ASCON lauds FG over accelerated work on Agbara-Badagry expressway

The Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), Badagry, on Tuesday commended the Federal Government over accelerated work on Agbara -Badagry expressway project.

Mrs Cecilia Gayya, Director-General of the college, gave the commendation in an interview with our correspondent
in Badagry.

Our correspondent reports that the 46-kilometre highway was awarded to CGC Construction Company in October 2018 at N63.2 billion.

Gayya said the hitherto deplorable state of the expressway had made access to the college difficult, affecting patronage by existing and potential clients .

“But today, the state of the road is much better than what we had in December 2021 as the drive from Badagry to Oko-Ofo now takes a short time

“The bad state of the road actually prevented many people from coming to ASCON.In fact on many occasions, our clients told us they would have come to the college but for the bad road.

“But we are happy with the way work is being done on the expressway now.

“Even if it is just one lane that they are able to finish by the middle of this year,that will cut down the hours being wasted on the road ,and it will serve us in ASCON”, he said.

On the digital learning initiative of ASCON, Gayya said the college was partnering with Work-Force, a private company, to develop an e-learning platform to boost virtual learning.

She said that the platform would enable those who might not want to come physically to ASCON in Badagry to take courses at the college.

“We have trained our staff on that and the private company and the college are working to set up a platform so that we will be able to deliver some of our programmes online.

“Hopefully, before the end of second quarter of the year, that programme will be on because we have gone beyond the training of staff.

“What we need now is the platform to start test running one or two programmes so that we can correct if there is any mistake, and then we pursue it from there,” she said.

Gayya said that the college organised online seminars in 2020 and 2021, the peak years of COVID-19 pandemic, to respond to clients’ needs.

She, however, said that those seminars that the college ran at the period were not paid for, but were run to test the capacity of the college to deliver online programmes.

“Those seminars showed us that we can have people do our programmes online and also we can go to them instead of them coming here.

“So, instead of people being worried of coming to ASCON, then we say don’t worry,we can come to you, and so this is one thing we are working hard upon,” she said.

Gayya, however, said there were some programmes which had to be done at the college as facilities at the institution would be needed to run them.