Reporting it the way it is ## Aregbesola pioneering roles in education ## Since assumption of office on November 27th, 2010, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola has left no one in doubt that one of the policy thrust of his Omoluabi’s administration is to redefine, retool and revitalise the comatose educational system wholesale in the state. Amongst his 6 points integral plan, education is one of the cherished programmes that is meant to catalyse transformation, drive growth in every facet of human endeavour and enhance socio-political stability. This is a sure bet for economic success in any nation that hopes to overpass poverty. The Osun Elementary School Feeding and Health Programme (a.k.a O’MEALS) which was formerly known as Home Grown School Feeding and Health Programme has been restructured in the State of Osun by the administration of Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola. This was done so as to encourage massive enrolment and increase the numbers of pupils in public schools and reverse the very low academic performance in both internal and external examinations. The nutrition is necessary for proper cognitive development and mental stability of the pupils in a nation where extreme poverty still ravage average citizens who are living below the baseline of $1.25 dollars a day. The O’MEALS School Feeding Programme has been running in a total of 1,375 Primary Schools across the State of Osun. The daily feeding allowance for each pupil has been increased to an amount of N 50. 00, totalling N 250. 00 (equivalent to $ 1. 56) per School week. For effective service, a total number of 3,007 food vendors/cooks were trained and are currently employed to serve midday meals for pupils of classes 1, 2, 3 and 4 in all Primary Schools in the State of Osun. All food items being utilised for feeding pupils are available locally and this is to boost the income of local farmers and others on the supply chain. Nutrition experts developed a menu-table of foods to be served to School pupils. This will go a long way to augment the undernourished pupils whose stunting childhood is a silent pandemic. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will be doing Nigeria and Africa a word of good if the world body extends a helping hand to the State of Osun in order to boost agricultural inputs and production, through processing, storage, transport and retailing to consumption towards eradication of malnutrition. It will certainly spur the governor into doing more for the good people of Osun. Ogbeni Aregbesola demonstrated his passion for education again a few days ago when he launched “Opon Imo” in Ilesa, with the distribution of learning tablets to all the secondary school students across the state. Addressing the dignitaries on the occasion Prof. Wole Soyinka; the Country Director of UNESCO who spoke through a Professor of Molecular Biology and a seating Senator, Sola Adeyeye, said all tiers of governments must provide solutions to challenges confronting the country’s ruinous educational institutions. The Nobel Laureate recalled that the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries witnessed the blackman swimming in the backwaters of underdevelopment, adding that the blackman never fared better in the 20th Century. He said the computer used when the United States landed the first man, Neil Armstrong, on the moon weighed three tones with five gigabytes, stressing that science and technology had evolved to produce handy mobile phones with 76 megabytes. He commended Aregbesola for initiating the use of the computer tablet, describing the innovation as a “groundbreaker”. “It is a pioneering achievement in the area of education development. The blackman is still behind. This is the challenge every president, every governor, leaders should face. Osun is developing, something tells me.” Country Director of UNESCO said the computer initiative was a unique initiative that would galvanise learning and engender altruistic development”. Thanking everyone on the occasion, the elated Ogbeni, said the public presentation of the computer tablets symbolised the breaking of the yoke of backwardness afflicting the Africa. He said, “He who opens a school door, closes a prison door. We won’t look back in laying a foundation for education in Osun. We are saving N50.25bn, which won’t be used to buy 17 textbooks, WAEC, JAMB textbooks and 51 audio tutorials in the next 10 years. The device, which only weighs 1.1kg, contains a virtual library, e-classroom and 17 textbooks on various subjects.” This is coming at a time that UNESCO set goals for every nation to education and eradicate composite poverty in the midst of the mass of the people by 2015 is knocking around the conner. It is pertinent to remind President Goodluck Jonathan and his co-travellers that there is another way to look at 2015, aside the frenzy power tussle over who occupies Aso Rock beyond 2015. It is obvious that the development goals of UNESCO, which Nigeria and other poverty-stricken countries subscribed will be a mirage in the next two years. These are in the areas of basic education, childcare, maternal health, hunger, gender equality, environment etc. With at least 10 million children out of school in 2013, Nigeria is far from meeting the goal of universal primary education. Education For All (EFA) in 2015 is clearly not one of the issues on the national agenda. The post-2015 MDGs for 2030 are all minimal development expectations for every human being. Britain, Liberia and Indonesia leaders made eight new sets of goals to be pursued beyond 2015 under the auspices of the UN and presented to Mr. Ban Ki – moon, the Secretary-General of the global body on June 7, 2013. The agenda emphasises Eradication of Poverty, and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development. The report sets out universal agenda to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 which is to deliver on the promise of sustainable development. It also emphasises that the new development agenda must be universal – applying to countries in the global North and South alike – and be infused with a spirit of partnership. So the focus has shift to 2030. But the question is, will the outcome of the 2015 presidential election put Nigeria on the path of meeting the 2030 goal of global end to extreme poverty? What is, however, clear is that there is no evidence yet of any anti-poverty passion in the build-up towards 2015 in Nigeria, except in the State of Osun. The present national leadership is more interested in stonewalling on how to win or clammed down on opponents in 2015. That cannot be statesmanship; it’s a national fraud. It is useful to think about what 2015 means to power-seekers in Nigeria and the significance of the year to the global movement against poverty. The lesson of the failure in meeting the 2015 MDGs is that the aim of the policy makers should henceforth be poverty eradication. The earlier they redirect their focus to the actualisation of these set goals and policies in various sectors for the purpose of poverty reduction, if not totally eradication, the better for us all. The parameter for measuring great nation is how much of advancement they make in terms of technological achievement, social development and job creation. It is a matter that goes beyond political squabble with perceived or imaginary enemies. The improvement in human condition as regards delivery governance should be paramount among the criteria used in measuring progress, and not how many opponents you are able to suppressed. It is depressing that with the level of poverty in the land, occasioned by the government’s abdication of its contractual responsibility to the citizenry we still have Governors across the country who are proclaiming sense of satisfaction governance while school pupils are out of school. As we speak, primary school pupils are out of school in 11 states of the federation (Osun not included) for nonpayment of their salaries and other allowances due them, which the Governors of the affected states earlier agreed to pay. This is in line with the strike action called last week by the National Union of Teachers, NUT, over the nonpayment of the teachers’ special allowance, TSA, which is 27.5 percent of their basic salary. The danger in this is that gloating over empty governance sloganeering is not the same thing as concrete governance that borders on delivery the goods to the Nigerian people. The sense of urgency that is needed in resolving the big questions about holistic education and poverty eradication is completely absent. Without missing word, any development that does not factor in the human capacity angle is as good as mere smoke-screen. Clearly, Aregbesola has inaugurated the students of the State of Osun on the superhighway of information technology through “Opon Imo” with this pioneering initiative that would certainly change the face of learning in the state and country. Every lover of education and human capacity building must commend the state government for providing the students with the device and for blazing the trail in the area of technological education at that formative stage. This innovative stride of the governor will no doubt be beneficiaries to the pupils who would be exposed to computer education. The unique innovation is a demonstration of dedicated leadership, flowing from egalitarian statesmanship that the governor is known for. Eyiola writes from Osogbo
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 07:25:18 +0000
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