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Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State explained the rationale behind his action to appoint a consultant to oversee and manage the revenues generated internally by higher education institutions in the state.
Makinde made the disclosure on Thursday inaugurating the board of trustees of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) Ogbomoso.
DAILY POST found that some staff and students at state higher education institutions and other stakeholders condemned the governor’s action for his action to appoint a consultant to manage the institutions’ revenues.
The professors of the institutions are still on indefinite strike.
Our correspondent gathered one of the main reasons for the strike is the appointment of the consultant by the governor.
Makinde said, however, that he decided to hire the consultant because the institutions were not ready to embrace transparency.
He argued that the government resorted to hiring consultants because financial activities in institutions were opaque.
Makinde, while speaking further, added that his administration’s desire to improve the quality of education in the state had led to increasing grants to higher education institutions to 100 percent from the 50 percent. cent, that the last administration had raised it in the last. government days.
He said, “Let me also take this opportunity to talk about the continuing crisis at Ibadan Polytechnic. Although most of the other higher education institutions that went on strike have retreated, only Polytechnic Ibadan remains.
“The students were at the Secretariat the other day to make their concerns known and we listened to them. But I must be very clear; we would not be in this situation if the boards of directors of these schools did their work in a transparent and honest manner.
“What issues were they talking about? They said they didn’t want Platinum consultants and the like. But we had to resort to hiring consultants because of the opacity of their transactions.
“The day before the departure of the previous administration, they reduced the subsidy for higher education establishments from 25% to 50% and from this 50%, we moved it to 100%. We said we would do it because education is one of the main pillars of this administration.
“But I told them if we go forward with 100% grants, you should be open with your IGR as well. We watched the situation for several months and heard nothing about IGR. As a result of this, we hired a consultant.
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