Education
INDEPENDENCE DAY MIRACLE: How a Mooted Idea Became a N282 Million School Built With Family Money
By Joseph Sunday
To mark Nigeria’s 66th Independence Anniversary, Senate Leader, Senator Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, on Thursday unveiled what is essentially a brand new school at Government Science College, Iyin-Ekiti, with a patriotic disclaimer: relax, government did not spend one kobo.
What was commissioned: repainted and refurnished classroom blocks, male and female hostels whose roofs no longer serve as observatories, a fully equipped science laboratory complex where chemicals actually exist, and three new buses that can start without being pushed.
The ceremony was witnessed by Governor Biodun Oyebanji, represented by Commissioner for Education, Dr. Olabimpe Aderiye, former Governor Otunba Niyi Adebayo, and students who were reportedly seeing their school walls in full colour for the first time.
“This Is Not Constituency Project — Don’t Check Budget Office”
Senator Bamidele was quick to clear the air.
“Let me be very clear. This is not a constituency project. I did not use constituency money. I used family money,” he declared, to thunderous applause and visible confusion among accountants in the crowd.
“I had to source money through personal intervention from my family.”
He then apologized on behalf of the state government for the sorry state of the school’s temporary site, saying it was his fault.
“I personally went to the Ministry of Education and told them, ‘Abeg, leave this school for me. Don’t renovate it. I told my people I will handle the permanent site.’ So they left it. If you thought government abandoned it, it was me. I told them to abandon it. Strategically.”
How Mr. Balogun Muted an Idea
Providing historical context, former Governor Otunba Niyi Adebayo revealed how the school came to be in the first place.
“When I was Governor, the Science School at Iyin-Ekiti was facilitated because the idea was muted by one Mr. Balogun,” he said.
Sources confirmed Mr. Balogun did not actually mute the idea. He mooted it. But the crowd preferred “muted” — because in Ekiti politics, good ideas are usually muted first before they are built.
Otunba Adebayo confessed that during his time, “there was a little money to embark on any meaningful project” — a statement the Ministry of Finance has now adopted as its official motto.
He explained how government managed the little money: the land and facilities for the science school formerly belonged to Egirioke Secondary School.
In other words, government did what government does best. It did not build a new school, it re-baptized an old one. Egirioke went to bed as a secondary school and woke up as a science school. Instant development.
The Love Triangle and The N282 Million Saint
Senator Bamidele then explained the complicated love triangle that kept students stuck in the temporary site.
The permanent site of the secondary school had already been prepared for handover when the Federal Government approved a new university — the Federal University of Technology and Environmental Sciences, Iyin-Ekiti. The community pleaded that the university be allowed to use the secondary school’s permanent site as its temporary take-off site. The state agreed.
In summary: the secondary school’s permanent site became the university’s temporary site, while the secondary school remained in its temporary site that was supposed to have been vacated for the permanent site.
“Simple,” Bamidele explained.
The university signed an undertaking to vacate by July 2026, but couldn’t, because the road to its own permanent site — also being facilitated by the Senator — is still under construction.
“Lorries cannot pass when it rains. So the road delayed the university, the university delayed the school, and the school delayed my Independence Day speech. But we thank God.”
Bamidele revealed the six-week miracle cost N282 million.
“When I asked for his bill, the young engineer gave me a detailed bill — N282 million. I sent it to two other engineers who are my friends to verify. The difference was less than 15 percent. In Nigeria, where quotation can be a work of fiction, that means this young man is a saint and should be given a national honour.”
Otunba Adebayo reserved the climax for the Chief Facilitator himself, describing Bamidele as “indeed a God-sent, not only to Iyin-Ekiti, or Ekiti State, but to the whole Nigeria.”
Eyewitnesses said the prayer that followed was so powerful that even the new Federal University paused its own construction to say “Amen.”
“You will continue to make yourself a proud son of Iyin-Ekiti,” Otunba prayed. Political analysts present said in Ekiti, once a former governor prays for you like that in public, you have just received a second-term endorsement without INEC.
At press time, Mr. Balogun, the man who muted the idea that built a school, could not be reached for comment. Sources say he is busy muting another idea that will become another university.
The ceremony ended with students rendering the National Anthem flawlessly, proving that even if the laboratory was missing, the music department was intact.