Governor Makinde Serves Shanties around Public Schools Quit Notice

The Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, has given one week quit notice to businesses built and operating along fences of public schools in the state.

The governor also disclosed that the government was going back to the drawing board to review its solid waste management strategies to achieve a better and more befitting environment.

Makinde gave the directive on Tuesday morning, shortly after a midnight inspection of some public schools across Ibadan, the state capital.

Governor Makinde revealed that the decision to sack the shop and business owners stemmed from the need to make learning conducive for students and allow them concentrate more on their studies, asserting that having markets or selling points around schools would not allow the students assimilate what they learn.

He said: “In some of the schools we have been to, you see shanties built by the school fence. Even at St Gabriel here, the entrance is almost blocked by people having shops very close to the school entrance. That is not conducive for learning.

“So, we are going to give them about a week to remove those things and we will clear everything so that when our children are coming back to school, we know they are coming into a conducive environment for learning,” the governor declared.

Some of the public schools visited were New Eden Pry School, Mokola; Oba Akinbiyi Secondary School, Mokola; St Gabriel Secondary School, Sabo; and Seventh Day Adventist Secondary School, Oke-Ado, all in Ibadan.

Concerning the environmental policies, Governor Makinde stated that the government had looked at the situation with the solid waste management and discovered it would have to review its current architecture, noting that the desired result in terms of an improved environment had not been achieved.

He said: “You will see that most medians have become a dump site, that also has to stop. In all the places we visited, you will observe that nobody will go and place dirt on our single lane roads, but people have turned the median on our dualised roads to refuse dump. All the places we went you will observe they are not hygienic.

“We have gone round, we will again go back to the drawing board because obviously something is not working with the architecture that we have in place. We are struggling. It means we haven’t gotten some things right so that we all can have a better environment,” Makinde lamented.

The governor was accompanied by commissioners, Prince Dotun Oyelade (Ministry of Information and Orientation), Mojeed Mogbanjubola (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources) and Biodun Aikomo (Ministry of Justice/Attorney-General) and the Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Sulaimon Olanrewaju, among others.