Reviving education in Ogun West
Educationally, Ogun West has been in limbo for a long with most indices remaining unfavourable; the number of enrolments in schools, pass rate in external examinations, proportion of school leavers pursuing degrees to success, number of graduates getting befitting jobs and so on remain at the bottom of the bottle.
The only advantage the district has explored maximally is the God-given cognitive asset for mental development as many students from the zone excel at every level of academic pursuit despite the obvious challenges.
It appears Senator Olamilekan Adeola YAYI had appraised the education value chain before deciding the appropriate interventions.
He initiated measures to ensure the teeming indigent students are enrolled for JAMB free of charge as this serves a dual purpose of easing the financial burdens on the parents as well as increasing the number of applicants across Ogun West and beyond.
After gaining admission into various tertiary institutions, Adeola came up with scholarship offers and bursary awards.
Either way, the senator promotes university enrolment and healthy academic rivalry among Ogun West students as a beneficiary of his scholarship scheme must attain and sustain a minimum of second-class upper division.
So, this prompts students to study harder to be celebrated and compensated through the scholarship scheme. This means hardworking students from Ogun West can bag degrees without paying a dime in school fees.
As a chartered accountant who has attained the status of a fellow, Adeola is well positioned to know how quality education contributes to the socio-economic progress of a people, which prompted him to initiate ‘EDUPACK’. As the maxim of law posits, “You can’t give what you don’t have.”
In the just-concluded 2025 JAMB registration, he ensured the genuine downtrodden benefitted. Over 4,200 students from Ogun West were enrolled for the examination free of charge. He gave a marching order to the team led by me that the exercise be taken to the nooks and crannies of Ogun West with robust strategies of capturing those living outside the district and ensuring the target audience is well netted.
Over 4,200 applicants were captured within one week of the closing date. The main question that came to mind after we had registered such a large number of applicants in the last week of the registration window was: What could have been the fate of these thousands of school leavers, their parents and our society if not for such a laudable initiative? The unique thing about his various intervention programmes is they are strategically interdependent and define a pragmatic value chain. A man who can successfully link the fate of school leavers to obtaining JAMB forms free and adopt them for scholarship or bursary opportunities while in the tertiary institutions is not just solving the problems of the students and their parents but strategically building a safer, greater and more prosperous society for us all.
In a few days to come, the YAYI Scholarship and Bursary Board will be disbursing huge sums to the cleared beneficiaries across tertiary institutions in Nigeria. YAYI’s net is so large that it covers everyone as Ogun West students, be it for JAMB, scholarship/bursary awards, and most importantly, for job opportunities.
In fact, helping to facilitate pensionable jobs to our army of unemployed graduates has suddenly rejigged the enthusiasm of our school leavers in droves to seek tertiary institution admissions since they know the future is bright. To Ogun West students of this era, I say big congratulations. You may need to know that there was nothing of such in our time and it was a great downturn for our education because many were demoralised, frustrated and lost hope in pursuing educational advancement.
Within two years of Yayi’s representation, Ogun West’s decades of infrastructural and developmental gaps are being closed like mimosa pudica by a magician and development engineer who many desire as the next Ogun State governor.
He does not just want a new deal for Ogun West; he is desirous of a better-positioned Ogun State and vastly equipped to deliver, such as a seasoned politician, chartered accountant, tax and development engineer, lover of common progress and a born leader with a heart of gold.
- Ola Agbetokun writes from Ipokia, Ogun State
