Aregbesola
The Osun State Government on Sunday asked Nigerians to ignore attempts by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to diminish the achievements of the Aregbesola administration with last Thursday’s official opening of the Osogbo Government High School, commissioned by President Muhammadu Buhari.
PDP had in a statement signed by its State Chairman, Hon Soji Adagunodo, said the commissioned school was not a public school but one to be managed commercially until the loan taken to build it was repaid.
PDP said: “Contrary to reports presented to the President and the public, the school is more or less a business outfit to charge high fees in an impoverished Osun State.
“In its usual deceptive and propagandist manner, the state Governor did not inform the President and the public that the school was funded with a Sukuk loan and will therefore be run not as a public but high fee paying private school.
“We can reveal that the Oshogbo high school commissioned on Thursday will be managed as a commercial entity by either Olasore International School, Iloko or Corona School, Lagos. The managers are to charge high fees like the elite private schools.
“We want to inform the public that the school Mr President commissioned is different from Oshogbo Grammar School, the reason why both schools are separated by a fence.The Governor has just use a public land to start an educational business venture.”
Reacting, Semiu Okanlanwo, Director, Bureau of Communication and Strategy in the Office of the Governor, asked Nigerians to demand from the PDP which insights it had into the workings of the Osun State Government’s various strategies to turn around the fortune of education in the state.
“We are not like them. This is a case of sour grape on the part of the PPD that wants to disparage the great achievements of the governor.
“Aregbesola’s mission in education is to democratize it and bring it to the poor who could possibly never have been opportune to be educated along children of the affluent in Nigeria.
“As at today, Osun has completed no fewer than 50 of such mega schools across the state that have already been put to use by Osun pupils without the PDP’s imaginary ‘high fees’.
“Which one of the schools such as Anthony Udofia Government Elementary School, Salvation Army Government Middle School, Adventist Government High School, Ede, Ansar-ul-Deen Elementary School, Isale Osun, Osogbo or any other school has become a ‘high fee paying’ school since their commissioning?” He queried.
It said the Aregbesola administration’s refusal to be slowed down in its development agenda had remained a source of headache to the opposition, adding that none of the claims of the party against the governor had been found to be reliable or true since the PDP embarked on its mission to destroy Osun State.
Continuing, the statement said Osun government will not “be bogged down by the emptiness of PDP’s ideas and the hollowness of the party’s arguments.”
“They said it openly that Buhari would not honour Osun people with his visit. Mr. President came and he was enthusiastically welcome by all the people of Osun. He was pleasantly surprised by the landmark and enviable achievements of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola in the educational sector through his numerous interventionist initiatives.
“The PDP is a disillusioned party and when a party disillusioned, it hallucinates and the outcome of PDP’s hallucination is this baseless criticism of Aregbesola’s historical and landmark achievements.
“The party is a rejected party that can never come back to life again in Nigeria. Its soul, to use the words of its leader, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has left it long ago”, he added.
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