ABEOKUTA — Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, has signed the State Education and Skills Trust Fund Bill into law, establishing a framework for sustainable funding and improved management of education and skills development across the state.
The governor signed the legislation on Friday at the Governor’s Office, Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta.
Speaking with journalists after the signing ceremony, the Speaker of the Ogun State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Oludaisi Elemide, said the new law would strengthen the delivery of quality education and improve learning outcomes across the state.
Elemide said the legislation was designed to make education “more meaningful, more qualitative and more constructive,” adding that its provisions followed extensive consultations with members of the public and relevant stakeholders.
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“We are just trying to make education more meaningful, more qualitative and more constructive. It will be more encompassing; that is what the bill is all about,” he said.
The Speaker expressed optimism that effective implementation of the law would further strengthen Ogun’s education sector and help sustain the state’s position as a major education destination in Nigeria.
He, however, called for increased participation from the private sector, stressing that the huge financial resources required to effectively develop the education sector could not be provided by government alone.
“The private people too need to contribute. After all, they are the ones that will inherit these people after being educated,” Elemide said.
Also speaking, the Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Prof. Abayomi Arigbabu, said the Education and Skills Trust Fund would cover both formal and informal education, with particular emphasis on skills acquisition and vocational development.
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According to him, the fund would provide an additional financing channel outside the state’s regular budgetary allocation and support critical areas such as school infrastructure, bursaries, teacher support and maintenance.
“In other words, we have put in place a mechanism of ensuring that education can also still be funded through another source different from the normal budgetary allocation,” Arigbabu said.
The commissioner explained that Ogun State had previously operated under an executive bill signed by the governor about three years ago, but said the passage of the legislation by the House of Assembly would now provide stronger legal backing for the Trust Fund.
Arigbabu added that the new law would also promote the integration of informal education into the state’s education system by re-engineering the traditional apprenticeship model.
He disclosed that more than 9,000 youths had already been trained in various vocational skills under the state’s skills-development initiatives.
According to him, the Education and Skills Trust Fund would provide an additional funding mechanism for expanding informal education, vocational training and other skills-development programmes across Ogun State.
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The development is expected to strengthen the state’s efforts to improve educational infrastructure, expand access to skills training and equip young people with practical competencies for employment and entrepreneurship.
