39 years after the Lateef Jakande administration put up Ojota Junior secondary School structure, it clearly has seen better days and yearning for total overhauling. Medinat Kanabe reports
IN 1980, when Governor Lateef Jakande built Ojota Junior and Secondary School; it was one of the numerous schools built by his government to provide immediate succour to a state yearning for enough facilities to fit its Free Universal Education programme.
Although the prototype was a mere windowless single six-classroom structure with steel pillars holding the corrugated iron roofs, it nevertheless served its purpose and generations of pupils have since passed through it, some going on to hold distinguished position in society.
But that is not the news.
The news is that that facility has received no maintenance, renovation or rebuilding since then, turning it into an eyesore and a horrible condition for learning. To start with, the school is now without a ceiling, making the pupils direct recipient of heat from the iron sheets. Also, the over 700 pupils use a single toilet, as the other three that were built 39 years ago are no longer functional.
From the outside, it is near impossible to know that the compound houses such deplorable structure, as the visible three-storey senior secondary school structure built by the Gbolahan Mudashiru Military administration in 1985 gives it a sort of decent semblance.
The rear gate from the popular Oduduwa Market area however presents the junior schools’ actual picture.
Some of the pupils who seem to have accepted their fate told this reporter that they are managing, even though they sit on tyres to receive lessons.
The worst hit are the JSS 1 students, whose classes are without any form of furniture. “We have some chairs in my class ma. The classes without any chairs are the JSS 1 classes because before they resumed we had removed all the chairs to our class,” a student said.
Inside the school, this reporter managed to get one of the security men to speak and he admitted to the poor state of the school. Our school needs to be rebuilt but nobody is answering the principal. She has written several times to the Ministry of Education, but they have not said anything about it.
“A woman who said she doesn’t want her name mentioned even came during the holidays to give us 25 chairs, but that is not enough,” he said.
Meanwhile, the old students of the school came together about three years ago to start an alumni association. They also lamented the state of the school.
One of them, the Managing Director of Ikoyi Club, Mr Tunde Orungbeja, told The Nation that they started an alumni association three years ago and decided to visit the school to find out what they could do for the school.
“We graduated in 1985 and are the first set of the school. When we visited, we discovered that the school had become dilapidated, so we decided to do something about it by informing some of our friends in government. We were told that the school had been listed among schools to undergo renovation during the Ambode administration, but nothing has been done,” he said.
He also said some officials came from the State Ministry of Education to inspect the school but nothing has been done. They have also, at various times, donated benches, chairs and a borehole – because for a long time, the school had no water and the students suffered for lack of water.
“We saw this during one of our visits and decided to put funds together to build a borehole for the school. The borehole is now functional but the water is discoloured because of the soil, so serious financial support is needed to help them get good water.
“The alumni, including those after our set, have come together to work very hard to bring development to the school but by and large, the school needs a complete rehabilitation and this can only be done by the government or strong private sector to support,”? he added.
Aside the poor state of the school, Orungbeja said it is also burdened by over-population.
Appealing to the government to come to the aid of the school and the community, he said it is a school that is more like a representative of the community and speaks volumes for Lagos State because the seat of government is just a stone throw away.
“It will not be nice to have that kind of structure abandoned, left to rot. It has produced great people and will continue to. About three years ago, the best WASSCE candidate emerged from the school.”
On his part, the Acting National President of the association, Chris Kehinde Nwandu, who passed out of the school in 1984, said they are working on areas of assistance to the school.
“We are appealing to the state government, whose responsibility it is to provide the basic infrastructure like school buildings, to come to the aid of the school. The state of the infrastructure is just too deplorable. We, on our part as Old students are also planning some palliative works on some of the classrooms,” he noted.
When The Nation contacted the Lagos State Ministry of Education, the Public Relation Officer, Kayode Sutton, said the government is aware of the state of some of the schools in Lagos and is doing its best to rehabilitate them.
“There are several hundreds of schools in Lagos that are in the best of shapes and of course we have other ones that are not in best of shape and infrastructure, and to arrest that situation the governor has promised that he will keep to the UNESCO school budget percentage and in no time, all these schools that are not in good shape will be renovated,”? Sutton said.
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