Osun State Governor, Adegboyega Oyetola, has announced upgrade of the State College of Education, Ilesa to a full-fledged university.
Oyetola made the announcement in Ilesa on Thursday at the inauguration and handing-over of N1billion worth Ijesaland Geriatric Centre funded by the community to the management of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ile-Ife.
Oyetola also said the government has engaged a corporate consultant, KPMG, to work out the sustainability plan of the upgrade.
He said, “Let me say that, having looked into and examined carefully the request made by prominent sons and daughters of Ijesa Land, and the Owa, our highly-revered Royal Father, His Imperial Majesty, Owa Obokun Adimula of Ijesaland, Oba (Dr.) Gabriel Aromolaran, government has decided to upgrade the Osun College of Education, Ilesa, to a full-fledged University.”
Commenting on the project, Oyetola said the initiative was another testament to the generosity of Ijesa people, adding that the gesture would go a long way to complement his administration’s sustained investment in the health sector.
“Considering our nation’s growing aged population and the absence of the requisite medical care for our senior citizens, this project is certainly excellently well-thought-out and has definitely come to fill a much-needed void.
“In other words, the Ijesa Geriatric Centre is a welcome development as it brings closer to our people a specialised geriatric care. This is against the background of the truism that being old is not a disease and that senior citizens have a right to medical care as indeed the younger population,” Oyetola concluded.
