11th October, 2017
Adejoke Adeleye/Abeokuta
No fewer than 30 buildings were damaged by heavy rain at the Federal College of Education, Osiele, Abeokuta on Tuesday afternoon.
The rain damaged major buildings in the School.
Speaking with newsmen on the incident, the Deputy Provost of the College, Dr Rafiu Soyele said the damage was enormous.
His words: “As at yesterday we were in the office around 2:30pm, when the rain came but we thought it was going to be a small thing and the normal rain but surprisingly it started from my office”.
“I noticed flood in my office and I asked some staff to clean it up and just as they were doing that, I started receiving calls from different quarters reporting the devastating effect the rain has had on their files and sections”.
“We started moving round to see what has really happened. We were sad because of the devastating effect the rain caused on the campus”.
“The rain affected the Provost office, the vocational education department, office of the Dean, the Micro Teaching laboratory, Students Union building, the 1500-seat hall of the institution, among others”.
“In fact the incident occurred during an examination”.
He lamented that “The damage is enormous, the buildings that are affected are not less than thirty, we discovered this when we moved round yesterday and that is the issue on ground”.
“Honestly, we are not happy with what happened here yesterday but we just have to let the government know the environmental hazard that has occurred in our college”.
On the financial implication of the damages, the Deputy Provost said: “Well, that is the duty of our Director of Works and I am sure that before the end of the week he must have been able to come out with a specific amount that can capture the repairs”.
He called on government to assist the institution, saying, “We would need the assistance of the Federal government because the damage is enormous and we all know that we are in an era of paucity of fund”.
“We are lucky because we are almost concluding our examination and the students are almost leaving for their various homes, so this has no effect on the students for now, but we must address it before their resumption and by November ending, the students will be resuming back to school because we are almost concluding our admission process”.
“We still want to thank God because there is no casualty at all”.