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• Donates 50 desks to primary schools
• Trains 40 on Bioprenurship
From Felix Ikem, Nsukka
• Hon. Ogara middle handing over the desks to the head teachers of the benefiting schools
Disturbed by the ugly sight of pupils in public primary schools sitting on bare floor to learn, the member representing Igbo-Eze South State Constituency at the Enugu State House of Assembly, Hon. Harrison Ogara, has given a new lease of life to the schools as he donated 50 five-seater desks to five public primary schools in the constituency.
• Hon. Harrison Ogara
The five beneficiary schools are:
Community Primary School Ala-Agu,
Community Primary School Uwani Unadu, Community Primary School Ebulunmiri Ibagwa Aka, Oka n’Obara Primary School Ihakpuoka, and Community Primary School Ihu n’owere, all in Igbo-Eze South LGA. The five got 10 desks each.
• Ogara in a group photo with some trained constituents onBioprenurship programme
Sunday Sun gathered that about 45 public primary schools in the area lack basic infrastructure for teaching and learning, making the pupils to resort to sitting on a bar floor to learn and receive lessons.
For Hon. Ogara, it was a sorry sight and particularly saddening given that he happened to have attended one of the schools growing up.
Speaking at the Igbo-Eze South council headquarters while handing over the desks to the benefiting schools, the lawmaker said that the gesture was borne out of his belief that education was key to human development and the need to catch the primary school pupils young with adequate infrastructure that would enhance teaching and learning in the affected schools.
He frowned at the deplorable state of public primary schools in the area and wondered how the pupils would learn sitting on bare floor.
According to him, “it is a known fact the world over that if you start from the cradle to tackle education in terms of training our children in good and habitable learning environment you will get it better. But if you don’t have a good functional primary education system it will be difficult to have the first class brains we are talking about in the country.
“Our children should be caught young to identify talents, but for those talents to be made manifest there must be some environmental stability, and there should be a conducive atmosphere for teaching and learning, pupils sitting on the floor to learn in this modern world is unimaginable, I want to imagine how the person will achieve the greatness.
“So, the 50 desks is to enable the pupils to sit comfortably and learn and be the best they can be. I was a product of public primary school and I knew what was in place during my time, even though it wasn’t all that the best then, but I think it is worst now. You can imagine a girl child sitting on the floor and exposing herself to infection and other avoidable diseases.
“These 50 desks are just a starting point, I plan to donate up to 10,000 desks in a few months, I will call on my friends and associates to support the project, but for now I am doing the much I can do with the savings from my salary, it is my pet project as a lawmaker. I insisted that the desk will be made from mahogany wood to ensure its durability.”
The lawmaker called on the government at the centre to join hands with the state government to fund primary education, which he described as a starting point for education.
“Living the funding of primary education in the hands of state governments alone is not good, I, therefore, call on the Federal Government and private sectors to get involved in the funding and development of primary education because when you get our people educated from the tender age you reduce poverty and criminalities,” he said.
Ogara, however, blamed past and present political leaders from the area for the infrastructural decay in public primary schools in the constituency.
In a remark, Hon. Jude-Mary Ugwu, education secretary, Igbo-Eze South LGA, commended the lawmaker and described the donation of the desks as a legacy project.
He admitted that pupils were sitting on the floor to receive their lessons in most schools in the area and blamed it on the negligence of primary education by political leaders.
“This donation is unusual in this area, this is so because since 1999, when we came back into this present democratic dispensation we have not been having this kind of presentation. Over the years all the people who represented us in this area at the various levels of government had not shown concern at all in the educational buildup in the area.
“Education and learning have been suffering over the years because our representatives and political leaders are not doing the needful, so I am looking at this presentation today as something very unusual, but it is a wonderful one. Hon. Ogara has broken the jinx, it is a good thing to remember where you come from, and Ogara has demonstrated that. All of us are products of primary education and we are very happy that this type of gesture is happening within our domain, it is a wonderful legacy coming from a House of Assembly member, and these 50 desks are huge relief, it will go a long way in improving the condition of teaching and learning in the beneficiary schools,” he said.
Mrs Onah Nwakaego, head teacher, Community Primary School Ihu n’owere thanked the lawmaker for leading the line toward ensuring conducive teaching and learning for primary school pupils.
“This is wonderful and commendable given that pupils in primary schools in this area are sitting on the bar floor to learn, which is not the standard and not helping their education in any way.
“Supporting education through this kind of initiative will help to boost the morale of children toward education and equally help build their future,’’ she said.
Also, Chief Mrs. Edit Ogara, head teacher, Community Primary School Unadu eulogized the lawmaker for the donation and applauded him for
distinguishing himself among others with quality representation in less than one year at the Assembly.
“Children are leaders of tomorrow; therefore, and said to be the future generations. To that extent, the need to catch them young becomes very important in all aspects of their lives, especially in education.
“This is why the need for a quality education learning environment becomes very important. We are happy that Hon. Ogara has taken the bull by the horns, by so doing hopefully others will join him in addressing the infrastructural deficit in over 45 primary schools in the area,” she said.
Similarly, on the recent training of 40 constituents on Bioprenurship programmes, Ogara said that he has chosen to teach his constituents how to catch fish instead of giving them fish.
Speaking during the graduation of the 40 trainees (Igbo Eze South Agro Rangers) in Bioprenurship programmes which he sponsored at the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN, he praised the trainees who bagged Certificates of Proficiency in Bioprenurship and urged them to go back to their various homes to practice what they learnt during the three-month intensive training at the university.
He stressed that what politicians did in the past, and still do, is just giving people handouts that are ephemeral instead of using the funds to teach people how to make money on their own.
He lamented that the political class in Nigeria has failed to encourage the people to go into small and medium-scale businesses though it was really captured succinctly in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
He said: “The Federal government policy of sharing N5,000 to poor people in Nigeria seems like a fraud and a programme skewed to allow those who have access to the fund to divert the larger chunk of the funds.
“But here in Enugu State, the government of Dr. Peter Mbah is doing everything humanly possible to create an enabling environment for our youths to become financially creative, independent, and responsible. Mbah knows that Enugu can only make progress in reduction of poverty in Nigeria by training our people to develop interests in small-scale businesses.
“Today, the government has signed into law a bill establishing Enugu State Electricity Regulatory Commission (EERC). He has also set up the team that will drive the commission and by the time we are done, Enugu will create its own electricity grid which will bolster power supply for small-scale industries in the state to thrive.
“Now that you have been trained in various fields of agricultural programmes. Yours is to show practically that our efforts and resources were not wasted.
“You have to show that you are serious by personally challenging yourself and starting small. If you can manage the little you have, agencies will develop the interest to assist you in whatever form. As it is, nobody will accept to give you funds when you have not shown the capacity to manage the little one you started”.
Hon. Ogara, however, praised the efforts of the Dean of the Faculty of Biological Sciences, Prof Emeka Nweze as well as Dr Nelson Ike Ossai who is the programme officer for making time to thoroughly drill the trainees
The highpoint of the event was the unavailing of the new IGS AGRO RANGERS Cooperative Society.
