Oyo State governor, ‘Seyi Makinde, has issued a one-week ultimatum to owners of shops built into the perimeter fences of public schools in the state to pull down the shops and stop all trading activities, stating that the government would bring sanity to the school environment ahead of students’ resumption.
The governor maintained that the government intends to make the learning environment in the state more conducive.
He decried the worrisome situation in which the learning environment is being compromised with trading activities close to school entrance.
Governor Makinde stated this shortly after inspecting some public schools in Ibadan, the state capital, in the early hours of Tuesday.
The governor equally monitored the waste management situation across the state capital, noting that the government would come up with a strategic plan to make the environment what everyone would be proud of.
He said: “The entrance is almost blocked by people who have their shops very close to the entrance of the school, which is not conducive for learning. So, we have gone round and what we are saying is that if you have anything attached to the fence of a school, you must remove it.
“We are going to give them about a week to remove those things. They should clear them so that when our children come back to school, we will know they are coming into an environment conducive to learning.
“Also, we have taken the opportunity to look at the situation with solid waste management. You can see most medians have become dumpsites but this has to stop.
“Where we have single carriage roads, you don’t see people dump their waste by the roadside. How come they have made the medians the dumpster?
“So, we will, again, go back to the drawing board because something is not obviously working with the architecture that we have in place.
“We are working to look into what has to be done next to have the kind of environment that we really want to be proud of.”
The governor was in company of the Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Prince Dotun Oyelade; his counterpart in the Ministry of Environment, Mr. Abdulmojeed Mogbonjubola; and the Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General of Oyo State, Barr. Abiodun Aikomo.