Students of Osun State College of Education, Ila Orangun on Monday
staged a fresh protest over the alleged planned merger of the college
with another state owned College of Education in Ilesa.
The students, who were armed with placards with various
inscriptions stormed the palace of the Orangun of Ila, Oba Wahab
Oyedotun, where people of the community were holding a meeting to
deliberate on the alleged plan by Governor Rauf Aregbesola to merge the
college with the one in Ilesa.
The students stormed the venue of the meeting where chiefs and
other leaders of the town had gathered. It took the organizers some
minutes before they were able to calm down the protesting students.
The students warned the governor against going ahead with the plan,
saying they would resist the policy with everything they had.
The Secretary of Ila Orangun Community, Mr. Yemi Adeoye, who
addressed journalists said the people of the town had resolved that the
status of the college should be allowed to remain the way it is.
They said the restructuring would lead to reduction of academic
programmes and population of the institution which was established in
1979.
Adeoye said the restructuring would leave the college with just two
academic programmes adding that this would affect the economy of the
town whose residents depended on the college with 15,000 students for
their source of income.
He said, ” It is our humble submission that the present state
government is being requested not to change the College of Education at
Ila to that of primary and technical education and continuous education
centre.
“The status quo should please be allowed to remain. This is very
important because of posterity and the generation yet unborn. The blood
of Marty, Adepeju Oyedotun whose untimely death precipitated the birth
of the college is crying in support of Ila Orangun community.”
Residents of Ila Orangun and Ila Orangun Students Association led
by its president, Mr. Rilwan Sulaiman and the Student Union President of
the COE, Ila Orangun, Julius Akinleyin, had on Saturday marched round
major streets in the town singing anti-government songs based on the
rumour that the government had given a directive to governing councils
of the colleges to work out the merger of the institutions.
