The old students of Methodist High School, Idanre, in Idanre Local Government Area of Ondo State, have expressed their determination to contribute to the development of their alma mater.
To this end, the former students, under the auspices of the Methodist High School Old Students Association, donated a block of six classrooms to the school.
Speaking at the inauguration and official handing over of the building to the school in Idanre, the Chairman of the Central Planning Committee of the association, Dr. Dokun Dairo, said the gesture was to join hands with the government to develop the school.
According to him, the projects cost a sum of N50 million cash, contributed by many old students of the school, coupled with materials donations from other members of the association.
Dairo said, “The essence of this event is for us to hand over the building project that the old students have put together to the school authorities and also to celebrate ourselves by having our reunion ceremony of the old students.
“The project cost over N50 million because a close person covered it for us, who also did this as a community development.
“By the estimate of the surveyor and the engineers, if we’re to contract this out, it probably would have cost about N150 million but it was built by direct labour; the project management was done by us, and that’s why it has cost just a little over N50 million.
“Before now, a lot of our old friends have been using their influence to help the school maintain infrastructure or add infrastructure to the school; one of our old students helped us facilitate a block of six classrooms, and then another member of our association also helped to facilitate tarred of the parking lot in the school as well as the channelisation of roads”.
While calling on the governments to focus more on the development of basic education in Nigeria, the chairman said there was a need for all stakeholders to fund education in partnership with the government.
“Education in Nigeria, we are having a problem with maintaining quality because the government alone cannot fund education, so we need other stakeholders in the funding of education; our governments need to come out that they don’t have enough to fund education, especially tertiary education so government should focus on primary and secondary education as well as vocational education while they allow the private sectors and private stakeholders to invest in tertiary education”, he said.
A member of the association and Permanent Secretary of the Ondo State Universal Basics Education Board (SUBEB), Mr Akinnagbe, commended the government for its efforts in changing the face of the school for the better. He, however, urged the government to do more to ensure that the facilities were provided to other schools in the state.
“The government has the role of providing good structure to our school, providing teachers and other materials that are necessary for schooling environment, and I sincerely want to commend the present government; we have six classroom blocks that were built by Ondo SUBEB a few years ago, although there is an intervention project too, the two classroom block with office built directly by JUPEB from Abuja and others in terms of provision of books and sporting equipment to our school.
“I want to encourage the state government should continue in this effort so that all these facilities can go around, not just our secondary school but also our primary schools in Ondo state. The JUPEB and SUBEB have the responsibility of providing sound education for the first nine years that is from primary 1 to 6 and from Jss 1 to 3″, the PS stated.
