Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, a former governor of Osun State, has urged all levels of government to support children’s access to a basic education.
Aregbesola, who is also the recently retired Minister for the Interior, noted that while serving as governor of Osun, he carried out a number of foundation education programs that had been beneficial to the state. He regretted, however, that his successor, Mr. Gboyega Oyetola, had discontinued those programs.
This was said by the leader of the All Progressives Congress on Saturday in Akure during a “welcome home” celebration hosted for him by alumni of the Akoko Anglican Grammar School, Arigidi Akoko, Ondo State, of which he is a member.
He said, “All governments must know that no matter how attractive private schools may be, they will never be able to displace government-funded public foundation education schools if we really want to provide education to all the children and stimulate development from the bottom up. It is a dream we must never give up on.
“When I became governor in Osun, I sought to replicate this idea. Our administration built 11 state-of-the-art 3,000-capacity model secondary schools, in addition to rehabilitating and upgrading the existing ones. Each school has 72 classrooms which can comfortably accommodate 49 students and six rooms for study groups. It is equipped with six laboratories, 36 toilets separated equally for boys and girls, two libraries for science and arts each, a facility manager’s office, a bookshop, and a sick bay.
“We introduced ‘Opon Imo’ (the tablet of knowledge), a digital education tool, ethics and discipline in public schools, and even established a state-wide agency on public school discipline. We introduced calisthenics and school feeding and health programmes.
“The first one we put into use was Wole Soyinka Government High School in Ejigbo, in 2015. By the time we left in 2018, 11 were fully operational. With each school graduating 1,000 students every year and a combined output of 11,000, we should have not less than 44,000 world beaters now, if the programme had been sustained.
These schools were designed to produce world beaters and the fruits were already coming out.
“A student from our school topped the Senior Secondary School Examination while another topped the JAMB examination shortly after we left. But our successor regrettably couldn’t continue with the tempo”
He praised all of the school’s administrators, professors, and former students, referring to them as superstars deserving of bigger celebrations.
The National President of AKOGRAMS, Mrs. Moji Ajayi, praised the minister for helping the nation and the association grow in her speech. She said that several infrastructure projects had been completed by the former students at their alma college.
