Education’s first quality is affordability, Akeredolu should know better
BY: ORIMOLOYE, Ifeoluwa

Lagos is Nigeria’s Centre of Excellence. In Lagos, beatification and landscaping of the environment is currently on-going and is quite evident in the pictures below. As Lagos is progressing, so also is the volume of wastes. You can attach any name to these pictures, but for me, I choose to refer to them as the ‘EKO ATLANTIC PROJECT’, no apologies please.

Meanwhile, last week witnessed a lot of activities in Ondo State or maybe, Ondo State witnessed a lot of activities last week.

From a purported imposition of #25,000 delivery charges for pregnant women, to a reported hike in school fee at Akungba varsity and then to the congress of the Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party, where our good friend, Henry Olonimoyo was elected the State Publicity Secretary of the Party.

Earlier, I and Busayo Oluyemi had argued about Rotimi Akeredolu’s stance or position as it relates to governance. While I argued that Akeredolu simply knows nothing about governance, Busayo had objected by saying that Akeredolu simply lacks the will to serve the people. Either ways, recent occurrences in Ondo State points to the fact that we are both right in our perception of Akeredolu.

It would be recalled that the immediate past administration in the State was reported to have made delivery absolutely free, or maybe the charges for delivery was kept at bay. It was controlled in such way that it is incapable of causing controversies such as this.

Against the backdrop of the fee hike at AAUA, one might be tempted to believe that the Government in Ondo State is also in a “trance” like its bigger brother at the centre. I can explain to you that the Government of Ondo state has shot itself in the leg with the increment as there is to be neither a basis nor justification for it.

How do you explain an increment in school fee for students of a school that is named after a man like Adekunle Ajasin? A man whose love for education echoes and re-echoes even long after his death. This action countervails the ideology of Adekunle Ajasin himself who stood side-by-side Awolowo in the quest for free education. It is simply contradictory.

In the memory of that very innocent man, Akeredolu had better renamed that school if he is bent on pegging the school fee at the outrageous figure. He had better renamed the school after himself to become Oluwarotimi Akeredolu University, Akungba Akoko. Only then will it be appropriate and justified to increase the school fee. It wouldn’t take anybody by surprise, rather, it would further amplify Akeredolu’s ideology and I mean the ideology that we all know.

In no doubt, the government of Ondo State has again shot themselves in the leg and I can tell you that the effect will be catastrophic.

It is in fact already becoming disastrous given especially the overall effect of the action. Already a friend hinted me over the weekend about plans by another friend of his to drop-out of school owing to the increment in school fee. What this means is that the new school fee regime is not affordable and may lead (like the anonymous student) a host of students out of school.
We will probably have more dropouts in this administration than in any other administration in Ondo State. Maybe the increase in dropouts will lead to an attendant increase in social vices and then Rotimi Akeredolu will be known for something remarkable.


Photo credit: Thisdayonline, nairaland

This one that just came in yesterday already wants to name a school after himself. Nigerian politicians are all the same self centred, self adulating egomaniacs