From Kolade Adeyemi, Kano
Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State, has said that his administration would renew educational agreement between the state and the French government, under the Kano- France Government Scholarship Agreement, for five more years from 2020, when the existing agreement comes to an end.
The current agreement was signed in 2016.
The extension, he said, was to enable those who would run Doctorate Degrees to have enough time to complete their studies.
In a statement issued by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Abba Anwar, Ganduje said the academic partnership was targeted at meeting the state’s needs.
“What we are doing now is to plan for our educational programmes. In this programme for example, we target lecturers of our tertiary institutions ,who will come back and impart what they were taught to their students,” he said when he visited Kano students at Campus France, in Paris, France, recently.
He added: “We all believe that the education sector needs a complete overhaul. That is why we said for the basic education, let us have free and compulsory primary and secondary education, a policy we have started implementing. Due to the quality of students that will be produced from our primary to secondary schools, we have to prepare for quality tertiary institutions.”
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“.In our efforts to prepare our tertiary institutions for quality response, we came up with this Targeted Educational Programme.”
Campus France is the body that manages the Kano-France government scholarship programme among others across the globe.
The body currently has 4,000 students under its watch. They work with all the institutions of higher learning in France.
Also satisfied by the exceptional performance of Kano postgraduate students numbering 26, out of whom 19 are running Masters programmes and seven Ph.Ds, Director-General of Campus France, Beatrice Khaiat, told the governor that more French universities were willing to accept more students from Kano.
“What Kano State government is doing by sending students based on merit from institutions of higher learning to France is extremely good for Kano, Nigeria and the world in general,” she said.
French Education Attachee in French Embassy in Nigeria, Mrs Laila Matthew, invited Governor Ganduje to facilitate Kano State’s participation during the upcoming Nigeria Day in France, when Nigerian institutions of higher learning would be in France to meet with many French institutions for Postgraduate studies opportunities.
“Kano is doing well in this agreement that was first signed in 2016. It is important to note that this agreement with Kano State government has opened doors for Nigeria, as some other schools have started showing interest in this great programme. So Kano is a pace setter. It may interest the governor to also know that, most of the awardees who are sponsored through Petroleum Trust and Development Fund (PTDF), come from Kano also,” she said.
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