Rivers State Governor, Sim Fubara has said that his administration will employ 3, 000 teachers in 2025 to provide more access to quality education at all levels of educational system in the state.
Gov. Fubara stated this while presenting the state 2025 budget of N1.188 trillion to the state House of Assembly on Monday.
The governor who announced a total package of over N63 billion representing 9.3 percent of the budget to be spent on education in fiscal year 2025, noted that the state will access all outstanding matching grants from the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) to rehabilitate, equip and furnish dilapidated public primary and junior secondary schools and continue to provide free basic education.
“We will also rehabilitate, equip and furnish as many senior secondary schools across the state, including the provision of new classrooms, perimeter fencing, water and electricity to provide a conducive environment for effective teaching and learning to take place.
“We shall work with the school-based management boards, administrators, parents and teachers to fix our broken school system, improve enrollments, keep learners in school, promote effective teaching, and improve learning outcomes,” the governor said.
Furthermore, he assured of the take-off of the Rivers State College of Education at Opobo and the reiterated the need to provide necessary funding support for all state tertiary institutions to provide infrastructure, build more hostels and enhance their administrative capacity to effectively discharge their mandates on human capital development for the state and country.
Gov. Fubara also disclosed that at the end of November 2024, the internally generated revenue was N282,557,399,997.78, which was over N51 billion more than the N231,057,836,945,00 budgetary projection.
Read also: NUJ describes 2024 as perilous year Nigerian journalists
“We are expecting the internally generated revenue for 2024 to close at over N300 billion by the end of December 2024, which is over N100 billion more than the total receipts for 2023.
“Mr Speaker, it is worthy of note that this is the first time the state government would record a historic N100 billion increase in IGR in a succeeding year.
“Most interestingly, the phenomenal increase was realised without raising or imposing new taxes, which underscores the success of our administration’s commitment to enhancing domestic resource mobilization as the primary source for funding the government’s expenditure and the measures we have put in place to drive this vision,” he added.
According to the governor, the organic increases in the internally generated revenue also show that the state’s domestic economy is on the right path to real and sustainable growth which he stressed will enable the state realize its drive for economic self-reliance and sustainability.
