Ogun State Governor Prince Dapo Abiodun signed the State Education and Skills Trust Fund Bill into law on Friday at a ceremony in the Governor’s Office, Oke‑Mosun, Abeokuta. The legislation creates a new funding window aimed at sustaining and improving the management of education and skills development across the state.
Speaking after the signing, Speaker of the Ogun State House of Assembly Rt. Hon. Oludaisi Elemide said the law is intended to “strengthen the delivery of quality education and improve outcomes” throughout Ogun’s schools. He added that the bill was crafted after extensive public and stakeholder consultations to make education “more meaningful, more qualitative and more constructive.”
“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,” Elemide said.
Elemide also highlighted the importance of private‑sector involvement, noting that the resources required to fund education cannot be shouldered by the government alone.
Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology Prof. Abayomi Arigbabu explained that the Trust Fund will support both formal and informal education, with a particular focus on skills acquisition and vocational training. He said the fund will provide an additional source of financing beyond the normal budgetary allocation for 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.
Arigbabu noted that the state had been operating under an executive order signed three years ago, and that the new legislation gives the Trust Fund stronger legal backing. The law is expected to integrate informal education into the mainstream system by re‑engineering the traditional apprenticeship model. To date, more than 9,000 youths have been trained in various vocations under Ogun’s skills‑development initiatives, and the Trust Fund will expand such programmes across the state.
<small>Source: The Sun Nigeria — read the original story there.</small>
