Education is not restricted to the four walls of a classroom,   and a Yoruba parlance  says the farther you go the more enlightened you become. The pupils of Josabig Group of School, a private  primary and secondary school in Ibadan, Oyo State  will not forget in a hurry the  beautiful moment  they had at one of the Africa’s most populous tourist site, Olumirin waterfalls  at Erin Ijesa, last week during an excursion.

Perhaps some of the students had come across what is  Waterfalls before, it must be  in their textbooks and not until when about  71 of the student  in company of the school proprietor, Pastor Joshua Adewale Odeniyi and some of their teachers  visited the site  to see things for themselves and confirm the textbook stories about the wonders.

TTM in  a chat with the school proprietor Pastor Odeniyi discovered that  the intention of the school management to visit  the water falls was to  complement the theoretical aspect of  Geography  which they were being taught in school with the practical  experience  at the site.

“The  students in secondary school were being taught  related  topic in their Geography class and coincidentally, we were planning for excursion, so  we concluded that they should be brought to see  rock and waterfalls.  

Coming  here for excursion is  not  to  see things or for  fun alone, but to learn, touring sites like this   help in widening one’s horizon and as  an institution of learning,  we decided to be taking our students to  places where they could  learn one or two things to complement whatever they were being taught in class,” he explained.

He said further that, some of the parents did not cooperate with the  school management in packaging the toursbecause a lotof people are not  enlightened about the necessity of what tourism is all about. He advised that there should be proper orientations on the relevance of tourism  to the socio-economic development of the nation.

If people are enlightened they will support the government in protecting the monuments  and sites rather than destroying them.

Speaking on the  Olumirin  Waterfalls, Pastor Odebiyi  said, “this is a wealth in the pot, it is  supposed to be a  source of income to the government  but  as you can see,   nothing serious is being done here to attract  both  local  and foreign tourists to this place, the road leading to the site is not good, though I noticed that they were working on it, but I expect something wider than this, there should be  a  convenient place  for people to relax,  even the government  can  build hotels and good restaurant here  where people can relax.

People love to relax in a place where they would  not want to be disturb  but  what we are  having here is not encouraging and I think the government  should something serious about this place, they should  lift this place to a standard  tourist site in the world. What we are seeing here is something unique, something that can add to the economic value of this state, but it is  disheartening that much  has not been done.

“Tourism generally  in Nigeria is not at  its rightful place, and  sincerely the Federal Government is not doing much to help it grow, we have a lot of tourism potentials in Nigeria, but they are  not  maintained. I want to advise the authorities in charge  at all levels to make tourism  something that can  add to what we are  generating economically, I am aware that many countries have  tourism as there major source of  income,  government should  shift  focus to tourism too. Though we are yet to have a  tourism club, it will be inaugurated soon. Some of the students who spoke with TTM expressed satisfaction at what they saw at the site and thanked the school management  for taking them to such a wonderful site.