OPINION: Before Ajimobi Sells Oyo Future

Posted by African Examiner Articles/Opinion, Featured Contributors/Columnists, Latest Headlines Thursday, June 2nd, 2016

BALTIMORE, MD (AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The much advertised dubious plans of Oyo state government under the leadership of Senator Abiola Ajimobi could not hold on June 1, 2016 as planned courtesy of patriots and good citizens of the state who trooped to the venue at government secretariat and ensure it did not hold.

Right from day One, I have been saying it that Ajimobi is a dubious leader who is interested in making life worse for citizens. Apart from inflated contracts, most of the demolished building owners have not received their monies and the government claimed it has released the money. People of Iseyin are still crying till date yet the emperor and authoritarian is still planning another educational coup like his friend Gbenga Daniel did in Ogun state where he ceded major government assets to his partners-in-crime.

On the educational institutions being planned to be privatized/co-managed by the state government, we need brief history of the reasons for rejection of the exploitative policy. When in 1970s, the government took over some schools from their previous owners, estimate of the cost of buildings and infrastructure in those schools were made and the owners were compensated. Since then the government in the state have been responsible for management of the schools through recruitment of staff, payment of staff salaries and construction of buildings. Now, the dubious globally recognized criteria the government and its emissaries were promoting is to return the schools to the initial owners with full transfer authority without making them to pay fully for the development that had taken place in those schools since government took them over. Now, it is clear that those in government might have collaborated with the movers of the return of schools to their original owners to ensure the transfer at no cost to them but at the peril of the state while government agents receive kick-backs behind the scene.

With the fact above, those that had received payment for their schools taken over then and are now clamouring for the returns of same schools without paying commensurate cost of the schools in terms of cost of infrastructural developments are fraudsters and should be DECLARED WANTED by EFCC for defrauding or attempting to defraud the state. It is therefore appalling that the government that claims to be for the masses is now for their exploitation.

When a newspaper(s) carried the advert on Wednesday May 25, 2016 that the government invites the interested company or body in the management of Secondary schools in Oyo state to come for expression of interest by paying N250,000 to the state government and that a stakeholder meeting will hold the following week June 1 ,2016, every sensible person knows the government had its intended audience already informed before making the advert. In fact, the advert was just to legitimize the COUP. This is because how could a week-advertisement have got enough publicity to larger parts of the population to have arranged for applications which they were not planning for within a week with two days holiday between. The state government is only playing to the hands of its enemies who have dug a hole to bury it for their selfish interest. In short, the government should investigate all the directors of the Ministry of Education and the Permanent Secretary as they could not have made such disastrous proposal to the government without “external influence”.

Reading the press release of the SSG made on June 1, 2016 on the disrupted DUBIOUS STAKEHOLDERS meeting at the Secretariat complex, one would know that those at the helm of affair have either not seen or accepted patriots enlightenment on the issue especially when the government reiterated its resolve to hold the meeting again even when all stakeholders have said no. Then, which stakeholders are now being invited by the state government if not those that have written the proposal for the mortgage of our educational future.

On the danger of the policy, the investors who would take over the schools would want to maximize their profit and so would strive to minimize cost by reducing staff strength, reducing salary of workers
as they won’t be ready to pay equivalent of what government pays but what is obtainable in private schools. Besides, to recoup their investment, they would exploit teachers and students as well as parents to pay exorbitant and unbearable charges while those in power are silently sharing the monies they ought to have spent on those schools. In the long run, the government would abdicate its responsibility and extort the masses. Thus, there would be increase in drop out especially the vulnerable children who wouldn’t be able to afford the charges. With this, child abuse would resurface as children
that could not attend schools would be on streets for any POSSIBLE ERRAND and social vices would increase from these dropouts.

The good people of Oyo state should save the state from the calamity which the current governor Abiola Ajimobi Government is planning for the state. ALL PATRIOTIC OYO STATE INDIGENES SAY NO TO AJIMOBI RETURN OF SCHOOLS TO ANYONE, BODY OR CORPORATE ENTITIES.ENOUGH OF SILENT ROBBERY IN THE CORRIDOR OF POWER

SOLIU, LUQMAN
IGBOHO, OYO STATE