The Osun State government and the former governor of the state, Rauf Aregbesola, the current Minister of Interior have clashed in a war of words.
In a statement on Friday by Osun State Commissioner for Education, Folorunso Bamisayemi said Aregbesola gave a false comment by saying that the condition of education in Osun was poor.
Aregbesola reportedly said,while he bagged LifeTime Achievement Award from the National Parent Teacher Association of Nigeria on Thursday was pained by the current happenings in the state as far as development issues were concerned, adding that one of such cases was the poor state of education in the state.
He was quoted as saying, “Osun was ranked as one of the 10th largest economies in Nigeria, ranked as 2nd highest in schools enrolment/attendance, next to Lagos State with enrolment moving from 15 to 45, and later to over 65 per cent by the time I left.
“But sadly today, the situation has changed.” Aregbesola further stated that he was pained that “ the vision and capacity that we demonstrated in delivering services to the people have been arrested. I am only putting the records straight and not to castigate anybody.”
Reacting, the commissioner of Education said Aregbesola’s claim is a false saying Governor Gboyega Oyetola has not destroyed education.
He added that, instead, the incumbent government had taken education out of the “deep hole” Aregbesola’s administration pushed it to.
In the statement, the state government said it “inherited an education system where principals, head teachers and teachers generally were heavily demoralized as a result of half salary payment by the then Aregbesola administration.
“We (Oyetola administration) took over an education system where students lost interest in schooling as a result of incessant attacks and disruption of school activities by cultists, hoodlums and roughnecks posing as students undetected because of the single uniform policy of the previous administration.
“We were appointed to rescue a system where public schools performance in external examinations was below 20 percent if contributions of private schools are subtracted from the combined results released by WAEC from 2014 to 2018 after the former administration has been in charge for over 5 years and has committed over 25 billion,” he said.
