Lawmaker, architect disagree over Nigeria’s infrastructural sustenance culture

On Sunday, Senator Yunus Akintunde, who represents the Oyo Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly, stated that Nigerian politics and administration have nothing to do with the apparent decay in the infrastructure sustenance culture of government at all levels.

During the Iroko Community Grammar School’s 40th anniversary celebration in 1983, which took place on the school’s grounds in Oyo State’s Akinyele Local Government Area, he disclosed this information.

Akintunde responded, “I strongly disagree with him,” to Architect Oladejo Olawoyin, the keynote speaker, who had earlier linked the country’s politics to the difficulties in maintaining public infrastructure. There is no connection between our political system and the state of the education infrastructure’s decay. It’s not only about educational infrastructure; it’s a pure policy issue.

It’s common to see thousands of solar street lights turned on these days. These days, governments put them on. They will all pass away in five years, as there is no maintenance budget in place. “After about one or two years, the whole thing went off because, while building up our contract, the provision for renovations, maintenance, and rehabilitation has never been part of our contract,” recalls former Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala. “That was the first time they put on solar street lights on Awolowo Road, old Bodija in Ibadan.” Consider how many years ago the majority of these buildings were constructed. therefore, no upkeep. The decline of public utilities in Nigeria must be stopped, he said, and non-governmental involvement as well as private initiative in the country’s educational system must be promoted.
Prior to this, Olawoyin had declared, “We conducted research and found that over 300,000 schools in Nigeria have collapsed due to dilapidation.” Dilapidation is the state in which facilities that should be maintained are destroyed and left in ruins. It indicates that your priorities are off when you don’t have a maintenance culture.

Many of these schools were established in the South-West in the 1960s by Chief Obafemi Awolowo. With the exception of the schools situated on main thoroughfares, I can confirm that over 90% of these establishments have closed.Check out Ibadan University. A US doctor has stated he will donate a million dollars, and we are trying to find a way to repair some of the University College Hospital’s buildings. Therefore, we require the alma mater’s cooperation. First, though, our policies are the real issue that is dilapidated—not the structures. Our schooling is no more. I brought up Awolowo because of that.

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Allow me to present a bottom-up approach. Return control of the school to the missionaries. It’s obvious that the government can no longer manage them. We should use that tactic here as well as throughout Nigeria. Strong endowment and alma mater are essential. Seek out your opportunities to serve the nation rather than what it can do for you, advised President Bola Tinubu. The nation is insolvent. That is the reality. We must examine ourselves.

“The resources were not placed where they should have been. In actuality, we have forgotten that education is what will challenge us. That was Awolowo’s thought process in the 1960s. But for perhaps fifty or sixty years, we forgot. These schools are untouchable. The roofs, doors, and other parts have collapsed,” he said.