By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
Parents Teachers Association (PTA) of Government College, Ibadan on Thursday asked Oyo State Government to forget about its plans to handover the school to the Old Boys Association.
The parents in opposing the planned handover of the school staged peaceful protest to the Oyo state Government Secretariat in Ibadan carrying placards and solidarity songs calling on Governor Seyi Makinde and his administration to without wasting time stop the planned handover.
In their placards inscriptions like “GSM deliver us from the capitalist GCI Old Boys”, “Handing over Government College to Old Boys will only serve the rich and not the poor”, “GCI Old Boys are after the land resources of Government College Ibadan”, “GSM deliver us from land grabbers’, “Government College is a community based school not for thr selected few”, “GCI Old Boys want to privatise GCI”, “Rescue Government College “, among others, the parents expressed their displeasure at the planned handover
Speaking on behalf of the protesting parents, Chairman of the GCI PTA Senior School, Prince Adeniyi Adeniji said the entire parents association are not sure of the sincerity in the approach of the Old Boys in taking over the school from the government .
Prince Adeniji pointed out that a petition had earlier being submitted to the State House of Assembly to express their displeasure in the decision of the government to hand over the school to the Old Boys, adding, ” on Tuesday we were at the House of Assembly, we submitted a petition and we felt we have done that for the legislature and that we should do that of the Executives today, let them hear us out and let them give us a feedback before we go further.”
“We are here to complain and express our displeasure concerning Government College Ibadan that the Old Boys have taken over. Our grievances is not about what they have been doing but the way and manner the handing over is been done in secrecy. We believe that we parents are equally stakeholders and we ought to be carried along, up till now, nobody knows the full content of the MoU. But what we have been gathering so far is that, the Old Boys will take over the school, they will be conducting the admission and all other things will be handled by the Old Boys”, he said.
Prince Adeniji added, ” but we are now looking at it, where is the position of the parents, what is the position of the students and how do we move from here and we are here to see Governor Seyi Makinde because he has been a performing governor and we don’t want him to be armtwisted in taking any decision that will be against we the masses”,
” We all love him and appreciate his efforts and as he has always been saying that he wants partnership and collaborations from both parents and other stakeholders but I believe that these Old Boys wants to take advantage of that statement to take over the school.They are saying they will conduct free education but we all know that conducting education is not an easy task or a beer parlour party, it requires a lot of investment.”
The PTA Chairman stressed, ” how do they want to sustain it? These are some of the things we expect them to tell us, and besides, we are members of the School Governing Board together with the Old Boys, we expected them to have told us at the meeting what they have been doing concerning the move. The told us that there has been ongoing negotiation between them and the government for some time and just two or three weeks ago, we still held the Governing Board Meeting and nothing of such was made mention of.
“And we felt that if truly they are sincere about the takeover or handover so to say, they should have told us at the meeting and the position of the board would have been sorted because the way it is, the School Governing Board will not be relevant in the scheme of things and what we are after is for the government to look critically at the issue.
Speaking further, Prince Adeniji said, ” as we are here, many parents are agitated and are even ready to go to the street, but we being the executive appealed to them to be calm and we assured them that we will come and stage this protest first and have the facts behind the facts.
“The future of these children is very paramount to us, we have seen it. If you look at the placards some of our parents are carrying, you will see that many of them don’t believe in the idea, they think it is the land they want to grab, because if you look at GCI, there is hundreds of hectares of land there and we had on good authority that they planning lots of investment on the land.
“As I’m talking to you now, they have a very big hall that they rent out and in our petition to the House of Assembly, we told them how much they have realised from the hall between January and March and nothing goes to the government as revenue.
“And if they have been doing that, we even complained about the location of the hall that is it too close to the classrooms but it’s to no avail. Having seen all these that have happened in the past, we felt that if these people should succeed in their plan, then the future of our children are not safe and GCI is the face of the state.”
