Osun State came alive last week, of course, for the very right reason. Its education review policy is it! Great kudos.

The reversal was painstaking and meticulous. It couldn’t have been for the wrong reason. You hardly can fault it. It thoroughly went through wide consultations. It is more than due process.

Flashback. Once upon a time, the state was literally turned into one big laboratory. It carelessly toyed with all sorts of weird and wild experimentations.

The most profound ones were in the field of education. And education became captive and the biggest casualty. Glaringly, things were falling speedily apart. The centre could not hold. The situation was under serious alarm.

Former governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, simply turned the tables against education. He did that between 2010 and 2018. He pursued his eerie policies with uncanny recklessness.

The policies negated everything that is reasonable. It ran riot against the national education policies. It turned Osun State into an island onto itself. Nothing reflected cohesion in the policies.

Are you still in doubt? This was what Aregbesola put in place: He merged primary five and six with Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) to form Middle Schools. This resulted to a new 4-5-3-4 system as opposed to the national policy of 6-3-3-4 system.

He stubbornly held tight to a single uniform for all schoolchildren in the state. Strange? He abolished the policy of Early Childhood Care Development Education (ECCDE). Dumped the single-sex schools system by mixing them up with the opposite sex. Replaced “grammar” with “high” in the name of secondary schools. The worst hit were the first generation/iconic schools

And the result? Absolute chaos. The most volatile was the single uniform policy. There were widespread protests and opposition from stakeholders. It was the peak of lawlessness.

Everybody became a law unto himself. Students even made matters worse. They came to school in regalia of different shapes, modes and colours. They were stoutly supported by their parents and guardians.

It was a display of their religious beliefs and convictions. It became a carnival. It was the height of disingenuousness and insincerity.

But Governor Adegboyega Oyetola has brought an end to that. The reversal put a huge spinner in the works of absurdity that ruined the state’s education in the past. That is definitely no more.

And how did he achieve the feat? Simple, reason and reasoning only prevailed! It has no political undertone and/or undercurrent, as the case may be. No ill feelings either.

It started like this. During the televised gubernatorial debate in 2018, Oyetola made a pledge. The critical single uniform came up. Without mincing words and with deep sense of responsibility, he promised to “look into it.”

After he became governor, he went around thanking the electorate. The notorious single uniform issue raised its ugly head wherever he went with his team. It was a recurrent decimal; hunting and haunting all along.

Oyetola became restless. He was losing sleep and having nightmares. Then there was a roll back in his mind. Aregbesola, under whom he served as Chief of Staff, once made a very strong and deep pronouncement.

It was in one of his last appearances on Ogbeni Till Daybreak TV programme. He said, if there was anything he did not do well, the party (APC) should liaise with the incoming government to sort of “right the wrong.”

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Oyetola got the message. And that was the impetus he needed. He instantly keyed into action and went into action. He wisely resolved not to make any political issue out of it. His spokesman, Ismail Omipidan, attested to this much.

That would not benefit anyone. He merely bowed to the will, wishes and aspirations of the people. He cleverly brought the matter to the cabinet meeting.

There and then, a committee was raised to take another look at some policies. From the committee’s report, there were 26 issues, with education having the lion’s share.

A panel to review the committee’s report was constituted. It was made up of eggheads in relevant fields. They were all eminent personalities, headed by Professor Olu Aina.

Other members were Prof. Ibidapo-Obe, Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade, Prof. Yemisi Obilade, Prof. Paul Obanya, Dr. Iyi Uwadiae, Prof. B.A. Adeyemi, Mrs. Moyo Adeleke, Prince F.A. Adejumo, Mr. Kola Busari, Mr. A.E. Ijaodola, Mr. Folorunso Alao and Mr. Wakeel Amudah. Nothing could be more intimidating.

Within weeks, the panel came up with its recommendations. Again, it was examined by the state executive council. Mrs. Funke Egbemode, Commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, and Mr. Olayinka Folorunso, her Education counterpart, made announced the final decisions to the public. The decisions made a mess of Aregbesola’s arrangement.

Egbemode: “The council approved the recommendations to revert to the 6-3-3-4 structure in keeping with the provision of the National Policy on Education. It was also agreed that ECCDE, in line with the practice in the 35 states in Nigeria, be stored.”

Other decisions included the reversal of schools to their old status. Henceforth, only single sex identified with those school names should be admitted. That put a stop to that monumental absurdity.

It did not end there. Affected male students currently in SS1 and SS2 in schools for females would be relocated forthwith and vice-versa.

The council also approved the reversal of “High School” to the old nomenclature of “Grammar School.”

And perhaps the most vexed issue was resolved this way: “The council agreed that the state government will do well to allow every school return to its old established and recognised public uniform.”

The reversal was the best thing to have happened to Osun State in recent times. It was hailed and lauded by friends and foes. It was well-thought-out.

The state government did not throw away the baby with the birthwater. It retained Aregbesola’s Opon Imo (Tablet of Knowledge) being derided as Opon Eemo  (Tablet of Bizarre), with modifications.

The final decision was not hurriedly arrived at. It was meticulously undertaken. It was never intended to score any point; not even political. The panel’s members that made the decisions are not pushovers in their areas of competence. They are renown and outstanding.

Oyetola is very much aware that when the chips are down, there is no passing the buck. That is not allowed because the buck stops at his table. That is why he took the wild bull by its dangerous horns. And it is handsomely paying off for him.

Osun is on the march one more time; courtesy: Reversal of education policy.