“They will come in unannounced, and between now and first of April, we will get education monitoring team to just go round and help us. We must continue to maintain the standard and we are not going to leave it in the hands of the ministry.
“I am setting up a governor’s monitoring team, but they will work with the honourable commissioners to ensure that they give us the right information.The headmasters or headmistresses will also ensure that none of these facilities are destroyed. If we come to your school, particularly our schools that are renovated, and we find out that the standards are dropping, we will change the headmaster or headmistress immediately.
“When I attended primary school, teachers lived on the school compound and they helped to shape our lives and made sure that they watched over us.That’s why we are building and furnishing homes. You are going to see that in all of these schools.
“If we come to the school and discover that you are not living within the school compound, we will send you back somewhere else. So, the education monitors must ensure they come at night, check and let us ensure that the Ibom Community Watch are posted to the schools to watch and protect the schools. We must ensure that we sustain what we have started. We cannot use your money to put this edifice in place, only for it to go down in three, four or five months.”
The deputy governor, Senator Akon Eyakenyi, who spoke on behalf of stakeholders, described the emergence of Governor Umo Eno as God’s blessing to Akwa Ibom and particularly thanked the governor for accepting to be used to extend God’s love to Oron people.
   Eyakenyi observed that Eno’s value for education, which fueled his drive to pursue and obtain a PhD, has been demonstrated in his identification of primary education as being fundamentally imperative and therefore investing in giving Akwa Ibom children a good start up.
Presenting an overview of the school project, the commissioner for education, Professor Ubong Umoh, said the Uko-Oyukim Model Primary School, designed to accommodate 495 pupils in 19 fully furnished classrooms on a 25:1 pupils per teacher ratio, was fully equipped with library, early childcare development facilities, solar-powered ICT laboratory, modern sick bay, spacious auditorium, dedicated staff quarters, separate gender-specific sanitary facilities, with comprehensive human kinetic facilities that enhances education and sports development.
Umoh lauded Eno’s model primary school initiative which, he maintained, underscores his administration’s dedication to transforming the educational landscape thereby fostering academic excellence and social development.
Presenting a special address and ballad at the event, two pupils, little Miss Happiness Antai and Master Godwin Asuquo, expressed the gratitude of the pupils, teachers and their parents to Governor Eno for the kind gesture extended to them through the state-of-the-art facilities.