'In Osun, the government was looking for the most cost-effective means of delivering top quality education to pupils in their public schools. One of their main thrusts was a computer tablet (Opon Imo), distributed free to the pupils. Each tablet is preloaded with all the textbooks they need, 56 in all, not to mention seven extra volumes like the Bible and Quran, personal health, sex education etc. The tablet also comes with ten years of WAEC and JAMB past questions in 17 subjects. The state government reckons it has spent about N57, 000 per child. There is nothing in this that a child cannot understand, but the likes Ayo Aluko-Olokun are looking for an elephant in the room with a magnifying lens. The state government has not issued a decree that the parents should not buy physical books for their children to complement the e-device if they so desire.'
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From: abiodun KOMOLAFE
![Opon Imo]()
In 2009, out of Nigeria's 36 states, Osun State came 35th in NECO examinations results. This was at the zenith of People's Democratic Party-led government in Osun State. In 2010, the state managed to crawl up the rungs to the 32nd position. After one year of Aregbesola's government in 2011, Osun State shot up to number eight.
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From: abiodun KOMOLAFE
Osun and value of encyclopaedic electronic tablet
State of Osun Student Displaying Opon-Imo in Class. (Inset is Ayo Aluko-Olokun)
The results of NECO attracted gratitude from the students in the state, and their parents. The performance of Osun State students in NECO was even more significant because the benefits of the fundamental changes which the Aregbesola-led administration had started to make in the education sector.
This background is important in responding to a gale of disinformation, mischief-making and crass ignorance being spread about the unprecedented changes in modern learning, among other measures, which are being implemented by the Aregbesola government in Osun State. One of such is a recent piece by one Ayo Aluko-Olokun. Left to the likes of Aluko-Olokun and his confederates, teachers and school authorities in Osun State would still be shoving their list of nine books per student at the faces of Senior Secondary students mired in insolvency.
What is his grouse? In Osun, the government was looking for the most cost-effective means of delivering top quality education to pupils in their public schools. One of their main thrusts was a computer tablet (Opon Imo), distributed free to the pupils. Each tablet is preloaded with all the textbooks they need, 56 in all, not to mention seven extra volumes like the Bible and Quran, personal health, sex education etc. The tablet also comes with ten years of WAEC and JAMB past questions in 17 subjects. The state government reckons it has spent about N57, 000 per child. There is nothing in this that a child cannot understand, but the likes Ayo Aluko-Olokun are looking for an elephant in the room with a magnifying lens. The state government has not issued a decree that the parents should not buy physical books for their children to complement the e-device if they so desire.
It is evident some of the ignorance in some quarters around this revolutionary project comes from the fact that they are totally unaware that it is one of the products of a thorough process of an education summit convened by the state government in February 2011 and chaired by Professor Wole Soyinka. When I read Aluko-Olokun's estimation that an SS student will normally have nine books and his rage at a governor who provided them with 63, I was disappointed.
When I went to Ilesa Grammar School in the 80s, Governor Bola Ige administration had a free education programme through which it supplied all schools with every educational materials: textbooks, notebooks, pencils etc. The only thing our parents contributed was their taxes and our school uniforms because we paid no tuition fees too. In my own school, we had good library with quality books on all areas of learning. We were being raised to be thoroughly knowledgeable so we can contribute to the progress of our nation. Kids raised that way grow to adults who are hard-boiled and unflinching in their vision but flexible in their approach. I have no doubt whatsoever that what will come out of the efforts of the governor of Osun State in this Opon Imo innovation is what comes out of a kid that grew up around a rich library.
We should soberly ask ourselves how has it come to this in Nigeria that someone who poses as a 'public affairs analyst' would recommend one book per subject for a Senior Secondary school student and reproach a governor who says they should have much more at no cost. Have the standards plummeted so abysmally around here? The next thing Aluko-Olokun(a media aide of a PDP gubernatorial aspirant) would do is to whine and squeal endlessly about the cost of this laudable project, while contesting how much has been saved by the state government by embarking of this innovative project. I bet every kid with an Opon Imo in Osun can tell that 63 books at N1,000 apiece for 150,000 students will mean 9 billion naira.
Imagine a state where the public schools pupils go about with a mini-library, and a hard stuff examination cracker of 20 years past question papers (WAEC and JAMB, ten years each) in their backpacks. That is positively taking on the future indeed, for those students. They can haul less baggage around for more educational value and key into a world that has gone digital in all aspects.Yet, those who want a return to the visionless, incompetent and inefficiency of the PDP years in the state see nothing commendable in this initiative, but to discredit the idea.
One of the questions raised is how students will power the tablets given the epileptic power supply. The simple answer to this distracting question is to ask the likes of Aluko-Olokun, how do Nigerians power the 50 million-plus mobile phones that they use? Surely, a 150,000Osun students are likely to be able to find a way around charging their computer tablets too if Nigerians can keep their mobile phones working despite the problem of constant power supply. However, the Aregbesola administration is making arrangements for communal solar chargers in remote rural High School locations.
This year's JAMB examination was done on the computerized format. The signs that the digital direction is the way to the future are everywhere and plain for all to see. The PDP ran this state for seven and a half years and they couldn't figure out a thing as simple as computerizing salary payments.
Apparently, Ayo Aluko-Olokun and his PDP crowd would have been more at peace with kids using chalk and black slates because there is no electricity for computers. They are people who will buy handheld phones for a hundred thousand bucks and squirm at a government spending N57, 000 on a computer for a twenty-first century child. Osun manages its resources judiciously, and it is not in the list of CBN's bad-debt states. Contrary to the lies about the state borrowing N280, Osun State only raised a long-term facility of N22 billion in the form of bonds through the capital market, which is a healthy thing in public finance. If you borrow on long-term basis for specific value-adding development projects like Osun State has done, by the time you have to start repaying, you would have grown your economy and IGR so your debts have become cheaper and mush easier to pay. That is what Osun State is doing and it agrees with development economics anywhere in the world.
Only recently, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that Osun State now has the lowest unemployment figure of all Nigeria's states. This is the consequence of the vision, planning and shrewdness of the Aregbesola administration.
- Ogunlela writes from Osogbo, Osun State
abiodun KOMOLAFE, AMNIM,
020, Okenisa Street,
PO Box 153,
Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State.
PO Box 153,
Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State.
Tel:- +234 803 361 4419
+234 809 861 4418
Alternative E-mail: ijebuijesa@gmail.com
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USAfrica
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http://www.USAfricaonline.com
1st African-owned, U.S.-based professional newspaper published on the internet.
------
CLASS ... The social events and profiles glossy magazine for Africans
in the U.S. and North America. It's the 'Ebony' magazine for the African
professional class across the U.S., north America and the Diaspora
http://www.Classmagazine.tv
-----
-PHOTOWORKS.tv
Our community's photos mega-site of your special events, weddings, anniversaries, etc
http://www.PhotoWorks.tv
.
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