The Ondo State governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko,assumed the leadership of the state with a clear agenda for its educational sector. And with just two years in the saddle, he has been able to cover grounds successive governments in the state could not cover as far as welfare, quality and standard infrastructure in the education sector are concerned.

Apparently loaded with ideas that could revive the waning educational standard and the decaying infrastructure in the sector, Mimiko set to work immediately and thus began the revolution, the result of which has clearly set Ondo State apart as a government that is making unequalled impact in the education sector with his government’s Caring Heart Mega School Scheme, which accommodates both primary and secondary schools.

It was the success so far recorded by the evolving revolution strategy in the  sector that could have given Governor Mimiko the confidence to announce to a team of media gurus which converged in Akure recently that private schools would soon become unfashionable in the state because of the standard and facilities being put in place in the state’s public schools.

Already, the process of making schools in the state status- irrelevant is beginning to bear fruit with the completion of  world class standard mega schools in the senatorial districts of the state, even as its primary schools are being turned into model schools, the latest being the total transformation of the hitherto dilapidated All Saints Anglican Primary School, Oke Ijebu, in the state capital.

The transformation of the school, which has become a model indeed after less than a year that work began on it, came as a result of the humane and sensitive nature of the medical practitioner-turned politician, Mimiko, whose popularity is fast-growing as the ‘caring heart’ governor.

Within 24 hours after a pupil of the school, Opeyemi Rasheed, was killed by his classmate, Abiodun Oluwadare, on October 7, 2010,  the governor, touched by the death, paid a condolence visit to the school, commiserating with the family of the deceased and school authorities.

Rasheed and Oluwadare had been playing with a pistol allegedly hidden in the school premises by hoodlums who had turned the compound into their operations base when the latter unknowingly pulled the trigger, killing the former instantly.

The family of the deceased got a compensation of N1 million from the state government while the State Universal Primary Education Board (SUBEB) picked the hospital bills of Oluwadare who was injured in the accidental shooting.

The use of the premises of All Saints and St Mark Primary Schools by the bad elements was due to the poor state of their infrastructure. The buildings had seen good times. The bushy surroundings provided a strong armoury for safekeeping of arms and ammunition. These prompted Mimiko to declare war on the almost four decade-old archaic facilities in the schools.

He divulged then that government would spend half a billion naira on massive renovations and fencing of all dilapidated school buildings across the state.

“It is the determination of this government to ensure that our primary schools are not death traps. The fact is that many things we ought to have done earlier have been abandoned long time ago. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. I know that we shall get there, even if it takes 10 years,” the governor said.

Mimiko explained that the state government was working on the building of Caring Heart Mega Schools in Akure,  Okitipupa, Ikare, Akure and Ondo, among others. The Mega Schools, according to him, were designed to make them meet the taste of the moment, in order to return the lost glory of the state in the education sector. The schools would be complete with facilities such as modern libraries and laboratories.

Eleven months after the renovation of the All Saints and St. Mark Primary Schools began, as part of the Caring Heart Mega School project, the once dilapidated structures have become a beautiful sight to behold, while Akure, Okitipupa Ikare and Ondo can boast of  being proud owners of  these educational facilities.

The project, awarded to Step Development Company Limited, six months ago, is a clear departure from the old order. The new school has seven blocks of 42 classrooms fitted with the state of the art facilities.

Unlike in the past when each classroom was occupied by an unimaginable number of pupils, the purpose-built classrooms will accommodate 25 pupils totaling 525 pupils in each school.

There is also an administrative block comparable to any one in any elite school in this part of the world.

All Saints and St Mark Primary Schools are not the only school to be so transformed.

Quite a number of such dilapidated schools in the state have been upgraded both physically and in standard to the Model cadre.

The aim of the governor for upgrading the schools he had mentioned, while laying the foundation of one of the completed infrastructures, was to bridge the age-long educational gap between the rich and the poor.

The scheme is not only aimed at arresting the imbalance in the education between the children of the rich and the poor, but one that is novel and capable of revolutionising education in the state.

As part of efforts to turn around the fortune of education, Mimiko’s administration had disbursed about N135 million as scholarships and bursary to students who are of the state origin.

Lauding the efforts of the government towards the development of education, the chairman of the state’s wing of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Braimoh Momodu, recalled how the government, in one fell swoop, paid about N1.4 billion, being the backlog of arrears of pension and gratuities of retired primary school teachers.

When many other states were yet to pay the 27.5 per cent of the new Teachers Salary Structure (TSS), the government had already implemented the enhanced teacher’s salary.

Specifically, the NUT Chairman, who expressed delight over the governments’ action and the efforts to redirect the state’s education, described the Caring Heart Mega Primary School, being the first-ever of such school in the state, as very wonderful and marvelous.

The Caring Heart Mega Primary Schools, each has the capacity to enrol 1,000 pupils with 42 classrooms, a laboratory for sciences, a modern library, a computer room, music room, an art gallery, a sick bay, a multi-purpose hall, boreholes, an administrative block, a resource centre, a demonstration farm and sports centre among other state-of-the-art equipment and infrastructure that a good school should boast of.

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