Osun debate: Oyetola, others promise education, health revolution

Osun debate: Oyetola, others promise education, health revolution 

Plans to revolutionize education, health and other sectors were laid bare by candidates of some of the political parties participating in the Osun State governorship election in the final debate Thursday.

The debate, which was organized by the TVC in conjunction with some civil society groups, was held at the WOCDIF Centre, Osogbo, the Osun State capital.

The participants are Gboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Olugbenga Akintola of Alliance for Democracy (AD), Babatunde Loye of Labour Party (LP), Mercy Ayodele of Reformation Party of Nigeria (RPN) and Oluseyi Fabiyi of KOWA party.

Candidates of the remaining four major parties – Social Democratic Party (SDP), African Democratic Party (ADP), People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and African Democratic Congress (ADC) were absent.

The organizers said they all promised to attend but failed to show up.

On education, Oyetola said the Rauf Aregbesola administration has done well in education but that he would focus more on the technological aspect of education, give scholarships, train and retrain teachers and also sustain the free meal for students.

Akintola promised to promote functional literacy and numeracy skills, improve funding for education and improve welfare of teachers.

The other candidates also promised to train and retrain teachers and pay salaries regularly.

On health, the APC candidate promised to embrace the National Health Insurance Scheme for workers, upgrade facilities of primary health centres, equip them with drugs and motivate medical workers.

Other candidates also promised to motivate health workers, build mega hospitals whose services will be paid for as well as embrace health insurance.

On job creation, Oyetola pledged to sustain the Osun State Youths Employment Scheme dubbed OYES, create five new farm settlements and give incentives to youths to go into agriculture. He further promised to look at exploring the value chain in agriculture that includes processing, transportation and storage, among others.

Fabiyi promised to build technology village in the three senatorial zones to harness the skills of artisans for development.

For Loye, the way to succeed in job creation in times like this is to encourage youths to go into technology related businesses.