Senator Yunus Akintunde, a member of the National Assembly who represents the Oyo Central Senatorial District, stated on Sunday that Nigerian politics and administration have nothing to do with the apparent decay in the infrastructure sustenance culture of government at all levels.
He revealed this during the Iroko Community Grammar School’s 1983 Set 40th Anniversary celebration, which took place on the school’s grounds in Oyo State’s Akinyele Local Government Area.
In response to architect Oladejo Olawoyin, the keynote speaker, who had earlier linked the country’s political climate to the difficulties in maintaining public infrastructure, Akintunde declared, “I strongly disagree with him.” Our political system is unrelated to the state of the education infrastructure’s decay. This is not only a problem with educational infrastructure; it’s a policy issue.
“There are thousands of solar street lights these days. These days, governments are wearing them. They won’t receive any maintenance, so in five years they will all pass away. On Awolowo Road, the old Bodija in Ibadan, solar street lights were first installed during the administration of former Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala. “After about one or two years, the whole thing went off because, while building up our contract, the provision for renovations, maintenance, and rehabilitation has never been part of our contract,” the former governor said. The majority of these buildings were constructed tens of years ago, but without upkeep. To stop the deterioration of public utilities in Nigeria, he said, non-governmental involvement and private initiative in the country’s educational system must be promoted.
“We have done research and discovered that more than 300,000 schools in Nigeria have gone under in terms of dilapidation,” Olawoyin had previously stated. A state of ruin and destruction of infrastructure that should be maintained is called dilapidation. A lack of a maintenance culture is an indication that your priorities are out of alignment.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo established many of these schools in the South-West in the 1960s. With the exception of the ones near busy roads, I can confirm that over 90% of these schools have closed. Examine Ibadan University. We are trying to figure out how to repair some of the University College Hospital’s buildings, and an American doctor has promised to donate a million dollars. Thus, the alma mater’s involvement is necessary. First of all, our policies are the reason for the state of disrepair—not the structures. Our schooling has ended. That’s what prompted me to mention Awolowo.
Read Also: APC sues NBA over Abure, Kenneth Okonkwo’s utterances, LP kicks
“Let’s tackle this from the bottom up. Give the missionaries back control of the school. Evidently, the government is no longer able to manage them. That’s the approach we should use here, as well as throughout Nigeria. A robust alma mater and endowment are essential. Seek out what you can do for the country, not what it can do for you, President Bola Tinubu advised. The nation is bankrupt. That’s the reality. We must turn inward.
“We did not place the appropriate resources at the appropriate locations. We genuinely lost sight of the fact that education is what will challenge us. In the 1960s, such was Awolowo’s thought process. However, we were blind to it for fifty or sixty years. None of these schools are touched. He said, “The roofs, doors, and other parts have fallen off.”
