Dipo Olowookere
Business service conglomerate, C&I Leasing Plc, recently held a strategic meeting with Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State alongside filmmaker and global girl child advocate, Ms Zuriel Oduwole.
The meeting, held at the State House in Marina, Lagos, was to discuss strategies aimed at improving child education in public schools across the state, with an emphasis on the girl child.
Governor Sanwo-Olu, which addressing his visitors, said the metropolitan state represents 0.4 percent of Nigeria’s territorial landmass with more public primary schools than in Ghana, hence, the need for long lasting reforms in the state’s education system.
According to him, the ongoing Excellence in Child Education and Learning project dubbed EKO EXCEL was launched to establish a culture of learning, while bridging the communication gap between teachers and thousands of students across the 1,016 public primary schools in the state.
He commended Ms Oduwole for her role in championing child education across the African continent and beyond, expressing the state’s readiness to collaborate with the filmmaker and her partners on initiatives that would have deep seated impact in the lives of children in public primary schools.
Responding, Ms Oduwole, brand ambassador of Hertz Nigeria, a franchise car rental company operated by C&I Leasing Plc, spoke on her double-pronged vision of having the government infuse practical, skills-based learning and e-learning courses into public school curriculums in the state.
She expressed confidence that children could at a young age be nurtured to explore their creativity by learning practical skills such as filmmaking, thus setting them up to make a living for themselves in the near future- a cause she informed the governor she was willing to pursue at sub-national level.
In her remarks, the Group Head, Research and strategy at C&I Leasing Plc, Ms Maureen Ogbonna, praised the Lagos State Governor for the impactful initiatives put in place to reverse the trend of education inequities state-wide.
Ms Ogbonna reiterated C&I Leasing’s commitment to continuously support commendable projects aimed at empowering children with quality education, while also exploring youth employability and skills development initiatives in line with the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) framework.
