Dear Editor,

Please find below an article that respresent my opinion on the state of education in Oyo state. Will be grateful if you will consider it for publication.

“In moving Nigeria towards prosperity and stability, there can be no substitute for Education. Time and again the challenges that confront our nation has called for leadership carved out of meaningful literacy and the ability to translate such into workable alternatives to the desperation and despair which the majority of our people are forced to live in.

Yet, the policy direction of some of those entrusted with the

responsibility of delivering true quality education to our people appear to give the impression that if anything at all, they do not have the slightest regard to the place that a key sector like Education has in our national agenda.  Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in Oyo State.

By its very actions and inaction, the present administration in Oyo state has succeeded in relegating education to the background as it goes about pursuing unneeded policies driven solely by a desire to secure a second term. Rather than set the improvement of teaching standards, educational infrastructure and enrollment as its utmost priority, the governor and his

administration are busy with a fantastic objective of “turning the state into London”.

Unbelievable but amid all the hardships confronting stakeholders in Education –with tertiary students disgruntled and educators losing their jobs by the months- this is what Ajimobi judges as both the right thing to pursue and the right time to pursue it! In their order of priorities,upgrading the environment through reconstruction of a few roads, planting imported flowers at an exorbitant cost to the State looks so magical that they calculate that by merely staring at these, the people will become enlightened and automatically acquire the mannerism that only proper education can bring about. A rather lame approach to societal development you would think.

Apparently it does seem to be the exact thought of a government that is mortgaging the future of her youths in a pitiable attempt to turn Oyo state into Mecca.

I am informed that the governor is learned.(Though his level of educational attainment is in doubt). Then he wouldn’t have missed the popular truism by Nelson Mandela that “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” or the Yoruba adage that says: "Omo ti a ko, lo ma gbe ile ti a ko ta." Meaning :  a child that is not given education will

Squander whatever assets he inherits. It follows then Mr. Governor that no matter how much is spent on state beautification, it will amount to money wasted without a literate society. For a child without education will see nothing wrong in grazing his herds of goats on flowers that has cost the government tons of millions to plant.

Nevertheless, this is how far the Ajimobi tenure has drifted from common logic. To all intents and purposes, it only pays lip service to educational development in the state.

They in all honesty do not see education as a viable project. Yet education provides "social benefits" for individuals and society at large, including a better way of taking care of ourselves, and consequently creating a better society to live in.

His desire to make Oyo state have a semblance to London or Mecca, would have been laudable if it had been on the right premise. Educate your citizens, create the right environment for the advancement of science and technology and see every other thing fall into place. If he will take time to inquire from these countries since there is hardly a week he does not visit Europe or the United States, he will observe that I am spot on.

The governor has traveled over eighty times since he came to office, mostly to Europe and America. These countries are technologically advanced and they owe their breakthrough and successes in the field of science and technology to robust and functional educational systems.  So can "aare atunluse of ibadanland" confidently say that since assumption of office he

has done anything to set the state on the path of educational successes?

From the very first day in office, he has shown that education will not be prioritized by his administration. School fees of tertiary institutions were increased and he still remains the only governor in the history of the state that was welcomed with a mass student protest on his first day in office.

Perhaps the best Ajumobi has given to education since assumption of office was the extra mural classes that were organized for SSCE students at the inception of his administration. Then, all the care taker chairmen were falling over themselves to organize one as if that's all Oyo state education needs to get to the next level! The sad thing about this was that the cost of publicity given to this "laudable achievements" by the governor

and his stooges was much more than what was spent on the actual program,and I dare say that in all my life I have never seen where such mediocrity is celebrated.

While previous governments in the state made efforts to reduce the number of pupils per class and increase the teaching staff,  his excellency has done  otherwise. He reduced the number of teaching staff and the number of schools by merging schools. The resultant effect of this is over-population of classrooms and mass sacking of teachers under spurious claims.

The principals whose schools were affected by the mergers were demoted to the classrooms. Yet these are hard working men and women who thought they had made career advancement and to make "a bad matter worse" he stopped running grants that are due schools.

Pray, where would the heads of schools get funds for petty expenses? Does this not remind us of Pharaoh and the Hebrew slaves," Make bricks but I won’t give you mortars" ? Ironically, we hear of the "Giant Strides" of Mr Governor’s administration in the education sector everyday.

The opposite is the case since presently teachers morale are down, schools are in dire and sordid conditions and what we have for free education is the occasional distribution of two copies of exercise books with a gap toothed smile photograph of the governor on its cover page to a few students with the usual massive publicity claiming that education is moving forward in Oyo state in "Giant strides". They bombard the media, with

information of how they have renovated over four hundred schools. The strange thing is that nobody sees these schools or knows where they are.

Let's pause for a moment and reflect on what the governor finds more viable than education. Yes! You guessed right. Garages, motor and trailer parks !

The present administration has spent over a billion Naira building motor parks all over the city while schools are in a sorry state, banners and billboards of the ones yet to be built are all over the city. A popular South African musician, while singing about the ills of apartheid in one of his songs, said " they have stopped building schools, all they build now are prisons". In the same vein, Ajimobi has stopped schools development.

All he is building are garages and trailer parks. While he cannot boast of building or renovating a school which he can proudly say is comparable to any in the world, he definitely is not found wanting when it comes to motor and trailer parks. They have been truly upgraded to international standard.

Little wonder the children in public schools would pause and observe these newly-built motor parks in awe, on their daily walk to school. Who knows what they are thinking about in their very impressionable minds. I hope and pray that they are not thinking that the motor parks and garages would be good places to work. God forbid that should be their thought. In that

event, then governor Ajimobi's "Giant Strides" in education would have birthed the fruits of his heart's desires indeed.

All the same, I wish to advice the governor to do more for education as this is the only true way he can leave a lasting legacy. That Pa Awolowo today is still been revered is due to what he did for his people through education, of which am sure his excellency benefited from.

But then the harm has been done; he has lost face with the people and they no longer have confidence in him. His desperation for a second term only exist in Eldorado, and in the minds of his praise singers, belly first politicians and sycophants.  His gap toothed smile can no longer fool the

people for they now know better.”

Omolere Omoetan.

Ibadan, Oyo State