L-R: Business Manager, Samsung West Africa, Changyeon Kim; Ekiti State Governor/ Special Guest of Honour, Dr kayode Fayemi ; and Managing Director, Samsung Electronics West Africa, Mr Brovo Kim at the 2013 Samsung Africa Forum in Cape Town, South Africa
When he won the Governor of the Year Award from Leadership Group of Newspapers in September 2012 on the strength of unprecedented achievements recorded since he assumed office, some observers believed that it was only a matter of time before the Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, receives an international recognition for excellence in governance.
Fayemi has always been reluctant and indifferent when it comes to the issue of awards which he believes has been bastardised in Nigeria, telling anybody who cares to listen that he believes his work will speak for him and history will judge him after he might have left office.
Providing good governance, deployment of resources to the right channels, probity, accountability, transparency and improving the standard of living of people of any political entity are ingredients of governance that are very difficult to ignore.
It is heart-warming that the giant strides made by Fayemi in the field of education were recognised in faraway South Africa by electronics giants, SAMSUNG.
The Ekiti State helmsman was bestowed with the award of SAMSUNG’s Best Governor in Africa for Education Project at the corporation’s Africa Forum Conference held in the South Africa city of Cape Town on Wednesday, March 13, 2013.
The award did not come by accident as Fayemi has invested massively in education in his determination to take the sector which he met in shambles to a higher pedestal.
Education and human development is the fourth leg of the famed eight-point agenda of the Fayemi administration, otherwise known as the Roadmap to Ekiti Recovery.
The governor before coming to power had envisioned a computer on every student’s desk while pupils in public schools were to enjoy free and compulsory education up to senior secondary schools.
Fayemi’s education blueprint also incorporates special initiatives for the physically-challenged students. The establishment of Institute of Science and Technology and State Sports Academy for Gifted Youths, are also on the cards.
Midway into his four-year tenure, Fayemi has surpassed expectations of Ekiti people in the field of education and human capital development with the fulfilment of over 80 per cent of his campaign promises affecting the sector.
Many skeptics scoffed at Fayemi’s vision of providing laptops for students of public secondary schools which he shared with the electorate when he was campaigning for the highest office in the state.
Many eligible voters and opposition politicians thought that providing laptops for students in public schools was a pipedream given the huge financial implication and logistics involved.
The proposal looked like several ones made in the past by politicians, who, in their desperation for power, would make promises they knew they could not fulfill.
It is on record that a total of 50,000 laptops have so far been distributed to students and teachers in Ekiti public schools under the Fayemi administration’s e-school project.
More will still be distributed to students and teachers who are yet to benefit between now and 2014, which is the target year for the completion of the project.
Fayemi has blazed the trail in Africa with the laptop per child initiative which has put students in public schools in Ekiti State on the same page with their contemporaries in the developed world.
The e-school project is being driven by the Fayemi administration in partnership with SAMSUNG West Africa Limited and MICROSOFT, a global trademark in software technology.
The laptop per child initiative of the Fayemi administration couldn’t have come at a better time with the recent directive by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) that all its examinations would henceforth be computer-based.
He expressed satisfaction that what used to be a dream has become a reality in the state with indigent students who never envisaged owning laptops now getting what they thought was impossible.
Fayemi said: “Our government has gone this far to ensure that everything is done to make us stand shoulders higher than other states by recreating our feat in the areas of academic excellence that our land was in the time past identified with.
Apart from the laptops given to students and teachers, Fayemi also changed the face of 180 public schools in the state under his administration’s Operation Renovate All Schools in Ekiti (ORASE).
The initiative was intended to save public schools, which were hitherto abandoned by successive administrations from dilapidation and collapse.
The scheme was also carried out to provide conducive learning environments for students and working environment for both teaching and non-teaching staff.
A visit to such schools, many of which did not have vibrant old students associations, now revealed a massive facelift to their classrooms, assembly halls, dining halls, hostels, administration blocks and sports facilities.
His achievements in these sectors are visible in every nook and cranny of the state and these have made Ekiti people to be proud of the man they gave their mandate to make things happen in the state.
Definitely, the best is yet to come for the people of the Land of Honour who are savouring the leadership qualities of a leader that is transforming his vision into reality.
By Odunayo Ogunmola
This article was first published in The Daily Independent
Last modified: March 26, 2013
