Osun State government has lamented that the deterioration of the 11 mega schools constructed with N16.5 billion under the administration of Rauf Aregbesola, have made pupils to abandon them, leading to a surge in the number of out-of-school children.
The schools with modern designs were built under the government of Aregbesola to tackle the menace and make education attractive.
Barely eight years after the project was inaugurated, the government said some of the structures are near collapse, and will require huge sums to renovate.
Commissioner for Education, Adedipo Eluwole, who spoke at the World Day Against Child Labour, said education under the past administration, witnessed hooliganism, vandalism, raping, cultism, among others, until Governor Ademola Adeleke assumed duty.
He said: “There are a lot of problems to correct from the past administrations, it is not a small deal. The past government made terrible mistakes.They continued building mega schools and merging them, which are giving us problems now. It is impossible to maintain those schools.The money to maintain one school, we can use is enough to take care of the schools in a local government area.
“The mega school in Ayedaade is almost collapsing, We sent people to assess it, and when they came back, they gave the government a bill of N480million for renovation. All these small classrooms of three blocks, we can use N12million to renovate them. You can imagine how many classrooms that type of money(N480million) can save. It is a problem for us. This is what contributed to out-of-school children in Osun State.”
He explained that schools are built nearby so that children can access them without travelling long distances.
He added: “When they(past administrations) merged schools, pupils from Owode were asked to go to Fakunle at the stadium; so, this discouraged the parents and they made their children sit at home.This is why Osun was the home of out-of-school children.”
He noted that the government of Adeleke has developed several initiatives to encourage school enrolment, which yielded positive results last year, leading to the enrolment of 11,000 children.
