Opon Imo: Students, Parents Appraise Osun Govt. as Distribution Continues

Students, parents and other stakeholders in the state of Osun have applauded the state government for its Opom Imo, ‘Tablet of Knowledge’ initiative.

Some of the students who spoke with our reporter listed benefits of the tablets to include access to several educational and co-curricular materials as the Opon Imo team takes distribution of the tablets to Ibokun High School.

The tablet since it distribution began in 2013, has enhanced learning and also complemented the efforts of teachers for better performance in teaching. In fact, in 2016, the state of Osun recorded a 46.3% pass rate in WAEC exams which indicates a 113.6% increase over 2015. The best in the past 13 years!

An SS3 student, Abiona Adesina, who spoke with our reporter said with Opon Imo, he is able to access his past note from SS1 and SS2, thereby improving his cognitive capability. Another parent who spoke to us said the Opon Imo initiative as helped him avoid spending money on buying textbooks.

Opon Imo, tablet of Knowledge contains past questions and additional traditional subjects, as well as the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO) syllabuses.

Recall WAEC in the first week of February 2017, endorsed the Opon Imo tablet and recommended it to other states in the country.

Also speaking with reporters recently, the Deputy governor who is the commissioner for Education, Grace Titilayo Laoye-Tomori, said “the Opon Imo, was produced in partnership with a Chinese firm. It has been uploaded with 63 e-textbooks (56 core texts and seven extra-curricular texts tailored to the Nigerian curriculum for use by the three senior secondary level classes (SS1-SS3).

“It contains lesson notes for 17 subjects tested in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), which were prepared by seasoned tutors, as well as 40,000 past questions of WASSCE, the National Examination Council (NECO) and the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE), written in the past 10 years. It also contains Yoruba proverbs and the English dictionary.”

She said an average textbook for secondary school pupils cost a minimum of N1,000 and explained that the state government and tax payers would have spent N8.6 billion on the purchase of textbooks, if it had not come up with the tablet.

“We will be saving the state a lot of money because of the e-books. The average textbook costs N1,000. If we assume there are 56 textbooks in the e-library, it would cost the state N8.6 billion if we were to buy the books for 150,000 pupils. It only cost us N200 million to produce 56 core e-textbooks.