The Cross River State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB has assured Online Media Practitioners Association of Nigeria, OMPAN, Cross River State chapter of partnership.
The partnership, according to the Executive Chairman of SUBEB, Dr. Stephen Odey Esq is to provide first hand information so that the general public will not be misled.
He said, “We want your association to help us publicise our works, so that people out there will know what we are doing in SUBEB. When you need information, meet myself or my Information Officer because everything in SUBEB is open – there is no secret in SUBEB. I believe we have established a very good relationship”.
Dr. Odey during a courtesy visit by members of OMPAN to his office in Calabar on Tuesday reiterated that his stay in office which will be 2 years in October has seen SUBEB revitalised the educational sector and the people of the state.
He said further that when he resumed office as Chairman, he discovered that the marching ground in the state from 2012-2015 was not excessive, so, “I came up with a rescue mission, embarked on a controversial screening by following the due processes; I did the screening and we uncovered over 1,000 unqualified teachers across the 18 LGAs… most of them have gone back to school.”
“We have built about 327 schools across the State. It is also the responsibility of SUBEB to run both Primary and Junior Secondary Schools and we have built 3 Junior Secondary schools across the 3 Senatorial Districts of Cross River State. We have built sickbay, distributed computers, solar power and other accessories to schools across the state”, he said.
The Executive Chairman also gave a preamble on how SUBEB operates, adding that before any project is executed, there must be checks and balances between the state and Abuja and EFCC.
He said the Governor is so prudent such that SUBEB under his watch does things judiciously. “The Governor just credited the SUBEB account with N1.2 billion, which I have notified Abuja and before accessing the money you have to sit in a panel and defend what you want to do after which you’ll be accompanied by a monitoring team.”
“It is very difficult for any parastatal to beat us because we have never conducted any teacher’s interview or recruitment and collect any money, no! We never do that. We have never collected any money from any contractor to execute a project too.
“So, we want your association to help us propagate our good works for the betterment of education in the state and beyond”, Dr. Odey said.
Speaking earlier, the Chairman of OMPAN-CRS, Comrade Efio-Ita Nyok said SUBEB has been critical in the development of primary education in the state.
Nyok who lauded the rescue mission by Barr. Odey, added that, “if we don’t have the right information, there’s a tendency that the public will be living in assumption which is not good. We thank you for opening your arms to embrace us, we will continue to work in partnership to ensure that education in Cross River State remains the best in Nigeria. We also want to use this opportunity to encourage you to keep fishing out academically unqualified teachers in our primary and post primary education system”.
