From Sade Adewale, Ondo
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Adequate facilities  have been said to be the driver of education due to its importance to the delivery of academic process.

Stating this was the guest lecturer at the 2nd  Annual lecture of the Federal Polytechnic, Ile Oluji,(FEDPOLEL),  a  fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects and founder of Stagray Associates,Akure,  Arch Wale Adelowo.

In his lecture titled” School Facilities :An essential combination of education infrastructure” said school facilities is a social infrastructure in education which can be referred to as the physical space and equipment that support teaching, learning and research programmes as well as suitable places to socialise and recreate in school ,ie. school buildings, classrooms, libraries, laboratories, toilet facilities and offices etc”

According to him:” research findings have shown that school facilities plays  vital role in providing access to quality education and that poor or insufficient school infrastructure negatively impacts students learning and schooling outcome”.

He stated that education is a social infrastructure, which if considered critically will bring economic success and long term development of a developing nation like Nigeria.

He asserted that for a school facility to be effective it should be responsive to the changing programmes of educational delivery and should also provide a physical environment that is “comfortable, safe,secure, accessible, well  illuminated, well-ventilated, and aesthetically pleasing”

The guest lecturer, having clearly reviewed the various educational policies in the country in relation to provision of school infrastructure, lamented that the present state of school facilities across tertiary institutions is still poor.

According to him, this observation might have been predicated on a number of factors, among which were:over-estimation of available resources; under-estimation of the costs of implementing a plan;over-reliance upon foreign sources of aid for implementation and inaccurate statistical data for planning.

In order to overhaul the poor facilities in the tertiary institutions, Architect Adelowo posited that policy makers and critical stakeholders in the education sector should think outside the box in terms of funding by embracing Build, Operate and Transfer( BOT)Strategy, Endowments and Capital Market funding.

While declaring the lecture opened, the Rector of the Polytechnic, Prof. Emmanuel Fasakin, congratulated the directorate for sustaining the lecture series and  charged it not to abandon it. The Polytechnic’s helmsman emphasised that initiatives would be encouraged in the Institution and it would not be killed, while calling on every staff to develop themselves to sustain the system.

He hinted that the role of the Directorate of Physical Planning in the infrastructural development of the Institution is key and should not be compromised during projects conception and implementation.”We must be painstaking in the conceptualisation of our buildings to avoid building collapse.

Earlier in his welcome address, the Director of Physical Planning,  Oyetunde Oyelola, appreciated the Institution’s management for its support and the audience for their attendance.