By ANAYO OKOLI

UMUAHIA-LIKE most other states in the country, Abia state is not immune from the rot in the education sector which occurred as a result of long neglect in the past. But the present administration has begun to address some the problems of the sector.

TERTIARY EDUCATION SCHOOLS

The state operates one university, a polytechnic and a college of education. In the last two years, the government has increased the subvention of the institutions to improve their facilities. The state university in Uturu and the polytechnic in Aba have actually witnessed reasonable improvement in facilities. However, the minus was the recent increase in the fees charged by the institutions which had been a big burden on the parents.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS

For the primary and secondary schools, the rots were huge that despite the rehabilitation so far carried out by the government a lot still needs to be done. Many primary and secondary schools across the state, especially in the urban areas have witnessed rehabilitation by the Universal Basic Education [UBE], many in the rural areas are still in bad shape. Those rehabilitated were also provided with desks and chairs. However, the government has assured that most of the schools in bad shape would be tackled.

It will be proper to state here that the rot in the sector could be attributed to corruption. Investigation showed that several billions of Naira received by the UBE in the state in the last couple of years, only an insignificant fraction was deployed to work on the schools.

This situation prompted Governor Theodore Orji to set up an inquiry into the activities of the UBE in the past and the report of the panel submitted recently speaks volume of huge corruption in the organisation.

The corruption in the UBE was so much that free text books provided for the schools were sold in the open markets, a discovery which made the governor to instantly change all the education secretaries in the state’s 17 Local Government Councils and reprimanded the chairman of ASUBEB for laxity.