Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State has advised parents and guardians to encourage the girl-child to study science-related courses in school.
The governor gave the advice when he received members of the Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria (APWEN) led by the national president, Mrs Felicia Agubata, in Asaba on Tuesday.
He said the girl-child should be motivated to study competitive courses, especially the sciences, explaining that with science-based courses, more job opportunities would be created in the country.
The governor, who was presented with an award by APWEN for being an “Inspirational Leader in Job Creation, Education, and Infrastructure Development”, told the visiting female professionals, Your advocacy for the girl-child is encouraging.There is need to ensure that more girl-children embrace the sciences and the competitive side of study.
“The more science-based courses we embrace, the more entrepreneurial skills that we can grow to check unemployment because unemployment makes it difficult to check insecurity.”
He emphasized that at primary and secondary school levels children should be given good education to lay a solid foundation for their future endeavours, adding that the government has given attention to the recruitment of teachers.
“In Delta, we recently carried out employment of teachers with 90 per cent of them in the sciences, because we are emphasizing merit in the employment to ensure that we lay a solid foundation for our children at primary and secondary levels.
“We are also doing a lot in technical education because we believe that people can acquire skills in a secondary school system that is technologically-based.`We have revamped six technical colleges and we promised to construct 19 more before the end of my tenure,” Okowa said.
He commended APWEN for choosing Asaba for its meeting and the commitment to create awareness for girl-child science education.
Earlier, Agbubata had told the governor that they were in the state for their meeting, disclosing that they were spurred to present the award to him in recognition of the giant strides recorded by his administration in road construction, the airport, education, job creation and other projects.
She commended the wife of the deputy governor, Mrs Ebieri Otuaro, an engineer, for her commitment to the growth of the engineering profession.
