The Egba Science Education Foundation has disclosed that it stopped a multi-million naira project due to the dearth of science teachers in some public secondary schools in Ogun State.
The foundation said it planned to equip all laboratories of public schools in the Ogun Central Senatorial District with N2m each, but had to put a halt to it due to the dearth of science teachers in many public schools.
The Vice-Chairman of the foundation, Dr Funmilayo Alatishe, disclosed this during a press briefing held in Abeokuta on the foundation’s maiden edition of the Olatunde Abudu Annual Lecture scheduled to hold on Tuesday.
Alatishe said the foundation had to channel the fund to other projects, including scholarships for students in tertiary institutions, who are Egba indigenes, and remedial programmes for secondary school pupils.
The committee vice-chairman, who was flanked by the President of the Abeokuta Club, who is also the Chairman, Publicity Committee for the lecture, Tokunbo Odebunmi, said the development had been taken to the attention of state government, which pledged to take necessary measures to correct the narrative.
Odebunmi stated, “Over the years, we have equipped science laboratories in government schools in Abeokuta. We found out that despite equipping those schools with science laboratory equipment, there were no science teachers to operate them. The pieces of equipment cost millions of naira, but they became useless due to the lack of science teachers.
“We have stopped equipping laboratories and went into remedial programmes for SS3 students and scholarship programmes for university students across the nation for more than 10 years now.
“We select students from each secondary school through an aptitude test. We have a minimum of 50 beneficiaries annually and for the scholarship programme, we select two students from each university across the country. We strictly select only students who are Egba indigenes.”
Speaking on the annual lecture held for the nonagenarian philanthropist, Odebunmi announced that the foundation had resolved to immortalise Abudu with the maiden lecture.
Odebunmi added that the annual lecture with the theme, ‘The Impact of Science and Technology on Agriculture’, was planned to raise issues on the need to embrace technology in agriculture.
He said thousands of students in various tertiary institutions in the country had benefited from scholarships from the foundation since it began 20 years ago.
Odebunmi said the nonagenarian had been the pillar of support for the foundation and it was resolved to immortalise him with the annual lecture.
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