Students and indigenes of Ila Orangun trooped out on Saturday to protest the alleged plan of Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s administration to merge the College of Education in the town with another state owned College of Education in Ilesa.
The students, who were led by the National President of Ila Orangun Students Association, Mr. Rilwan Sulaiman, and the Student Union President of the COE, Ila Orangun, Julius Akinleyin, marched round major streets in the town singing anti-government songs.
One of the protesters told PUNCH correspondent that security agents closely monitored the protest to prevent it from being hijacked by hoodlums.
He said the protest, which was also joined by market women , okada riders and other residents was peaceful, saying there was no record of breakdown of law and order thought the period of the protest.
The national president of Ila Orangun Students Association, who spoke to our correspondent on the telephone said students mobilised themselves and other residents to embark on the protest, which he described as a patriotic one.
Sulaiman said the protesters went to the palace of the Orangun of Ila, Oba Wahab Oyedotun, who appealed to them to be peaceful in their approach.
The students’ union leader said the monarch also said he was aware of the rumour of the merger of the college but had not been able to verify its authenticity.
Sulaiman said operatives of Department of State Service quizzed him during the protest but they did not arrest him nor anybody who participated in the protest.
He said, “We are against the planned merger of the College of Education, Ila Orangun. We don’t want the college to be merged with any institution. We also do not want the college to be converted to a continuos education centre.
“Ogbeni Aregbesola is not the first governor of Osun State, he should leave the college alone. The college is the mainstay of our economy in the town and merging it with any institution would collapse the economy of the people of the town.”
Lecturers in the four tertiary institutions owned by the state government had condemned the alleged move to merge the institutions due to the financial crisis the state is facing.
The lecturers, who are members of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics , Iree and Esa Oke and the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union, Ilesa and Ila Orangun, in a communique issued after their meeting at Esa Oke said “Council frowns at the clandestine move of the state government to merge the two state polytechnic and the two Colleges of Education and describes it as an ill-advised, laughable, non-progressive and obnoxious policy that will only complicate the sufferings of the masses.”
(Punch)
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