Access to education, a must for all in Lagos – Ambode

Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has formally unveiled the State
Digital Library, reiterating his administration’s commitment to provide
access to education for all.
Governor Ambode, who spoke through
the Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Tunji Bello, at the launch of
the Lagos State Digital Library held at the Landmark Event Center,
Victoria Island, said the unveiling of the first of its kind digital
Library was part of the vision of providing access to education.
According to the Governor, the access envisioned would be through collection and curation of digital content by online portal.
He
said that the development, apart from complementing the quest for
achieving Lagos dream of becoming Africa’s model megacity, would also
help in transforming the State to a global economic and financial Hub.
“The
digital library will provide a repository of contents which include
2,000 study aids on core subjects from primary to senior secondary
school curriculum, over 1,600 tutorials, instructional videos and
selected e-books for primary to SS3 approved texts, brief history of
Lagos State, online forum, podcasts and exam-mate (A Test Resource).
“The
contents also include quality research papers from Lagos State Tertiary
Institutions covering a wide variety of topics digitized for the
platform in various forms such as vocational videos, entrepreneurship
contents, creatively presented history lessons and online courses on
coding.
“This portal will be accessible via internet connection on a range of
devices, from desktop computers to feature phones regardless of
location, age or social economic status,” he said.
He said as part
of the government’s efforts to make the State the next technology hub
in Africa, the “Code Lagos” and “Digital Library” projects were
initiated, adding that the Digital Library programme was the first of
its kind in the State and one of the largest learning platforms in
Africa.
The Governor noted that based on statistics available,
Africa is expected to reach 500 million internet users by 2020, majority
of whom will access internet through a mobile device.
He,
therefore, urged students, researchers and everyone interested in
knowledge acquisition to make use of the platform which can be accessed
from any part of the State and country.
Earlier in his remarks,
the Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Mr Obafela Bank-Olemoh
said part of the innovation of the present administration was the
introduction of “library initiative” whereby private organisations can
adopt a library and improve it.
According to him, the initiative
was already yielding fruits with the library at Herbert Macaulay, Yaba
and the one at Isolo already taken up by corporate organisations.
The
representative of the Governor later logged on to the
“www.educatelagos.com” portal to formally unveil the programme at the
event which also attracted members of the Organised Private Sector and
the Diplomatic Corps.