Inside Ibadan School Directly Opposite Oyo Government House in Ruins, Disaster Looms
March 19 2020, the day was sunny and bright over Ibadan but as events would later unfold, the school premises beamed darkness for Adedokun Sheriff, a JSS2 student of Ikolaba Grammar School, Agodi Ibadan.
He fell from the balcony of the only storey building in the school and his life has never remained the same again.
Located around a serene environment, directly opposite the JAMB office and the state government house to its adjacent, Ikolaba Grammar School is an epitome of ruins in the midst of the calm beauty and serenity of Agodi.
Muslim faithful during Salah or Ramadan trooping to the popular Id praying ground at the back of the school would be flummoxed by the lack of shield against sunlight and rain which the Id trees provide in excess when they realize they have what the students lack.
Even the Id trees can't provide a shield to what is left of the school if they were to be removed. It is a graveyard for the living, and it's not even Ukraine at war Ikolaba Grammar School is a dent in Governor Makinde's urban renewal project. A low point in his many giant strides is in the area of educational infrastructure.
Disaster looms already and there have been cases where students got injured due to the fact that the balcony of the only classroom duplex can no longer hold.
They fell and landed in the hospital. Decades of neglect are stamped on the walls of the classrooms. Any parent who sends his child to I.G.S. most definitely has no other option. It's a death trap.
Right from the school's entrance, where a security man probably in his 80s, opens the gate of gloom and hopelessness that the school has become, to view a forsaken sculpture of a drummer and a woman, who must have been tired of dancing. The fences are filled with holes that house reptiles. No building within the school premises is fit again for rats.
How can hell be so much visible in the midst of bliss?
No chairs, no tables, no windows, no boards in many classes. Yet, the sirens blast just across the building of dignitaries visiting Mr Governor on the way to the State Secretariat. Abomination!
How can hell be so much visible in the midst of bliss? Kola Daisi Event centre on the right is one of Ibadan's most beautiful event centres. While guests and the Ibadan 'Cubanas' dance and make money cry at the venue, tomorrow cries just across the street in the debacle of its abandonment.
Ikolaba Grammar School Agodi Gate Ibadan is one of the signature school projects by former Governor and Minister of Justice, Late Chief Bola Ige in 1980.
It is not fit for learning even for the mentally deranged.
How Engineer Seyi Makinde and indeed, members of his administration could completely miss this decay right in front of their nose is absolutely astonishing. It begs the question, who are those on the ground to inspect schools and government-owned buildings? The school alumni body had written an SOS letter I was told, but nothing has changed.
Perhaps, until sensational news breaks out regarding dead students, then like ambulance service providers, government rushes to the scene just to pick up the dead.
Did the Nigerian in you say "God forbid"? But aren't we gods on earth? If we can't turn up to forbid bad things right before it happens, should we expect God to forbid?
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