New Telegraph

Oyo community donates land, block of classrooms to govt

A community in the Oyo, Ojongbodu in Oyo West Local Government Area has donated a three-acre of land to the state government to facilitate establishment of a primary and secondary school in the community.

 

The gesture, according to the community, is to pave way for the school to commence operation by September, this year.

 

Turning of the sod for commencement of building project of the block of three classrooms with toilet and offices for staff on the land had been performed by the Head of the community and Baale of Ojongbodu, Chief Olaniyi Adeoye, the Adegboye III, who was joined by the patriarch of the family, Chief Francis Adedayo Taiwo and other community members, as well as officials of the state Ministry of Education.

 

The densely populated New Ojongbodu Layout along Obananko Village, which is the ancestral home of the Ojongbodu people, has been without schools for the teeming residents who have to take their children and wards to far distances to attend schools.

To address the education challenge in the area, the community resorted to give out their land since the government alone could not shoulder every need in the education sector.

 

The schools to be named Olodu Community Primary and Olodu Community High School, Ojongbodu in Oyo, in the words of the Baale, “will be sited on about 21 plots of land valued at over N30 million based on current land selling price in the area in addition to the ongoing construction expected to cost about N15 million.”

 

The Baale added: “Before the next school year, the buildings housing JSS 1 students would have been completed and a habitable shed for the primary pupils would also have been erected and handed over to the Ministry of Education under the administration of Governor Seyi Makinde.”

On the donation of the parcel of land and building to the government, Adeoye told New Telegraph that: “As large as this community is, there is no school, be it nursery, primary or secondary, and it is about four or five kilometres in radius. Our plan is to establish the schools and hand them over to the state government to run and manage.

 

The government will recruit teachers and bring in pupils and students by the time it takes off in September this year.

 

“Before we commenced this project, the state government representatives told us that we will need to build a block of three classrooms with offices and toilets on the three acres of land that we have donated to take off, and the government will continue from there. In essence, the government does not want us to just hand over a virgin land to them.”

 

The duo of the Head of Section, School Services, Oyo West LGUBE, Mrs. Victoria Owoade, and Head of Section, Planning, Research and Statistics Department, Mr. Adeleke Adebowale, who represented the Oyo State Universal Basic Education (SUBEB) at the event, commended the community for what they described as “the historic and remarkable gesture.”

 

Some of the heads of compounds that make up the Ojongbodu community, who were also at the foundation laying ceremony expressed delight over the school project.

 

They are 110-year-old Tiijani Oladele, (Aareago of Ladindin Compound in Ojongbodu), Mr. Oseni Adebayo of Balogun’s compound, Lasisi Tijani of Olode’s compound, and Rasidi Popoola of Baale Agbe’s compound

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