The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress in Oyo state,  Sharafadeen Alli, has condemned the use of consultants to manage public schools, describing the development as exploitative and detrimental to the education sector.

Mr Alli spoke on Monday at an interactive session organised by the Nigeria Union of Journalists in Ibadan.

The APC candidate said that education remained the foundation of a progressive society, stressing that an educated person cannot be easily cheated.

“I believe that when you are educated, you are no longer a naive person and as such, you may not be rich, but you know your left from your right, hence cannot be cheated,” he said.

He traced the legacy of quality education in the old Western Region to the late Obafemi Awolowo, who introduced free education, the policy that yielded results for decades and earned Oyo state national recognition.

“To show that at that time, things were better, in 2006, the Universal Basic Education in Nigeria gave the state an award because we had done very well,” Alli recalled. “What do we have today? Inappropriate structures, non-existent facilities, poor institutions. Our tertiary institutions are not what they used to be.”

He added that governing councils in state tertiary institutions have been rendered powerless, while consultants are running schools.

The politician specifically faulted the system where consultants allegedly collect a percentage of school fees. Outlining his plans for basic education, Mr Alli promised to return to a 30-pupils-per-class system to enable effective teaching and learning.

He noted that overcrowded classrooms of up to 150 pupils make it impossible for teachers to give proper attention to students.

“In those days, the teacher would identify and call every student by their name because they can recognise everybody in class, because we are not too many,” Mr Alli explained.

He further pledged to provide instructional materials and upgrade dilapidated infrastructure across primary and secondary schools in the state.

The APC candidate promised to run free, functional, qualitative and compulsory education from primary to junior secondary school in Oyo state.

He also said that his administration would recruit more teachers and prioritise their training, retraining, and welfare for both academic and non-academic staff, and revamp technical and vocational education to tackle unemployment.

Mr Alli also linked the poor security situation in schools to the lack of local government autonomy, noting that crippled LGs cannot provide security around schools.

The governorship candidate promised full financial and administrative autonomy for local governments if elected. He said that his administration would support neighbourhood watches and deploy technology such as drones and CCTV cameras to monitor cities, especially black spots.

Mr Alli also pledged to establish a residents’ registration initiative for effective social investment programmes and to prioritise intra-city rail transportation in both the short and long term.

(NAN)