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Rauf Aregbesola,
governor of Osun state, south-west Nigeria has said his government had no
regrets whatsoever committing the largest chunk of the state’s resources to
changing the face of education.
He said his government
was preparing the state’s future leaders for the next 25 years in what the
government wants them to be in a new world order.
The governor spoke at
the unveiling of a new block of 10 classrooms built by the Anglican Church in
honour of former Governor of Osun and a former chairman of the All Progressives
Congress, Bisi Akande.
Aregbesola said:
“Education, by far, has commanded our greatest engagement and resources and we
owe no one any apology over this,” adding, “As I often let people know, we are
preparing for the next 25 years, what we want our children to become and where
we want them to be in an increasingly digitized and fiercely competitive
world.”
The governor said that
the dedication of the classrooms resonates with the vision of his government’s
education programmes.
He added, “Osun was
the cynosure of all eyes when President Muhammadu Buhari came to commission the
state-of-the-art Government High School, Osogbo, just one of the 3,000
pupils-capacity 20 high schools our administration is building. The others
being 900 pupils-capacities each, 100 elementary schools and 50 middle
schools.”
He regretted that
education had failed to achieve its purpose in many individuals, noting this is
the root of many problems confronting the society today.
“We are in trouble
today; we are under-developing and are at war with each other, as a people,
because we have forgotten these fundamentals.
“Any educational
system or any faith, for that matter, whose goal is not to develop and bring
harmony to human society by first cultivating human intellect and then imbues
man with a higher moral standing, is not worth its estate and will soon be
discarded into the dustbin of history.
Same will happen to
any faith that continues to foment trouble and divisiveness in human society,”
the governor warned.
He explained that
education serves the man to fit in and live successfully in this earthly realm,
adding that humans are already projecting to colonize other planetary bodies.
Speaking earlier, the
former Governor of Osun state, Akande in whose name the school was commissioned,
attributed decadence and immorality in Nigerian schools to the forceful
take-over of the missionary schools by the past successive military
governments.
Akande said the
consequence of the military take-over of the schools across the country resulted
in the displacement of people with moral integrity by fraudsters, drug barons,
thugs and the vagabonds from political leadership space.
The former National
Chairman of the All Progressives Congress asserted that the major reason why
the military took over schools from missionaries was to lay the foundation for
their own immorality and corruption.
According to him,
“whether in Islamic schools or in any evangelical learning centres, all
Missionary schools known to Nigerians were institutions for moral instructions.”
Akande further said:
“Military intervention in governance itself is immoral and ungodly. Those
Nigerian military adventurists, who forcefully seized power in Nigeria,
deliberately came to violently loot our resources.
“In order to lay the
foundation for their stupendous immorality and corruption, the military
therefore, had to snatch schools from the missionaries and to retire from the
inherited public life with immediate effect men and women with some moral
credentials who were old products of the missionary schools.
“Consequently, today,
the fraudsters, the drug barons, the thugs and the vagabonds compete
effectively and successfully to displace gentlemen and women of moral integrity
from political leadership space.
“The overall result of
the military interventions in governance in our policy is the pain Nigeria
suffers today from lawless and lackadaisical attitude of everybody to
work.
“The resultant effect
of the populace’s criminal attitude to work is a major plank providing the
bedrock for the ongoing economic recession in our country.”
In his remarks, the
Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Most Reverend Nicholas
Okoh, said religion remains a veritable tool for the promotion of peaceful
cohabitation and tolerance in the society.
Okoh, who frowned at
religious crises in some parts of the country, expressed hope that with a
Christian faith building a school in honour of a Muslim statesman, Nigeria
would soon get out of religious vendetta.
He described Akande as
a “True Muslim whose ideology and faith have impacted greatly in the lives of
fellow beings without discrimination.”
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