Kazeem Badmus
THE Provost, Osun State College of Education, Ilesa, Professor Kolawole Kazeem, has disassociated himself from illegal miners who invaded the school land for mining activities.
Kazeem said he did not know anything about the illegal mining activities taking place on the school land.
This is just as the state government commenced investigation into the encroachment of the school land by the miners.
Speaking with newsmen in Ilesa at the weekend, Kazeem said the state government panel and security agencies have identified school officials culpable in the act, hence the decision to embark on a thorough investigation to determine the extent of the involvement of the officials.
He added that apart from the menace of illegal miners, the school is also facing challenge of land grabbers because it has no perimeter fence to define its boundaries.
The provost said those accusing him of complicity in the illegal mining activities are the bad eggs whom the system did not allow to dictate what they want again.
Kazeem said: “All the allegations are not true. The management is not involved in any mining. We have been dealing with the issue of illegal mining even before I became the Provost and we have been doing everything to stop these illegal activities. Above all, our school does not even have a perimeter fence, thereby, making it easy for someone to come and go at will.
“It is not only the miners that are the problems. We also have issues of land grabbers who are laying claims to the land of the college and we have been battling with these people. We stumbled on that when there was a protest letter that I collected N100m and that was already selling land of the college.
“But as God would have it, in the last couple of days, we were able to discover that there are some elements in the college who are actually involved in that kind of trade and the state government had already commenced investigation. The Police and other security apparatus are involved in order to fish out the bad eggs and see what we can do to stop this thing.
“I have never met those illegal miners in my life. It is just a propaganda and this propaganda was as a result of my efforts to sanitise the whole system and I have done my bit to make sure that the system is reformed as much as possible.
