Gov. Okorocha inaugurates Education Trust Fund Committee

Gov. Rochas Okorocha of Imo on Monday inaugurated a 13-man State Education Trust Fund Committee to sustain the free education programme of his administration beyond 2019.

Inaugurating the Mr Emma Ezeonyasi-led committee in Owerri, Okorocha said there was the need to institutionalise the policy in the overall interest of the state.

“As governor, I am poised to seeing that the free education programme of my administration is sustained in the state beyond 2019.

"There is no greater gift you can give to a child than education. Education remains the pivot upon which the wheel of every success in life rotates.

"We must do everything as a people and government to keep the free education programme alive,” he said.

Okorocha said that the poverty rate in the state had reduced as parents who were selling their valued possessions to pay school fees of their children and wards no longer did so, with the introduction of free education.

“The lives of our children born and yet unborn are very important. So, this is the time to secure the future of our children and children yet unborn by saving for their education.

"Every child must go to school and education must be made free so that the children of the poorest of the poor can go to school as we don’t know where the person who may change the face of the state or the nation will come from,” he said.

The governor charged the committee members to leave no stone unturned in the realisation of the goal for which they were chosen.

In his vote of thanks, Ezeonyasi, the chairman of the committee, assured that they would live up to expectation since they were called to serve the state and her people.