Mr. Ayodele Asalu, a leader of Osun State’s All Progressives Congress, lamented the state’s public schools’ shortage of instructors on Tuesday. Asalu, who claimed that the government had not hired any teachers in the previous two years, notably brought up the dearth of instructors in Ejigbo Local Government’s public schools.
He spoke in Ejigbo, Osun State, during the tenth edition of his education support program, which provided brilliant but impoverished students from the 20 public secondary schools in the Ejigbo local government area with free access to the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
Asalu then called for cooperation from all parties involved in order to guarantee that all young Nigerians have access to high-quality education and lessen the threat of out-of-school children in the state.
Asalu also urged communities to work together to support the education of talented but underprivileged kids, as is the case in many places in pre-independence Nigeria, emphasizing that education should be a right rather than a privilege for Nigerians.
“I’ll encourage the Osun State government to do more for education,” he added. To be honest, the state’s education system has not been well-run by the government. In Ejigbo, there are schools with no teachers. I would like to urge them to support us and allow them to hire additional teachers.
In contrast to Oyo State, which has a large teaching workforce, this government has not hired any teachers in the past two years. We are pleading with the government to take action.
Over 4,000 underprivileged students have benefited from the free WAEC and JAMB forms over the past ten years, according to Asalu, who also stated that “through this Educational Support Programme that I solely finance, a total of 4,320 underprivileged but brilliant students have been aided to sit for WAEC and UTME with free examination forms.”
“The amount of tertiary institution graduates and undergraduates that we currently have in Ejigbo Local Government and Ede Federal Constituency is a direct result of this persistent effort. We are giving away 500 free WAEC forms and 350 free UTME forms this year to deserving and exceptionally talented students who were selected from all across Ejigbo Local Government.”
Kolapo Alimi, the Osun State Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, was asked to respond to Asalu’s remarks on the lack of qualified instructors in the schools in his local government. He said he was having a meeting with the governor and would respond later. However, he has not returned the call as of the time this report was filed.