Date: 2020-08-14

Kwara State Governor, Ab­dulRahman AbdulRazaq, held an online meeting with young people drawn from across the state Wednesday night, urging them to em­brace technology to cope with the new economy and explaining the various youth-centric initiatives of his administration.

In a zoom meeting attend­ed by dozens of Kwarans to commemorate the Interna­tional Youth Day, Abdul­Razaq said investments in new skills and new technol­ogy were major preoccupa­tion of the administration.

He announced the slash­ing of tuition fees for two major courses at the In­ternational Vocational, Technical and Entrepre­neurship College (IVTEC) centre, Ajase-Ipo, a deci­sion taken to allow as many Kwara youths as possible to access technical education and make them self-sus­taining.

The reduction affects only Kwara indigenes studying at (IVTEC).

While the tuition fee for the three-month-dura­tion IVTEC Special Cer­tificate Programme (SCP) has been cut from N50,000 to N35,000, the tuition for IVTEC National Innova­tion Diploma (NID) pro­gramme was reduced per session from N110,060.00 to N77,050.00 for prospective Kwara students.

The tuition for the one year National Vocation­al Certificate (NVC) has also been reduced from N75,833.33 to N53,083.00.

AbdulRazaq acknowl­edged the calls for a down­ward review of the fees at other institutions, includ­ing the Kwara State Univer­sity, but observed that the administration recognised the need to invest more in the school to attain certain heights and then determine the strategy to ease burden on the students.

The Governor said the next budget would feature more investments in tech­nology especially in schools and governmental institu­tions in line with its ease of doing business strategy while more money would go into funding small business­es, startups, and innovative ideas, particularly those from young people in the state.