Sanwo-Olu Renews Pledges to Lagosians As LASCOCO Holds Maiden Convocation Ceremony
- The Lagos State Cooperative College (LASCOCO) recently graduated 104 students who bagged a professional degree in various fields
- Prizes were handed to no fewer than fives students for their academic excellence during the course of the programme
- However, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu who was a special guest at the convocation ceremony urged the new graduates to be steadfast and focused
Lagos, Agege - The Lagos State Government had expressed determination to sustain the state's resilience through the formulation of people-oriented strategies and policies that are need-based and development focused, Legit.ng reports.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu made this known at the maiden convocation of the professional diploma programme of the Lagos State Cooperative College (LASCOCO) at Oko-Oba, Agege area of Lagos state.
Source: Facebook
Sanwo-Olu explained that his administration would remain relentless in the effort to convert emerging threats to opportunities, leveraging digitalization technologies to deliver learning and educational outcomes.
Represented by the commissioner for commerce, industry and cooperatives, Lola Akande, the governor gave assurance that his administration would continue to provide the much-needed support required by the College to function optimally.
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He said:
‘We have thus established this College out of the need to complement efforts towards the creation of an economy that is knowledge-driven and skill-based in appreciation of the key role of cooperatives in enterprise development, job creation and generation of massive economic opportunities for the teeming population of the State.
"It is therefore expected that the existence of the Lagos State Cooperative College would help to enhance the performance of bookkeepers and trustees of cooperative societies through the Provision of need-based training while also helping to meet specific manpower needs of the State through the provision of high-level manpower with capacity for self-employment and job creation.
"As such, want to seize this opportunity to enjoin the leadership and entire membership of the Cooperative movement in the State to ensure increased patronage of the training programmes of the Lagos - state Cooperative College to develop the. capacity of Operators in the sub-sector."
How corporative societies in Lagos hits all time high - LASCOCO
In an address of welcome, the chairman of the College's Governing Council, Oyewale Raji noted that in Lagos state, the number of registered cooperative societies had grown from one hundred and eight (108) in 1967 to well over fifteen thousand (15,000) with a net asset of N70, 731,066,384.90k (Seventy billion, seven hundred and thirty-one million, sixty-six thousand, three hundred and eighty-four naira and ninety kobo) according to the mid-year report of the Cooperative Department for year 2016.
He described such a huge number of cooperators managing a stupendous amount of funds of about N80 billion in today’s worth as an essential part of the current administration's THEMES agenda and a gold mine waiting to be explored and exploited for the betterment of Lagosians.
He said:
"The economic reverberations and trickle-dow effects of activities of this subsector can only be imagined in terms of improving the economic emancipation of the greater number of our rural dwellers and thus unable to provide assets to collateralize loans from conventional banks and financial institutions"
Reeling out the achievements of the College, the Provost, Akorede Ojomu appealed to the state government to, in his usual manner, help them to overcome some of the challenges facing them, including the procurement of a permanent site to meet NBTE's requirement of not less than 10 hectares of land and to enable LASCOCO to realize its vision as a global model cooperative institution.
He said:
"There are a lot of facilities that are still lacking in the College for which we have presently improvised but which are still required in the long run for the enrichment and standardization of our academic activities. We need demonstration farms, a well — equipped Entrepreneurship Centre for vocational and entrepreneurial training, a pseudo micro finance outfit for students of Microfinance and Enterprise Development to mention but a few"
Honourary awards of Fellowship of the College were conferred on a former commissioner for commerce, Olayinka Oladunjoye and three former permanent secretaries, Wale Raji, Olajide Bashorun and Olalekan Akodu, for their immense contributions to the development of the college.
While Olajide Bashorun expressed appreciation to the college for the honour bestowed on them, Oladunjoye announced that she will be meeting one of the College's need by adopting the library, which will operate as a physical and e-learning centre.
One hundred and four students bagged Professional Diplomas in Cooperative studies during the convocation ceremony.
Five of the graduating students who distinguished themselves in the course of the professional Diploma programme were given prizes, with Veronica Akingbade bagging the overall best student prize, while the special student award was given to Ogunjinrin Oluwakemi, a person living with disability for her tenacity and resilience during the programme.
Sanwo-Olu erect ultra modern school in Lagos state
Meanwhile, Governor Sanwo-Olu has commissioned a new secondary school in Lagos named Elemoro Community Junior Secondary School in Ibeju local government area of the state.
Described as a state-of-the-art edifice, the school has an 18-classroom block, 12 standard classrooms, a football pitch, a studio for arts and music, a science laboratory and the likes
Governor Sanwo-Olu said he built the school to ensure that pupils from the community no longer have to walk long-distance before they have access to education.
Sanwo-Olu promises massive production of rice
In other news, Governor Sanwo-Olu on Friday, December visited the site of the Imota Rice Mill to ascertain the level of progress.
The Lagos governor was pleased to announce that mill will start production by the end of the first quarter of 2022.
He disclosed that the 32-metric ton per hour mill with 16 silos that have a combined capacity of 40,000 metric tons is built to produce 2.8 million bags of 50kg bags of rice annually.
Source: Legit.ng
