Former presidential spokesman and host of Channels Television renowned weekly political and economic programmed, Inside Sources, Laolu Akande has urged President Tinubu to place more attention on the education and health sectors of the economy like he is currently doing to the N15 trillion Lagos-Calabar coastal highway project.
The seasoned journalist in his weekly nugget, My Take urged the president to place much emphasis on human capital development as he believes education has transformative capacity to impact and liberate the majority of the population from ignorance, poverty and mystery.
Commending the president’s audacious move in constructing the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, Akande urged Nigerians to have faith in President Tinubu by giving him the benefit of doubt.
“We should give the president the benefit of the doubt in this 15 trillion gargantuan infrastructure project. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt because we are persuaded that this infrastructure project will be of significant economic benefit.” he said.
Calling the attention of the president to the crux of his submission, Akande said, “let us challenge him, the president I’m talking about, to come up with an equally if not a much more audacious plan for the education and the health of our people.
“Take education for instance. In this country today we have pupils in their millions learning with their bellies on the floor in schools because there are no chairs and desks. We have hundreds of pupils being taught in one class perhaps with two or three teachers in total.
“Those things are happening for the most part in this country. This is not the talk of pupils who don’t even have schools, children that are out of school. We have over 20 million out of school children in Nigeria according to UNESCO.
“Public education in Nigeria is now entirely on ground zero. So why can’t we develop an irreducible plan, an audacious plan that revises this shameful state of our education and deliver the much needed educational revival.”
On challenges facing tertiary education in Nigeria, Akande noted, “Even in higher institutions, students are cramped, both in their classes and in living rooms like sardines, in camps with disease -prone sanitation outlets, and living conditions that are not even fit for indentured servants.
“Yet, we have had it so well done in this country before, in the area of education, and it served us very well. Today, as the world is progressing faster in the knowledge economy, proper education as a factor of development is even more urgent than before.”
Alerting the president on the dangers of ignoring the education sector, Akande said, “If we don’t make education our absolute number one development priority, we are already defining the kind of future our children and their children will inherit.”
Decrying the state of the nations health sector, Akande stated, “We also need an audacious plan for health care. In this country today, pregnant women and accident victims are still being wheeled on wooden barrels, in many cases, to the hospitals or health care centers.
“In most cases, those centers and hospitals have nothing. They are bare. Assess and affordability to decent health care is still far to fetch in our country. So why not have an eight -year program, just like the coastal project, that delivers health care to our people so that the poor can get it?
“Why not have audacious free health care to people who can afford it? Why not a system of effective ambulance and emergency response? Why not have well-resourced, top-notched hospitals where those who can pay can go to?
“These things are possible. Let us well hold this embarrassing medical tourism abroad, in which a lot of our elites have become famous patients around the world, going to places like India and Turkey and France and UK.
Advising the Tinubu administration on a way forward Akande advocated for an audacious plan as it is in the case of the coastal highway.
“So as the Tinubu Administration goes ahead with the Lagos-Calabar Project, let it also be that we have a big vision cast for human capital development in this country. Let the Tinubu administration influence state governments to buy into such a big vision.
“Let’s have a near-term, mid -term and long -term audacious plan to banish poverty from the country, to banish want from the land, to banish mystery from our country, to banish ignorance of the land, to banish disease from the country.
“If we have the audacity to have this 15 trillion Naira costal project, we can do anything that we care to do. And there you have my take for the week. Inside sources will be right back and today we’re having a focus on the idea to change the governance system from presidential to parliamentary system.” Akande said.
