Desmond Mgboh, Kano

Kano State Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje on Saturday vowed that his administration will ensure that children in the state have unhindered access to free, compulsory and quality education.

Ganduje, who stated this while receiving the Kano Correspondents’ Chapel, Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Award of Excellence as the Father of Modern Free Education in Nigeria 2019, also reiterated his desire to ensure that Almajiri in the state benefit from his free, compulsory basic and secondary education policy.

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He described the status of Kano as a state with the highest number of out-of-school children in the country, as a challenge that must be faced and defeated.

According to him, with the free school feeding programne and free education policy in place, all children in Kano now have the privilege to be educated, charging parents to take advantage of the opportunity to send their wards to school.

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The Governor appreciated the award bestowed on him by the Kano NUJ Correspondents’ Chapel, adding saying that “we are happy that you identified with the heavily-loaded statement we made here in Kano, which is free, compulsory basic and secondary education for our children.

“We are happy we are sending our children to school free-of-charge. We are happy that we are sending the Almajiri to go and learn just like other children. We want to leave a legacy; and we believe that journalists are our partners in progress.”

In his remarks, the Executive Vice Chairman of Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), Prof Umar Garba Danbatta, who was also honoured for his commitment to Digital Communication and Cyber Security in Nigeria, described journalists as very important professionals that are indispensable to national development.

Danbatta, who assured Nigerians that the NCC is doing everything possible to ensure that they get adequate services from service providers, confessed that the achievements recorded so far under his watch at NCC would not have been possible without the partnership, contribution and cooperation of the media.

He further appreciated journalists for helping to propagate and disseminate the activities of NCC, while assuring Nigerians that the NCC have already solved the problem of receiving unsolicited messages from service providers, adding that in recent times over one million complaints received from telecom consumers were resolved.

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