The senator representing Rivers South-East Senatorial District in the National Assembly, Senator Magnus Ngei Abe, has said “education cannot be free”.
Abe made the statement in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital where he charged government at all levels on the need to provide quality education especially in public schools.
He said the charge became necessary in order to improve on the standard of education and encourage academic excellence in the country.
“Any society that is serious about progress will understand that without educating the younger ones and preparing the next generation, we are just wasting our time.
“The sadness of our country today is that a lot of us do not seem to realise that no matter what investment we make, except we invest in education, we are only wasting other investment.
“I do not believe in free education because education cannot be free. I believe in education where the students are not paying but the society pays.
“When you say free education, people tend to think of education where nobody pays, and where nobody pays there is no quality.
“That is why you have class-rooms without desks, you have teachers with unpaid salaries, you have schools without laboratories and you have students who graduate and can neither speak good English nor are they able to defend what they claimed to have studied, all because the people believe that education is free. Education is not free,” the senator said.
Abe further stated that “The education of a child is not just the responsibility of the student or the parents or the family of that child because any child that is not properly educated and properly trained will become a burden not only to that family but to the entire society. The benefit of education is for the society and the responsibility of sound education is the responsibility of the society”.
Senator Abe went further to say it is only investment in sound and quality education where individuals are exposed to modern training facility that can bring about a developed society.
Abe later gave cash awards to 140 students from the Rivers South-East Senatorial District marking his annual financial support for students of the states origin.
TheNewsGuru reports the beneficiaries were drawn from the Nigerian Law School as well as final year students of the Kenule Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic and the Port Harcourt Polytechnic.
“I know that for some people this money may not mean much but for some this intervention may have come at the right time and it is for those people that we make this sacrifice,” Abe said.