Oyo: NLC Declares Indefinite Strike, Students on Rampage as Ajimobi Orders Closure of Schools

Oyo: NLC Declares Indefinite Strike, Students on Rampage as Ajimobi Orders Closure of Schools

For several hours today, students of public secondary schools in Ibadan metropolis, Oyo State, trooped to the streets as early as 9a.m. to oppose state government's plan to return some schools to former owners and engage a number of others in Public Private Partnership (PPP) to address the rot in the state education sector.

Specifically, the government explained that the disrupted stakeholders’ summit it organised last week was aimed "to partner willing stakeholders in the participatory management of a negligible number of the public secondary schools, which may not be more than 10 per cent of the existing 631 schools in the end."

Subsequently, seven labour leaders,, including the state Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Waheed Olokede; his deputy, Alhaji Bayo Titilola Sodo and others were arraigned and incarcerated at Agodi prisons for allegedly disturbing public peace and wanton destruction of government property. After five days in detention, their bail conditions were perfected yesterday at a tense court session fortified with policemen who frisked people in and around the court premises.

Many motorists were turned back from plying the roads leading to the court in Iyaganku, Ibadan thus causing gridlock in Dugbe, Oke Ado, Iyaganku axis for several hours.

While the court session was on, students were forcefully sent out of the classrooms to protest the continuous incarceration of labour leaders, ostensibly by aggrieved workers who were protesting against their colleagues’ detention.

Journalists who went round the city to monitor the protests saw huge crowd of students filing the streets chanting anti-government songs, and in the process took over a property belonging to the state Governor, Abiola Ajimobi, and vandalised it.

Thousands of them from various secondary schools in Ibadan Southwest Local Government stormed Oke Ado area where Senator Ajimobi Vocational Training Centre was located and threw stones at the building from various directions, breaking the glass windows, thus forcing trainers and trainees at the centre to scamper for safety.

The students lamented that the one thousand naira fee introduced by the government coupled with the alleged plan to involve the private sector in the management of public schools was unacceptable to them, as it would lead to further increase in school fees.

Sensing the danger inherent in the ugly development, the government has ordered the immediate closure of all primary and secondary schools in the state as a way of protecting the lives and properties of the entire citizenry.

The government statement further read in parts: "Government has noted the attempt by some members of the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Nigeria Union of Teachers to expose our staff and students to danger arising from the on-going court action against their members.