As part of moves to rehabilitate Simawa High School in Sagamu Local Government Area, a diaspora group, Beyond Remittance, has sought the approval of the Ogun State government to adopt the school.
The group made its intention about the school which presently has 1,397 students and 12 classrooms known when it met with the state delegation led by the Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Professor Abayomi Arigbabu.
Nigerian Tribune reports that the 42-year-old school is one of the schools listed by the state government under its “Adopt A School” policy as part of moves to encourage stakeholders in the organised private sector to support rehabilitation of primary and secondary schools in the state.
Representatives of the group of US-based Nigerians led by Ms Bukola Shonuga told the government that they have developed a detailed proposal on the said adoption after carrying out independent research on the school and its needs.
Shonuga, a New York-based media practitioner, decried the lack of access to government officials which delayed the take-off of the group’s plan for the Simawa High School over the last three years.
She said the group had submitted (via email and hand-delivered) a proposal accompanied by a letter of recommendation from the Consulate of New York to Governor Dapo Abiodun’s Office.
While decrying infrastructural decay and overpopulation of students in schools, Shonuga noted that the student-teacher ratio in the school is 68:1 which needs to the improved.
Shonuga told the commissioner and his team that a larger meeting with the group members in the US would be held virtually at a later date.
“The Beyond Remittance concept emerged from the realisation that the billions of dollars in annual remittance by the diaspora contributes substantially to Nigeria’s and helps our families to pay for essential expenses. But transferring knowledge will be a more powerful way to really help our people and to build a lasting sustainable economy. So, we are really excited to be here to strike this conversation.
“People in my age bracket (I’m 63 years old) are in our retirement phase and we have the time and the resources to see how we can help our people.
“The school we are proposing to adopt is Simawa High School. We have visited the school. We have been on the ground and we have done a lot of research. We have been trying to adopt the school for three years now.
“We have found out that that particular school has 68 students in one class and one teacher, we found this incredible. We also found that Simawa High School is not the only overcrowded school in Nigeria, that this is the pattern across the public school sector in Nigeria. We are not here to point fingers at the government because that wouldn’t get us anywhere. It is easy to criticize, but it’s more productive to come up with a lasting solution.
“We have done our research and our intervention approach is designed in phases one, two, three and so on. So, it’s a long term approach,” she said.
In his remarks, the commissioner said that the adoption of the school would help drive the revitalization efforts by the government in the education sector while noting that infrastructural decay in the state’s schools was caused by the previous administrations in the state.
Arigbabu further disclosed that the present government has rehabilitated about 900 classrooms in the last three years, noting that the state’s 42 flagship secondary schools have been marked as model schools for the government’s long-term plans on achieving the global benchmark of 40 students to a teacher ratio in the classrooms.
Arigbadu, however, promised the government’s readiness to support the diaspora group towards implementing its programmes for the school.
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