Lagos State Deputy Governor, Mr Obafemi Kadir Hamzat, on Monday, defied the early morning downpour to inspect schools in Maryland and Agege areas of the state, assuring that the Babajide Sanwo-Olu- led administration would prioritise education in the state.
Aside from the Maryland Nursery/Primary School which he visited, the governor also paid an unscheduled visit to the Ahmad Memorial Muslim Primary School, Oke-Koto, Agege.
The deputy governor, who was accompanied by the Head of Service (HoS), Hakeem Muri-Okunola; Deputy Chief of Staff, Gboyega Sanyanwo and other top civil servants, also assured that there would be a uniform standard for all the schools in the state.
This was just as he lamented the poor state of many schools in the state, describing it as appalling, assuring that the government would leave no stone unturned in addressing children’s education as it considered it important.
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“The Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu administration is prioritising education as a sector. It is also considering educating the children as very important and we will leave no stone unturned to ensure this,” the deputy governor said.
“The environment that we try to teach them is also important and that is the reason we are here is to see for ourselves some of the schools that are not in the right state. We are choosing schools that are in bad shapes.
“This is to see what will be the strategy that will be used to repair them because our children will be going on holiday very soon. So that before they come back, what can we achieve in terms of rehabilitation and to understand the situation in the majority of our schools,” he added.
“Basically, our children must be protected from the weather when they are in their classrooms. During the tour, we noticed that some of the doors, windows and other structural issues are affecting the schools. Our plan is to ensure that our children are comfortable while in school,” he added further.
Speaking further, the deputy governor said he could see that some classes in schools visited were overpopulated, while some of the classes were not in use, promising that the state government would do some repairs and equally “reduce the density in the classrooms.”
“We also discovered that some of the classes have 45 pupils and we noticed that some of our classrooms are not in use. For instance in this school (Maryland Nursery/Primary School), they have 32 classrooms but only 22 are in use. So we need to do some repair and reduce the density in the classrooms,” Hamzat said.
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