Pastors, police clash over Osun school merger

Pastors and some members of the Osun Baptist Conference on Wednesday resisted the attempt by policemen deployed in the Baptist Girls High School, Osogbo, Osun State, to force male pupils to resume in the school.

The state government is reclassifying public schools into elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. Subsequently, schools are being merged.

But Osun Baptist Conference had insisted that it would not allow the school to be changed into a mixed school or have its name changed.

Clerics from the church and members of congregation, led by the Christian Education Minister, Osun Baptist Conference, Rev. Bisi Oluwadamilare, had mobilised members to the school, singing hymns and praises at the school gate.

Numbering about 50, they prevented male pupils from going inside the school but did not stop female pupils transferred from others schools to the Baptist Girls High School.

Trouble started when the policemen deployed in the school asked male pupils to go inside the school by force. This made the clerics  and other protesters to close the gates. The action led to a scuffle but the crisis was later settled.

The crisis had hardly died down when the Deputy Governor, Mrs. Titi Laoye-Tomori, visited the school. Her intervention and plea with the cleric further doused the tension.

Oluwadamilare said in an interview with our correspondent that the church would resist the plan to change the name of the school and the plan to turn it into a mixed school.

He said, “We are not against the merger of schools by the government. They can bring pupils from any school here; we don’t care about their religions but we don’t want Baptist Girls High School to be turned into a mixed school. It is girls only and we want it to remain so.”

At Osogbo Grammar School, the merger was done with ease, while pupils brought to the school were seen seated in their classrooms when our correspondent visited the school around 9.am.

The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights had on Tuesday protested the plan to scrap Fakunle Comprehensive High School, alleging that the state government wanted to build a shopping complex on the premises.

The Osun State Coordinator of CDWR, Castro Abiona, said this in a communique issued at the end of a meeting of the group with other stakeholders.

Punch