Sambo: FG Approves N1.5tn Presidential Support on Education

Ibrahim Shuaibu The Vice-President, Alhaji Namadi Sambo, has said the federal government is spending about N1 billion annually on educational projects across the Nigerian universities.

Sambo disclosed this yesterday at the foundation laying ceremony of the Mrs. Patience Jonathan’s 360-bed female hostel block and the modern international conference centre of the Bayero University (BUK) in Kano.

Sambo said N1.5trillion fromthe presidentialsupportfundsoneducation had already been approved to cater for the need of Nigerian universities and other tertiary institutions.

Sambo said courtesy of the transformation agenda, projects like this would continue to dot all the Nigerian universities an other tertiary institutions.

The vice-president, who also held an interactive session with members of the university community shortly after the ceremony, said in order to realise Nigeria’s vision 2020, the federal government had paid a special attention to education sector through the award of various projects amounting billions of naira.

Speaking during the occasion, the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Abubakar Rasheed, disclosed that the university had in the last four years been repositioned from an art-based to a science-based university with the introduction of about 40 new departments and research centres.

The vice-president also visited the Zaria Road bridge and also inaugurated some project at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital which is under the supervision of the university.

Sambo was accompanied by the Minister of Education, Ibrahim Shekarau, Minister for Special Duites, Tanimu Turaki and the Chairman of Technical Education Trust Fund, as well other senior government officials.

THISDAY observed that the police authorities had deployed hundreds of counter terrorism operatives backed by dozens of Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) in strategic areas of the Kano metropolis for the visiting vice-president.