{"id":64858,"date":"2018-11-27T15:01:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T14:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=64858"},"modified":"2018-11-27T15:14:15","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T14:14:15","slug":"2019-presidency-donald-duke-promises-free-education-extension-of-retirement-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=64858","title":{"rendered":"2019 presidency: Donald Duke promises free education, extension of retirement age"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Donald Duke, the Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has promised free tuition in primary, secondary and tertiary education in the country, if elected president in 2019.<\/p>\n

Duke, represented by Mr Precious Elekima, the Governorship candidate of the party in Rivers, made the promise on Monday in Port Harcourt, at the flag-off of the party\u2019s campaign for 2019 polls in Rivers, NAN reports.<\/p>\n

He also promised to extend the civil servants retirement age to 45 years of service or 70 years of mandatory age, stressing that retirement after 35 years of service or 60 years of age will be optional.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday I am representing our presidential candidate to pass his message to Nigerians and to the people of Rivers State in particular.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis Excellency, Donald Duke, says that everyone matters. You deserve the best in this country. He says that his administration will bridge the gap between the poor and the rich in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur administration will bridge the gap between the rich and the poor by offering free tuition in all levels of education \u2013 from primary to tertiary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will revisit the handover of schools to missionaries with a view to working out an agreeable partnership, taking into consideration the interest of the public, the missions and the communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cUndergraduate and postgraduate scholarships home and abroad will be offered. Board of governors will be inaugurated for all public primary and secondary schools in Rivers state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will extend the civil servants retirement age to 45 years of service or 70 years of age mandatory; retirement after 35 years of service or 60 years of age will be optional.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is because if lecturers and judges can work up till 70 years, I am sure civil servants can also work till that age.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur pensioners will be on first priority and must be paid first before anyone in the state,\u201d he said.\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Duke, the Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has promised free tuition in primary, secondary and tertiary education in the country, if elected president in 2019. Duke, represented by Mr Precious Elekima, the Governorship candidate of the party in Rivers, made the promise on Monday in Port Harcourt, at the flag-off of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}