Reversal Of Aregbesola’s Policies On Education In Osun Will Be Counterproductive, Warns Comrade Majeed

Comrade Yahaya Majeed, a human right activist spoke with P.M. EXPRESS in Lagos at the weekend about the negative effects of the planned reversal of some education policies of former Governor Rauf Aregbesola on single uniform and middle by Governor Gboyega Oyetola and some other issues

HOW will you react to the planned reversal of some policies of former Governor of Osun State, Rauf Aregbesola on same school uniform and middle schools by the administration of Governor Gboyega Oyetola? 

There is no doubt that government supposes to be continuity particularly when it involves the same party and mostly about 55 percent of the drivers in this new government were in the previous government that came up with this policy that is being reversed now. So this exposes how poor people are been governed in this country.

But they said it was a mistake then…

I don’t think so, policy that ran for years, let me tell you, Osun people are in trouble if they said so. For every policy implemented, there is a cost to it. Now that they said a policy is being reversed, there will be serious cost to it. Who pays the cost? Government will never tell us because they are not sincere.

Parents have to buy clothes for their children, don’t you agree on that sir? 

I will never be a party to anything that will add burden to these parents, the campaign manifesto of APC in the southwest of Nigeria is free education, which mean no school fees, free books as we enjoyed it during Bólá Ige’s UPN, but here students pay some money no matter how little, no free books. What they did was to give free food and uniforms to the student. If that is what the government can do let it be, though small, the advantage was that it increases the rate of enrolment in the primary schools across the state.

Now let’s look at the number of students who are in both primary and secondary schools in the state, if we go by the figure branded by the government of Oyetola, we have something around 700,000 and assuming they use a minimum of N2, 000 to give each pupil uniform, so the government will be looking for close to N1.4 Billion. Other costs of the reversal of system will involve changing documents, laboratory equipment to the old schools and all other logistics. Here we are looking at about N2 Billion or more. If we look at cost of implementing the reversed policy, it will not be less than N6 Billion. Who will pays for these costs? If you say parent, some parents have up to four children in those schools. What is per capital income of a typical rural parent in Osun State? my brother, some children might end being drop out. If government decides to take the bill of the getting uniforms for the pupils, we are expecting that the government should be ready to cough out N1.4billion from the meagre revenue of a state like Osun, a state that usually complain of no money and economic struggling state with very bad poverty index for several months. I don’t know how the state government will cope and you must factor one thing, this uniform is not produced in Osun, so capital flight to states where the uniforms will be produced.

I think the same thing applied during Aregbesola’s government, no company in Osun state produced the uniforms giving to the students

Well, I am not a spoke person for either of the former or present government, but I know there is one clothing company that was opened at beginning of implementation of that policy then. 

Sir, you were always seen at the corridor of power during the time of former governor and even in this present regime

Of course, I know both of them but I never work with them, all what I am concerned with is development and progress of my state. I can be with them, you can be too, depend on circumstances.

Which circumstances sir?

I think I should explain few things here. There was a time I and my friends went to the Government House to donate 3,400 copies of a Compendium of JAMB past questions and answers on English and Mathematics from 1980-2015 to the Osun State Government in 2016 and last year, I and my other colleagues took some Ambassadors of foreign countries in Nigeria for the purpose of helping us develop our state.

Sir, the policy has been reversed and the government said it has adopted the white paper submitted by the Committee. They said the same school uniform has been creating problems to identify students particularly the bad one among them

For me, the Committee never said anything new, and with due respect to the Committee, there suppose to be a public hearing on this sensitive policy that have been implemented for years so that there will be inputs of different sides of opinion people in the society. Do you know that when there was different school uniform, there are schools that were using the same school uniform in the state, though they were not from the same local government, but what differentiated them that time was chest badge on the uniforms. There is no way your uniform can be the same, your school badge and logo can’t be the same, even come from Oyo, Sokoto. modification would have been the best to the uniform to save the burden of expenses on parents or the government. Let’s re-introduce school badges.

On changing school system, you must also take note of relocation of students and financial burden on the parents, even infrastructures in these schools must be look into. High schools in Osun are mega schools built by the last administration. We learnt it can take 3,000 students. If you are reversing the policy now, the question is can the new students occupy all those classes because the number in each school  cannot be up to 3,000? School infrastructure decay will definitely set in, who pays Osun people, what about the teachers too? 

What do you think is the way forward? 

My advice to the present government is to look into how to improve on what the immediate past government left behind, modification mechanism can be applied, but not outright reversal of a policy in which the senior actors in this government was strongly involved, which mean electorate are deceived by their campaign slogan of continuity, All this is sending a very strong signal that may likely backfire soon. Secondly, if they are now saying policy they jointly formulated and implemented is now a pain or mistake, the future implication of this is better imagine. You can take the people for a ride for too long. Lastly, our elected representatives in the House of Assembly should wake up to their responsibilities.

Since this issue has started, media opinion is that all is not well in the camp of the ruling party.

Anyway there is nothing that cannot happen, but to me it is a disservice to the people who elected them to the government. As you said, who will lose in this? People of Osun State are the biggest losers because the people’s money will be used to implement this reversal. To me, reversing that policy outrightly will worsen the economic and wellbeing of Osun people. This is an invitation to economic catastrophic in Osun State. Do you know they can use that same uniform policy to industrialise the state, create thousands of jobs, change the narration of the state’s poverty index through circular economy.

What is circular economy sir?

Let that be for another day 

When is Agritech Nigeria Osun 2020 coming up?

By the grace of God, we are more determined to create wealth and job opportunities for over 3,000 Osun people through agriculture value chain during this year’s event.