Dayo “Bush” Aleobiosu Offers Solution To Nation’s Major Problem

Dayo Alebiosu the popular politician known as D-Bush has offered a way out of a major national problem.

The former two-term Federal Lawmaker from Kosofe, Lagos state provided the solution to collapsing standard of education across the country when he appeared on TVC’s Your View last week.

“We should be looking at more teacher training colleges so that the best quality teachers if our currency isn’t attractive enough for them to come, it means we have to bring the mountain to Mohammed, have them train the people with that passion (to teach) so that the knowledge can calculate down” the chieftain of the All Progressives Congress stated.

Alebioshu made the suggestion against the backdrop of tracing the genesis of the falling standard of education to the 1983 policy of the federal government to provide better employment for its citizens.

“ If I remember clearly in 1983, the scare of employment, the government came up with a policy to protect its citizenry they decided that some foreigners had to leave. If you think back during that period we had white teachers, Ghanians teachers, Togolese teachers, Lebanese, Indian teachers.

Some of them came inside to work, some of them came with their husbands who were expatriates and we had the best from everywhere feeding into our educational system. And we had proper standard and we also had a currency which was practically at per with the pound. So for those who were British they lived a better life earning the same amount of money or slightly less than in England.

The Ghanaians who came were attracted by the value of our currency. Over time when we decided that foreigners had to leave, if I am right I think they had between 90 and 120 days to leave, so what happened? They left with all that knowledge, we wanted to create employment so we looked to graduates oh you studied by biology you are going to become a biology teacher, you studied mathematics you are going to become a mathematics teacher forgetting that studying something and having the passion to teach it are two completely different things.” D-Bush provided insight.

The former Special Assistant on Housing in Lagos state before he was elected a Federal House of Representatives Member in 2007 explained further “Fast forward to now, Government came up with a policy after realizing that Government couldn’t do it alone, what did they do? The government gave out licenses to individuals and people from the private sector and they came up with private schools but the question is, what was that to address? Was it that we didn’t have enough schools or we were looking at the quality and standard of education?

Now we are dealing with the fact that can’t have foreigners come here because our currency is really not as attractive to them. The Ghanaians don’t want to come because they are comfortable where they are at. And we have seen so many schools now. I think Lagos state alone as at 2019 had 20,000 registered private schools. 20,000. The question is does that change the standard and quality of Education? The answer is no?.” and further insisted “ So what should we be looking at, we should be looking at more teaching training colleges.”

To complement the training of teachers, the Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) also pointed out that “We understand that from time to time we need to review the constitution, with our curriculum as well necessity is the mother of invention, we have to continue to change our curriculum to fit into the times, that is on one side, do I think the curriculum is weak? I think it needs to be rejigged.”

While harping on the need to create more teacher training colleges, Dayo Bush advocated that colleges of education should be privatized – if possible – to maximize the inherent and apparent gains in the process.

“There is a saying that the difference between a stepping stone and a stumbling block is how you use them, why don’t we turn those teachers from stumbling block to stepping stones (with better training)” the politician urged with feelings.

The falling standard of education has resulted in a drop in standards across different sectors and particularly an upsurge in reported cases of deaths with links to bullying in schools.