Makinde orders demolition of shops on Oyo school lands

Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, has issued a one-week ultimatum to owners of shops built on the perimetre fences of public schools in the state to pull down the shops and stop all trading activities ahead of students’ resumption in the state.

Makinde, who gave the directive shortly after inspecting some public schools in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, on Tuesday, September 5, 2023, stated that the state government intends to make the learning environment in the state more conducive.

The governor decried the worrisome situation in which the learning environment is being compromised with trading activities close to school entrance.

He also 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 every resident would be proud of.

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Governor Makinde 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 Star