Committee condemns terrible condition of Lagos model college

The Committee on Education of the Lagos State House of Assembly have condemned the state of some of the  colleges owned by the Lagos State government during an an on-the-spot assessment of these schools.

Members of the committee lamented the near-total neglect of model colleges in the state on Wednesday, March 9.

The committee found that students’ luggages are kept outside already overcrowded hostels and that students defecate in the open. They also discovered that the school had no library because its library had been converted to an examination hall.

While visiting the Lagos State Model College, Igbonla, Epe, Lagos, Chairman of the committee, Lanre Ogunyemi said the colleges are riddled with poor infrastructure. It wants the state government to urgently address the issues in the colleges to sustain the visions of their founders and restore the lost glory of the schools.

Ogunyemi said: “we don’t want to assume that things are right, which is why we decided to go round all our schools in the state to be sure that we are really doing what ought to be done.

“Our tour so far has been extremely revealing about the dilapidation and retrogression of our model colleges. There is need for us to improve the situation.

“Since much is being given to education in the budget of the state this year, we should seriously improve the facilities in our model schools. We would go back to the drawing board and advise the executive to ensure that we give the children in model schools a new lease of life.”

He said a trip round the school revealed that the students were being subjected to inhuman conditions in their hostels, which he said were over-populated and unkempt.

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“The facilities in the hostels are inadequate, we see a lot of cramping of beds and we saw that it is not conducive.

“The feeding of the students should be improved upon, also some of the children could not take care of themselves because they are under-aged.

“So, the government should apply age restriction and we feel that the model schools in the state should be model in their outlook,” he said describing as worrisome a situation where the students have to keep their luggages outside the hostels due to congestion and over-population, defecate in the open, while some of them that are under-aged have special rooms because they bed-wet.

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“The school should have improvised a room for library because without a library, the students cannot research. The vision of the founders of model schools in Lagos state needs to be sustained and we need close and adequate monitoring of our model schools to ensure that we get it right.

“We will go back to let the executive know that we have an urgent and critical need in our model schools.

“We have asked the school authority about their security, the number of security men they have and advised them to ensure that they relate with the community to handle emergency situation,” he said.