Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, has said his government is exploring investment opportunities with the Indian Government to sustain the gains recorded by his administration in boosting Technical Education and Vocational Training (TVET) and human capacity development, among others.
Obaseki said government was finalising plans with the Government of India to train more teachers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), boost the capacity of civil and public servants and groom more youths on technical and vocational skills.
The governor, according to a statement by his Special Assistant on Media Projects, Crusoe Osagie, said this when he received the Consul General of India, Mr. Chandramouli Kern, who led other top Indian Government officials on a courtesy visit at the Government House in Benin City.
He said: “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.
“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.
“One of the quickest challenges we have to industrialisation is that our education system, unlike India, has not emphasised technical training enough but still has the English prep school arrangement whereas many of the Asian countries have emphasised more technical training at the secondary level, giving kids a lot of options to use their hands.”
Urging the country to leverage the business-friendly environment and other incentives provided by his administration, the governor added: “Edo is perhaps the best located state in this country; a junction state with a lot of traffic around us; so, we have markets.”
Earlier, Kern, while commending the governor’s sustained investment in the state, noted that Edo State is taking a similar development roadmap like India, especially in areas of education reforms, human capacity building, industrialisation, health insurance and skills development.
Source: The Guardian
