As part of efforts to ensure boys and girls are taken away from the streets, the Association of Esan Professionals (AEP) has launched a N250 million Education Trust Fundraising to improve the standards of secondary education in Esanland.
This is just as the AEP also gave awards to worthy sons and daughters of Esanland.
The N250 million Education Trust fundraising award and recognition ceremony with the theme, “Securing the Future of Esanland and its People through Education” was graced by notable Esan personalities at the event held at the popular Civil Centre in Lagos.
The chairman of the event, the Adolor of Ewatto and Odolagbon of Warri Kingdom, Chief Leemon Ikpea, said the event could not have come at better time than now, adding that what AEP is striving to achieve as an association is to ensure that there are no out of school children in Esanland.
Ikpea who is also the chairman of Lee Engineering and Construction Company Limited, said that for Esanland to be free of out of school children, educational infrastructure, tools and other the necessary things that would help make the standards of education high must be provided for selected schools within Esanland
He contended that if it is left for the Edo State government, the principal objective of education will not be achieved, adding that these challenges necessitated the decision of AEP to assist in its own little way by organising a N250 million Education Trust fund raising event to achieve the desired result.
The chairman urged well-meaning Esan sons and daughters to donate generously to this course.
He recalled that through the AEP 20 Esan youths were trained in welding and fabrication at the Petroleum Training Institute (PTI) for nine months as part of its contribution to capacity building in Esanland.
The governor of Edo State, Mr Godwin Obaseki, said the state government with the introduction of the Edo Best education programme the system of education has become the state to beat.
Obaseki, who was represented by the special adviser on political affairs, Mrs. Philomena Ihenyen, said the recent WAEC where the state was declared the overall best is a testimony to the fact that the programme is working, adding that there is more to do and that the state government take education very seriously hence the instruction of EdoBest.
Earlier, the president of AEP, Mr Efe Akhigbe, in his welcome address, said the event was a unique because it was the first in person and virtual fundraising ever organised since the inception of the association 21 years ago.
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