Osun State Governor Gboyega Oyetola, has proposed 21 percent of the state’s 2022 budget for the education sector, reiterating that his administration’s commitment to the revival of the education sector remains non-negotiable.
This was as Oyetola presented a proposed budget estimate of N 129,756,450,790.00 before the State House of Assembly in Osogbo on Tuesday.
The details of the Appropriation Bill revealed that the larger chunks were earmarked for infrastructure, education and health sectors, with the Agriculture sector also getting its fair share.
The 2022 draft Budget size was higher than the year 2021 budget N109.8bn by over N20bn.
While speaking, Education, according to Oyetola, is crucial to the sustainable development of any nation. The governor also described it as a critical component of human capital development.
According to him, “Therefore, our administration has great passion for the provision of quality and functional education to every citizen, with the hope of eradicating poverty and fostering development at all levels of the State.
“To this end, we are currently implementing major far-reaching reforms to promote functional education in the State.
“For us as an administration, we regard education as the driver of our sustainable development efforts and the face of our Development Agenda. We are therefore doing all in our powers to provide adequate, quality, equitable, functional and affordable education for our children.
“In the outgoing year, apart from formulating policies that support good learning, we renovated schools across the State, provided educational materials as well as trained and re-trained our teachers to improve their performance.
“We shall be consolidating the gains so far recorded in this sector. Before the end of the current academic session, a website for all secondary schools in the State will be hosted. This will give room for easy dissemination of information to our students and their parents.
“Next academic session will also witness massive rehabilitation of schools across the State, with provision of Pupils and Teachers furniture to aid conducive learning environment.
“In order to further promote the realisation of the pivotal role of the sector, the sum of N 26,609,411,740.00 or 21% of the total budget has been allocated to the education sector in the 2022 draft budget”, Oyetola said.