Politics and Emotions behind renaming of Wole Soyinka High School

The people of Ejigbo have lamented over the politics and emotions over fake agitation of renaming of Wole Soyinka High School, Ejigbo. The people demanded that  Osun State government should build more schools for them. The people of Ejigbo said they want the government to build more schools and not renaming of schools. How does renaming of schools lead to development of education?

There are concerns in Osun State about the cost of holding town hall meeting just to rename Wole Soyinka High School, Ejigbo. A town-hall meeting to hide and destroy, early 21th-century murals that some considered positive to Yoruba people.

The people of Osun State have voiced disapproval of renaming the school, saying that Prof Wole Soyinka has “pioneered and blazed a trail for people’s rights and equality in government,” and pointed to development he had written supporting Nigeria and Africa.

The people are confused concerning the name change and there is a lot more that the government and schools could and should be focusing on in dealing with out of school children and building more schools than simply renaming schools.

What I cannot understand is why the government is advancing a plan to have all these schools that Rauf Aregbesola built renamed, when there isn’t a plan to build new high schools. The people are frustrated about a lack of a plan, and they are especially frustrated with the fact that the discussion of these plans weren’t even on the agenda during the 2018 electioneering campaign of the present government in Osun State.

Ejigbo Community, the headquarters of Ejigbo Local Council of Osun State, was deceived recently against the renaming of a secondary school in the community after the Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka. The Office of the Special Adviser to the Governor on Civic Engagement held a meeting at Ejigbo Town Hall to urge Governor Gboyega Oyetola to erase Soyinka’s name and replace it with that of the progenitor of Ejigbo, Akinjole. The meeting was held to deceive the people of Ejigbo so that they can not demand for the building of more such school in Ejigbo. If the present government in Osun State is sincere, let it build more high schools in Ejigbo and name it after Great Akinjole and stop deceiving the people. If the government has personal issue with Wole Soyinka, I plead with the government to go and reconcile with him instead of using the people of Ejigbo for wrongful mission.

The proposed change of the school’s name would not only deceive the people of Ejigbo but also create a controversy on their sense of belonging. Let the present government build new schools and name it after Akinjole that would also serve as a reflection of respect accorded to the progenitor of the town.

The Special Adviser to the Governor on Civic Engagement, Mr. Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, should advise the government to fulfil all aspirations and desires by building more schools and stop renaming old schools. The development of education in Osun State is beyond renaming old schools.

The administration of Aregbesola had christened the mega secondary school, built in the community in 2015, Wole Soyinka Government High School. The first in the series of mega-schools built by the Rauf Aregbesola administration in Osun state was formally opened in Ejigbo and fittingly christened in honour of Nigeria’s Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka.

The school, which cost N750million, is a 3,000-capacity complex with 72 classrooms of 49 square-metre, each capable of sitting 49 pupils. It has six offices for study groups. It will be known as Wole Soyinka Government High School, Ejigbo.

It is equipped with six laboratories, 18 toilets for girls and 18 for boys, one science library, one arts library, facility manager’s office, a bookshop and a sick bay.

Soyinka praised Aregbesola, saying he was elated that such honour was bestowed on him. He pledged to visit the school often to see how it was faring. He also said the school was an an “emphatic rejection of what Boko Haram insurgents preach”. He described the Federal Government’s failure to rescue the missing Chibok girls as shameful.

“It is a shame that the nation cannot account for over 200 girls in Chibok. I sympathise with the religious policy of governments in school; children must not be brought up feeling that religion inhibits knowledge. “In schools, we need not distinguish our children, the fatalistic religious holiness and the holier-than-thou attitude must be reduced among our pupils.”

Aregbesola said although the cost of the school was huge, he noted that it was a worthy investment. Wole Soyinka Government High School illustrates the extent to which names are imbued with cultural and legal meaning, and used to help legitimise certain engagements and interventions of Rauf Aregbesola as governor of Osun State.

Wole Soyinka Government High School reflects the political, military, economic, and social power of the Yoruba race. Investigation of the naming process reveals how Wole Soyinka negotiated his place in yoruba society and how he transferred his world views, history, and geography into Yoruba race. Places are social constructs created by human societies who imbue them with meaning and values. Assigning a name to a place is a powerful statement of political authority that may subsume religious beliefs, patterns of use, social values, a society’s views of the past, and its expectations of the future. The old axiom that the victors write the history should carry a corollary that they also get to name places.

Inwalomhe Donald writes from Ejigbo, Osun State