Oyo APC Gubernatorial Candidate Vows to Declare Emergency in Education 

The Gubernatorial Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC in Oyo State, Teslim Folarin, has vowed to declare a state of emergency in the education sector of the state, if elected as governor. 

Folarin, who is presently the Senator representing Oyo Central, stated this while being hosted on the “Guest Platform” of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Oyo State Council, in Ibadan.

He noted that the education sector of the state needed serious overhaul.

The Senator deplored the poor education ranking which put Oyo State in the 33rd position out of 36 states and the delisting of about 50 schools in the state by the West Africa Examination Coucil, WAEC, for exam malpractices.

He says, “We have an idea what we want to do but the first thing we want to do is to declare an emergency. I think we’ve reached that stage because we must speak the honest truth. How many of us would be happy to send our kids to these schools?”

Folarin, a former Senate Leader and current Chairman, Senate Committee on Local Content, asserted that Governor Seyi Makinde had misplaced his priorities by abandoning the education sector and spending so much to build bus terminals instead of standard schools across the state.

The APC Governorship Candidate said: “The schools out there are not schools. It is only in Oyo State that motor parks are better than schools and that is unacceptable. To change that, we will sit down with stakeholders: government, parents, alumni associations, religious bodies, etc., put all the cards on the table and decide the way forward.

“Makinde is building bus terminus at N4.5 billion each. If you do a calculation of N50 million per block of classrooms, you will build nothing less than 370 across the 33 Local Government Areas in the state,” he affirmed.

Senator Folarin further revealed that if elected as the governor of the state he would ban the operations of the Oyo State Park Management System,PMS.

He said PMS was alien to the law and atrocities committed by PMS members were becoming unbearable for people in the state.

The three-term Senator described himself as the best and most experienced among the governorship candidates in Oyo State and promised to bring his experience to bear in his administration, if elected.

He said his administration would leverage the agriculture sector, where the state had comparative advantage to improve the state’s revenue base and economy.

Folarin, who is also the Coordinator for the APC Presidential Campaign Council in Oyo State, gave the assurance that the council would deliver at least 2 million of the 3.3 million votes available in the state to the presidential candidate of the party, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima in the February 25 election.

“We know Asiwaju will win and we are looking for ways to maximize the win. That is what prompted us to be going round the state again to solicit for the vote of the people. Our target is to win between 1.5 and 2 million votes. Of course, the presidential election will be different from the governorship, our projection is that Asiwaju will get 80 percent of votes in Oyo State,” he said.

Folarin, then called on the electorate to support and vote for all APC candidates,  both at the state and the national levels, in the general election.

Confidence Okwuchi