Infrastructure decay in schools predates Abiodun’s govt – Ogun Commissioner

The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology in Ogun State, Prof Abayomi Arigbabu, has absolved Governor Dapo Abiodun of blame on the public schools students sitting on bare floor in classrooms due to infrastructural decay.

In July, photos of students writing examinations on bare floor in different secondary schools in Ogun State have attracted huge knocks for the state government.

The government officials within few days stormed the school with new sets of furniture, including desks and chairs for the students.

Speaking at a media chat on Friday in Abeokuta on the government’s scorecards in education sector, Arigbabu said the infrastructural decay at schools predated the current administration.

The Commissioner flanked by other major stakeholders in the state’s education sector, however, emphasized that the current administration had “invested heavily” on improving infrastructures in the last three years.

“Students have been sitting on the floor before we came in,” he said.

He said the government had rehabilitated and renovated 960 classrooms across the state with the provision of furniture.

The Professor of Mathematics also explained that the government had embarked on “radical decongestion of schools”, using 42 flagship schools as models.

He added that there has 120 percent increase in running cost for public primary and secondary schools in the state.

“We have compiled list of all schools that needs intervention and by the end of this. We have renovated 960 schools and we have supplied over 2,5000 tables and chairs to reduce and cushion the effects of shortage of furniture in our schools.

“We have also upgraded and recategorize our schools, this is a new initiative in Ogun state which we call the Flagship school initiative.

“This initiative means that we are not starting model colleges from the scratch but we want to turn our colleges into model colleges. Where we are going is all the 511 secondary schools in Ogun state will better be model colleges.

“Now we have 42 of those schools, we want to solve the problem in our education sector. The 42 flagship schools are spread across the three senatorial districts of the state and to enter the school, there is usually screening test.

“We have started systematically working on the Flagship schools with the standard of candidates to enter the schools, quality of teachers and also in terms of quantities and the decongestion of the population of those schools. Decongestion of class population is one of our goals in Ogun state. In our flagship schools, there is no class room that is more than 60 pupils.

“To achieve this, we have given ourselves a six years goal and except we establish more schools and build more classrooms, we cannot achieve this goal and where we are going is to have maximum of 40 pupils in a class,” Arigbabu said.