Anambra State Governor Charles Soludo has extended free education to pupils of public mission nursery and primary schools as his Deputy Chief of Staff and Chief of Protocols, Hon. Chinedu Nkemakonam Nwoye (Glamour) together with the state Commissioner for Budget, Hon. Chiamaka Nnake, jointly offset the tuition fees of primary school pupils in Nawfia community Njikoka Local Government Area.

The benefiting primary schools which are Okagbue Memorial School Mmimi village Nawfia, Ojoko Memorial School Ifite Nawfia and Uruoji Primary School Uruoji village Nawfia, are schools managed by churches and as such the free education policy being implemented in government-owned public schools did not get down to them; hence the need for the interventions in the primary schools aforementioned.

The governor’s Chief of Protocols who initiated the intervention, said they embarked on the over N1.5 Million project to extend good governance to the rural populace because the government of Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo is a government of the poor and the downtrodden and that Soludo places very high premium on quality education.

He said authorities of the primary schools mentioned were calling for assistance and there was confusion as parents thought that all the schools benefited from the free education of the state government.

The governor’s aide who said he was moved by a feeling of empathy and compassion for the pupils and their parents, decided to co-opt his colleague and they shouldered the responsibility of paying the tuition fees for the pupils from their personal resources.

Confirming the interventions in the three nursery and primary schools mentioned above, the Provincial Education Secretary of the Anglican Communion in Anambra State and Education Secretary of the Awka Diocese of the Anglican Communion, Ven. Ifeanyi Umeh, said it was a special intervention in mission schools in Nawfia as a town.

Ven. Umeh said the mission schools were Okagbue, Uruoji and Ojoko primary school respectively. He said the governor’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Chief of Staff and the Commissioner for Budget visited the schools and presented gifts that took care of the tuition fees of the pupils in the nursery and primary sections.

He said some of the parents who witnessed the presentation of cheques to the school authorities were so delighted such that they praised Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo for stepping down his free education policy to mission schools through the help of the Deputy Chief of Staff and the Commissioner for Budget. (Saturday Independent)