By Stephen Adeleye

Kogi State Government has urged host communities of public schools to halt the habit of encroachment on the school land, warning that government would take decisive action against perpetrators.

The State’s Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Hon. Wemi Jones, FCIB, gave the warning after he led a team on an inspection tour of the facilities at Government Technical Colleges in Ankpa and Idah at the Eastern senatorial district of the State.

He urged the host communities to those colleges to stop encroaching the school land, stressing that government would do everything possible to recover all its encroached land across the state.

Jones added that the state government would be soliciting the cooperation of the paramount rulers of those communities to help persuade the land grabbers to desist from such act.
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”If you build your structure on school land no matter how beautiful it is, you are merely wasting your time and resources as far as government is concerned.

”Land speculators are deceiving themselves because you don’t have a land or property if you have built illegally on the school land, and the law is going to catch up with you very soon,” Jones siad.

He noted that government was looking at revamping the colleges, to be getting adequate students as intake into the new Confluence University of Science and Technology (CUSTECH), Osara.

The commissioner restated the commitment of the state’s Governor, Alh. Yahaya Bello, to revamping education especially technical education in the state.

”As I have said it severally in various fora that His Excellency, Alhaji Yahaya Bello is irreversibly committed to revamping education in our state, and technical education takes a primary place if we are ever going to get it right in this country.

”This is because of the fact that the moment you are out of technical college ordinarily you have a vocation that you can then decide to build upon”, he said.

According to him, there is a need to take care of our secondary schools and technical colleges so as to adequately feed our students into those state own tertiary institutions.

”We are here on a visit to the technical colleges to know the level of work to do in rehabilitating and revamping them.

”Presently, we have four state own technical colleges in Kogi, which include: Oboroke, Ankpa, Idah and Mopa, and we have visited three to assess their facilities.

”We will be visiting the fourth one in Mopa before the end of this week by God’s grace”, he said.

Jones emphasised that the state government would revamp all the four state’s technical colleges, and create 17 additional ones in the remaining 17 local government areas of Kogi State.

He added that the establishment of additional 17 technical colleges was already a law in the state, saying, ”we already have a template to run the colleges effectively.

”It is going to be immediate thing, because His Excellency is irreversibly committed to ensuring that education is totally revamped in Kogi”, Jones said.

He noted that adequate provision had been made for the the resuscitation of the four existing technical colleges in the 2021 budget.

The Principal of Government Technical College, Idah, Mr Abdullahi, commended the commissioner and his team for the visit, saying he was so happy for the action.

Ibrahim also thanked the governor for his intervention in resuscitating all the technical colleges in the state, while appealing for provision of adequate qualified teachers.

The principal also appealed the commissioner to help the schools to recover all school land that had been encroached by individuals in their host communities.

In the Commissioner’s team, were the Permanent Secretary, Kogi MOEST, Pastor Emmanuel Idenyi; Director Science and Technology, Mr Dipo Aiyenibe; and Director Tertiary Education, Mrs Taiye Bolu, among others.

The Government Technical College, Ankpa, was established in 1975, while that of Idah was established in 1959 and had its present principal, Abdullahi Ibrahim as its 35th principal of the college.

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