We Have No Regrets Focusing Our Resources On Education – Aregbesola

Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State has said his government had no regrets whatsoever committing the largest chunk of the state’s resources to changing the face of education.

He said his government was preparing the state’s future leaders for the next 25 years in what the government wants them to be in a new world order.

The governor spoke at the unveiling of a new block of 10 classrooms built by the Anglican Church in honour of former Governor of Osun and a former chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Bisi Akande.

Aregbesola said: “Education, by far, has commanded our greatest engagement and resources and we owe no one any apology over this,” adding, “As I often let people know, we are preparing for the next 25 years, what we want our children to become and where we want them to be in an increasingly digitized and fiercely competitive world.”

The governor said that the dedication of the classrooms resonates with the vision of his government’s education programmes.

He added, “Osun was the cynosure of all eyes when President Muhammadu Buhari came to commission the state-of-the-art Government High School, Osogbo, just one of the 3,000 pupils-capacity 20 high schools our administration is building. The others being 900 pupils-capacity each, 100 elementary schools and 50 middle schools.”

He regretted that education had failed to achieve its purpose in many individuals, noting this is the root of many problems confronting the society today.

“We are in trouble today; we are under-developing and are at war with each other, as a people, because we have forgotten these fundamentals.

“Any educational system or any faith, for that matter, whose goal is not to develop and bring harmony to human society by first cultivating human intellect and then imbue man with a higher moral standing, is not worth its estate and will soon be discarded into the dustbin of history. Same will happen to any faith that continues to foment trouble and divisiveness in human society,” the governor warned.

He explained that education serves the man to fit in and live successfully in this earthly realm, adding that humans are already projecting to colonise other planetary bodies.

Speaking earlier, the former Governor of Osun state, Akande in whose name the school was commissioned, attributed decadence and immorality in Nigerian schools to the forceful take-over of the missionary schools by the past successive military governments.

Akande said the consequence of the military take-over of the schools across the country resulted in the displacement of people with moral integrity by fraudsters, drug barons, thugs and the vagabonds from political leadership space.

The former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress asserted that the major reason why the military took over schools from missionaries was to lay the foundation for their own immorality and corruption.

According to him, “whether in Islamic schools or in any evangelical learning centres, all Missionary schools known to Nigerians were institutions for moral instructions.”

Akande further said: “Military intervention in governance itself is immoral and ungodly. Those Nigerian military adventurists, who forcefully seized power in Nigeria, deliberately came to violently loot our resources.

“In order to lay the foundation for their stupendous immorality and corruption, the military therefore, had to snatch schools from the missionaries and to retire from the inherited public life with immediate effect men and women with some moral credentials who were old products of the missionary schools.

“Consequently, today, the fraudsters, the drug barons, the thugs and the vagabonds compete effectively and successfully to displace gentlemen and women of moral integrity from political leadership space.

“The overall result of the military interventions in governance in our polity is the pain Nigeria suffers today from lawless and lackadaisical attitude of everybody to work.

“The resultant effect of the populace’s criminal attitude to work is a major plank providing the bedrock for the ongoing economic recession in our country.”

In his remarks, the Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Most Reverend Nicholas Okoh, said religion remains a veritable tool for the promotion of peaceful cohabitation and tolerance in the society.

Okoh, who frowned at religious crises in some parts of the country, expressed hope that with a Christian faith building a school in honour of a Muslim statesman, Nigeria would soon get out of religious vendetta.

He described Akande as a “True Muslim whose ideology and faith have impacted greatly in the lives of fellow beings without discrimination.”