The Governor of Bayelsa State, Henry Seriake Dickson, on Saturday called on governments at all levels to commit more attention to the promotion of education in the country.
Dickson said that education remained the only route to sustainable stability and development in Nigeria.
According to him, the most important of all investments any government could do was the development of the human mind through quality academic efforts.
Dickson, according to his Special Adviser (Media Relations), FIdelis Soriwei stated this at the 7th Convocation Ceremony of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Abuja where former President Olusegun Obasanjo bagged the first PhD in Philosophy.
He called for support for the NOUN at the federal and state levels to enable he institution to extend quality education to more Nigerians.
The governor said that effective education was the only option to guarantee the stability, security, development and prosperity of the country in view òf her increasing population which he said would be the third highest in the world in a couple of years.
He said “I call for more support to this university. A number of our people don’t know that In the next couple of years, our country will be the third most populous country in on the face of the earth, after China and India.
“And there is no way, we can talk of any meaningful stability, of security, of development, of prosperity unless we have succeeded in creating that critical mass of enlightened citizenry that can sustain economic prosperity and development and prosperity
“This issue of education is so important because every other form of development, in the end is brick and mortar. It is good to build the roads, and bridges as we are doing, but the only investment that has the inherent capacity to multiply itself in several folds, the only investment that does not need repairs is the investment in human mind.”
The governor who commended former President for making the efforts to bag a doctorate degree in Philosophy at his age. He stressed that the award signified the fact that it was never late to acquire education.
Dickson added that the Bayelsa State Government had committed N70 billion to the development of educational infrastructure in the state.
According to him, the government had built model secondary schools in the headquarters of the eight local government areas of Bayelsa State which offer free quality education to students.
Dickson also said that his administration had commenced the construction of 25 Constituency model schools across the state.
