By; Bayo Akamo, Ibadan.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Monday asked the SouthWest governors to refocus their education policies towards qualitative education delivery.
ASUU made the call through its Ibadan Zone Coordinator, Professor Segun Ajiboye while featuring on a Radio Program “Talking Point” monitored by the New Nigerian in Ibadan.
Professor Ajiboye who stressed that there is the urgent need for the governors to revive neighborhood libraries for students to have access to books they cannot afford, lamented the dismal performance of Southwest states in the last West African Examinations Council (WAEC) in which the states were ranked very low nationwide.
According to him, “the dismal results in the last WAEC could not be divorced from the shortsightedness of education handlers who failed to provide the needed human and infrastructural needs for schools in the region.
“The WAEC results should not be a surprise but a fall-out of failure of governance in education. Our governors must stop embarking on ambitious projects like erecting flyover on major highways instead of developing the future through qualitative education,” he said.
Professor Ajiboye stressed that despite the increasing population of pupils, there is no equal improvement in learning environment and insufficient teachers in most schools, adding that while teachers in public schools remain the best around, they are poorly motivated.
“You expect teachers not being paid to teach children happily. Schools are seriously dilapidated with some schools overtaken by lizards. Some governors have created confusion through re-classification and did a lot of harm merging schools. Education is not about changing nomenclature but mere political gimmikry. Even the performance would have been more terrible were the figures of students from private schools not added.”
The ASUU zonal Chairman then advised the Southwest governors to seek expertise in Universities and ensure effective monitoring and supervision in public schools as well as learn from Imo’s experience as executed by Rochas Okorocha, adding that for now, there is yet no evidence from the education summits held by Oyo and Osun States.
Emphasizing that when the Faculty of Education was consulted by the Oyo State Government, the state ranking improved from 23 to 13, he said the consultancy agreement was discontinued based on suspected political sabotage making the ranking to revert to the old position.
