Joseph EMERIBE
In 18 Days from now schools will resume in Kwara State but residents of Alagbado Community in Ilorin South Local Government Area of Kwara State are confused on where to take their children and wards to.
This is because the only public Secondary School in the community is without enough classrooms to accommodate more than senior secondary school students one (SS1).
Chairman Joint Alagbado Development Association- Sallam Jimoh Adebayo, in a telephone interview hinted that nothing has been done yet by the state government to meet with the demands for a functional senior secondary school to serve the need of the community.
“For now there is no development at all. Nothing! Nothing! No feedback”
According to the joint Chairman, a representative of the government was at the community on Friday with nothing tangible done since the visit.
“The chairman visited on Friday and promised to get back to us but since that Friday nothing else”, he added
Chairman Araromi Community- one of the communities out of the 52 Communities- Alh. Isiaka Ibrahim said that the facility which now houses Sobi Alagbado Senior Secondary School was originally an abandoned skill Acquisition Center Project of the Federal government.
“Right now we have SS1; we don’t even know where we’ll move the students promoted to SS2 to. They are now on holidays and we don’t know where to fix them should school resume.”
Alh. Ibrahim further explained that the structure with four classrooms and administrative offices accommodates over two hundred students and thirty two teachers.
“The community requested for a Senior Secondary School, and the government said do we have land? We told them that what we have in our community is an abandoned skill acquisition center project. “Mandates” and authorities with the government gave the approval to convert the said project to what we have now as a SS1” says Ibrahim.
Similarly, one of the stakeholders in the community who is well stricken in years fondly called Baba Correct and a facilitator of the only public primary school in the area gave his account on the efforts made by the community to sustain the educational aspiration of the people in the area.
“Our fathers suffered and we pray that our children don’t suffer what we suffered why growing up. Imagine our kids traveling far distance to the next community for studies.
I facilitated the first public primary school in the community despite the fact that we pay monthly for the facility to the owners of the leased out structure. This is the main reason why we worked hard on getting public schools to the community but our efforts are not yielding the desired results.”
A visit to the community revealed that the temporary facility being used as a senior secondary school building consists of five rooms and five halls serving as the administrative offices and classrooms for the thirty-two teachers and about two hundred students of the school respectively.
Compared to what is obtained in a standard government school, the senior secondary school in Alagbado is without; windows, ceilings and toilet facility while the students are exposed to harsh weather conditions that could threaten their learning ability.
Leaders in the community say they are willing to agree with the government for a lasting solution to the educational challenge bedeviling the community before the 19th of September which is less than 21 Days from now.
However, all efforts made to get the Kwara State Ministry of Education to react to the issue failed.
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