Hardball
Folorunsho Bamisayemi, the Osun commissioner for Education, must consider himself some wit, if not an all-knowing Daniel come to judgment, with his ringing verdict on the Aregbesola-era “mega schools”, which he thumbed down as a virtual waste.
“I will renovate every school in Osun and put more teachers if I have access to the money used in building a mega school,” he told the press, insisting those 10 schools, with an eleventh 90 per cent completed, all built with N16.5 billion of public funds, were being underutilized.
To start with, what schools were Commissioner Bamisayemi talking about, that he would have renovated, employed an army of teachers and still keep a healthy change? They certainly can’t be in the class of those futuristic schools the old government took so much pains and sacrifice to conceive and build.
Besides, if there were enough schools worth their names, and if indeed they could be renovated to make any difference as Mr. Bamisayemi now crows, it is doubtful if any rational government would take sweeping steps to build new ones.
By the way, by his condescension over the so-called “mega schools”, does Mr. Bamisayemi even realize Governor Gboyega Oyetola was the chief of staff in the government that built those schools, following recommendations from the Wole Soyinka Education Summit, convoked to plot a way from the ruins that Osun public education had become?
How does the commissioner feel his principal would feel, that an appointee of his is conking, in the most reckless and insensitive of manners, a legacy which glory — or short-fall — the present governor must proudly — or gamely — share, or bear? Hardball thinks the governor should call his commissioner to order.
(The Nation)
