Education sits at the heart of everything worth fighting for in Oyo State and everywhere all around the world, but particularly Oyo State. This is a truth I’ve carried through years of watching kids chase dreams on cracked school floors, and of course my years of helping other countries build their own educational system.
A support for vision and the AKK cause means backing a push to fully fund public schools and pull private ones into the fold, not as strangers but as teammates.
It’s the single most powerful weapon we have against disadvantage, a tool that can lift a girl in Okeho or a boy in Ibadan out of the dust. I’ve seen it; classrooms with no roofs, teachers with no commensuration of pay for their efforts, and still, kids show up, hungry to learn, teachers show up, willing to teach. That’s the fire I’m here to fan, not with words but with work.
Public schools in Oyo state are stretched thin, they run on fumes while Nigeria’s education budget scrapes by at 5%, a fraction of what it should be. Kids cram into rooms with broken benches, tattered books, and teachers juggle classes of 60, sometimes with no materials and teaching aids.
Full funding of education isn’t a fancy promise; it is pouring heart and soul into hiring more staff, fixing leaky ceilings, and getting tools that actually work. This isn’t about handouts, no, it’s the single best investment we can make in our state’s future, a chance to stop losing half of our kids to streets or farms because school is too far or they are too poor to attend one.
I believe private schools have what public ones need: trained hands, humming tech spaces, ideas that stick, mention it. My mission would be to build a bridge where they share the load in a number of ways, maybe through joint teacher workshops or turning laboratory to co-work space and sharing expertise and wisdom. A quality education system should be open to every child, no matter their village, their pocket, or their prayers. I’ve watched this play out in other places, seen it lift whole towns when it’s done right, and I am convinced Oyo state is ready for that step. It is real, not a guess; we’ve got the pieces, just not the glue yet.
If you walk Oyo state’s towns, in remote localities and even some areas in our major towns and cities, the reality is rough, you’ll see it: experts says over 40% of our kids dodge school, some hawking pure water, others herding goats, some selling groundnuts, others lost to chores, and the poorest get crushed first, especially girls out in the sticks, – urban schools burst with bodies, rural ones echo empty, and disadvantage grows where learning dies – all because the system is too weak to hold them. Disadvantage doesn’t pick favourites—it hits the poorest hardest, rural girls most of all, and urban kids packed like sardines in crumbling blocks of classrooms. I’ve spent years as a thinker and a doer, digging into what makes states breathe, and I know this: half-fixes mean half-lives. If I get the support, we can push our state to where education doesn’t skip the broke or the far-off, to where every child gets a real shot at their future through quality education, and not a shrug.
This will be a monumental support for our kids. We can birth into life, public schools flush with life, private ones pitching in, a future where no one’s left staring at a locked door. I’m not tossing dreams from a soapbox; I’m hauling a plan built on decades of seeing what works. This won’t be my fight alone; it should be our collective pursuit, every parent, every teacher, every kid counting on us to get it right. Education is our weapon, our stake in tomorrow, it is our shot, and I’ve got the know-how to make it hit hard. Together, we’ll turn Oyo state schools into places that don’t just stand but soar. I have no doubt.
Dr. Adewale Kolapo Kareem (AKK)
Oyo 2027
AKK 2027
Governor 2027
AKK! Aseyori ni tiwa.
AKK!! Ajose Ajoje
AKK!!! A Task that must be done.
Thursday May 15, 2025.
