Education Under Governor Makinde: A State of Abundant Teachers But Abandoned Learning | Yusuf Olatunji Alabi

A government that cannot improve education has failed woefully, and that is the reality in Oyo State today. Despite parading free education and massive budget claims, the data and reality show a sector in steady decline.

Oyo State, once the intellectual capital of Western Nigeria and home to the first university in Nigeria, now ranks 26th out of 36 states in WAEC ratings. This is not opposition propaganda. It is the official rating sent by WAEC to State Ministries of Education to guide policy. At a stakeholders’ event in Ibadan where Senator Sharafadeen Alli paid WAEC fees for students, the Chairman of the occasion, Alhaji Bello Oladeji, lamented openly, “How can Oyo State be in the 26th position in WAEC rating? It is very bad.” For the Pacesetter State, ranking 26th is not just failure; it is an emergency.

While the government claimed enrolment explosion, expansion of schools, disarticulation and establishment of new schools in urban and rural areas, independent data says otherwise. According to a 2022 report cited by UNICEF in 2024, 20.1% of children in Oyo State were out of school, making Oyo State the highest in the Southwest. This translates to around 674,324 children out of a total of 3,351,969 children aged 3 to 17 years roaming the streets. A recent stakeholders’ engagement in March 2026 by Educare Trust and CSACEFA confirmed Oyo still has over 670,000 out-of-school children, still the highest in the zone. The reasons given include poverty, distance and hidden costs. Even the 2025 intervention by the National Commission on Almajiri and Out-of-School Children Education failed in Oyo, with only 7,768 children captured out of a 27,000 target, just 29 percent. How can a state claim progress when 674,324 children are out of school?

Data don’t lie, but if arguable, the result is on our streets on weekdays in Ogunpa, Oja’ba and other suburbs of the city where children who should be in school roam about hawking, doing menial jobs and begging for alms.

The problem is compounded by dilapidated structures and lack of maintenance of schools resulting from the policy that killed the working model for the running and maintenance of schools. The late Governor Abiola Ajimobi introduced School Governing Boards (SGBs) for all public secondary schools to solve the problem of running, maintaining structures and facilities and bringing community involvement into school administration. The model brought old students, parents, community leaders and philanthropists back into school management.
On assumption of office in 2019, this government dissolved the 643 Governing Boards in public secondary schools and, in a circular dated 11th May 2021, the Ministry of Education announced total dissolution of the boards in the name of political ‘free education’.
The result is visible across the state, as many public schools remain inadequate, lacking usable classrooms, toilets, functional libraries and sports facilities. Some school heads resort to using their own money to buy chalk and other classroom materials. This policy had very high PR but says a lot about school management. Any penny to a school from parents reached Agodi faster than a bank transfer and the school head would get an invite from the Ministry.

Due to inadequate funding, our schools now look unkempt and dilapidated.
The giant model school buildings initiated by the late Governor Ajimobi and some completed during this same administration have all been left to the school management to maintain from their salaries. The management has to apply for a grant for school running once per term, a payment that would not even cover toilet maintenance. What is supposed to be a monthly school running cost, as is done in Lagos, has been turned into a grant that has to be applied and lobbied for. The administration has built no single model school building since its inception and is still unable to maintain those already built by the previous administrations.

The schools still use chalk and blackboard, pen-on-paper report cards and fully analogue operations. They are still running on a 20th-century model that depends on teachers’ salaries and efforts to finance. No really a working system to finance the school.

Thirty-two months after destroying a working system, the same government was forced to return to it and re-inaugurated the boards for the 643 secondary schools, an admission that the Ajimobi policy was right all along.

TRCN data shows Oyo does not lack qualified manpower. In fact, Oyo State emerged tops with 5,200 registered qualified teachers, topping Lagos, Kano and others out of 2.2 million registered nationally. Another TRCN update puts Oyo at over 136,000 registered teachers, the highest in Nigeria. Yet education keeps going down. Qualification on paper without continuous capacity building is useless.
The Teachers Registration Council introduced Mandatory Continuing Professional Development requiring 40 credit points every 3 years, but in Oyo State there is no statewide structured in-service training, no retraining on new curriculum, education technology or inclusive education.
Teachers are left to struggle, posted to rural areas without support, with inconsiderate postings and low welfare packages. All these affect the results.

You cannot have the most qualified teachers in Nigeria and still rank 26th in WAEC. You cannot claim free education when 674,324 children are out of school, the highest in the Southwest. You cannot demolish a community-driven maintenance model that was fixing dilapidated schools and expect structures to survive. Education is not about paying counterpart funds of N3.5 billion to UBEC and announcing it on radio. It is about learning outcomes, functional classrooms, trained and motivated teachers, and children actually in school. By all these measurable indicators, the Oyo State Government has failed woefully in the education sector.

A government that cannot fix education cannot fix the future.

Yusuf Olatunji Alabi is a political observer and social critic passionate about accountability and good governance in Nigeria.