The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Benue State, Mr. Emmanuel Jime, has promised that if elected, he will declare and properly implement free and compulsory primary education in Benue State.
Jime who made the promise during the flag off of his governorship campaign at the Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) Square in Makurdi on Saturday said his administration would introduce automation and digitisation of public school libraries and provide great incentives for teachers in rural communities.
He also promised to organise annual-refresher courses and workshops for teachers on microteaching and special education, adding that his government would take a digital approach to supervision to ensure that Benue children in the rural areas got the top-quality education they deserved.
“I’m passionate about education because if there is a child in the remotest part of Ekile in Ado LGA in the hinterlands of the Idoma and Igede nations who cannot read and write, it matters to me because that also could have been my children.
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“I make this solemn pledge to you: that from May 29 this year when I will be sworn into office as your governor, I shall declare and properly implement free and compulsory primary education in Benue State.”
While lamenting that the incumbent governor, Samuel Ortom, had nothing to show for his over three and a half years in office, Jime who gave Ortom a red card, wondered what he was presenting to the people of the state to qualify him for a second term.
“But what really is this administration presenting to us as its qualification for a second term? The forthcoming elections present us with another opportunity to choose where Benue goes from here. The verdict is clear on Governor Ortom: he came, he saw, he plundered and he got a red card.
“If we make the wrong choice, keeping him a day longer after his current term expires, we may not look elsewhere for reasons for the sustained failure of our state: we will look to ourselves
Earlier in a remark, the leader of the party in the north-central part of the state, Senator George Akume, went down on his knees to apologise to the people of the state for asking them to vote for Ortom as governor in 2015.
He told the mammoth crowd that he had come with a new governor in the person of Jime whose main goal is to wipe away the tears of the people by ensuring that pensioners, civil servants and contractors are paid promptly.