The Minister of State for Niger Delta Affairs, Hon. Samuel Ode has underscored the primacy of education as a veritable weapon to facilitate the socio-economic and psychological development of an individual to adequately equip him to contribute his quota towards nation building and growth.
Ode made this assertion while receiving a delegation of Niger Delta Students Union Government.
While admitting that the Niger Delta issues were very complex and multifaceted, the minister said human capacity development was the best starting point of confronting the other challenges because, according to him, effective human resource development would facilitate the efficient and professional harnessing, management and deployment of the other resources and assets for national development.
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It was in this wise, he continued that the ministry has developed a scholarship scheme targeted at providing brilliant but indigent students of Niger delta origin to acquire the necessary skills like their more privileged peers. He announced that in 2 to3 weeks, the ministry would publish a public notice in some prominent newspapers inviting interested qualified students to come for screening after which, according to him, the scholarship awards would be granted; he therefore charged the student body to assist the ministry in ensuring that impersonators and other fraudsters were barred from infiltrating the ranks of genuinely qualified students.
Earlier in his remarks, president of the students union, Mr. Genesis Idikibiebuma appealed to the government to include education and human capacity development in the Niger Delta Master plan because of it helped in developing an individual to become positively useful to society; he also solicited for the assistance of the ministry to provide 3 buses for the logistic needs of his members and some support to organize a national students summit.
