Rauf Aregbesola, the former Governor of Osun State and immediate past Minister for Interior, has emphasized the importance of governments prioritizing the basic education of children.
Speaking at a reception in Akure organized by the old students of Akoko Anglican Grammar School, he highlighted the successful foundation education programs implemented during his tenure as governor.
However, he expressed regret that these programs were discontinued by his successor, Gboyega Oyetola.
Aregbesola, a member of the All Progressives Congress, reiterated the significance of a strong public foundation education and called for sustained commitment to this cause at all levels of government.
His words: “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 callisthenics and school feeding and health programme.
“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.”
