Kunle Adelabu
The Sekumade of Ipakodo, His Royal Majesty, Oba (Engr.) Bashir Shotonwa, has expressed his displeasure at the non-existence of the Ipakodo Vocation Centre which for many years trained youth in different skills.
Oba Shotonwa lamented the abandonment of the facility when the representative of Ikorodu Federal Constituency, Rep. Babajimi Benson, visited royal fathers in Ikorodu Division to get their blessings for his fourth term re – election at the Ayangbure Palace during the week.
The royal father who is keen in seeing the vocational centre resuscitated appealed to the three -term lawmaker to intervene in resuscitating the facility for youth to be trained and engaged.
“We need you to provide more employment opportunities for youths and I also want your intervention in bringing back the vocational centre in Ipakodo.
“The vocational centre operated for years and it has been down now for many years and they are not doing anything to it.
“The centre would have provided the much -needed skill training for our youths that do not have anything to do,” the royal father said.
Oba Shotonwa further said that all his findings about what led to the collapse of the centre did not yield any result and frowned at how the council mismanaged the place.
“I have carried out my investigations and I am yet to find out how the vocational centre was ruined. I nearly wept the day I visited the centre seeing sewing machines, computers and other machines abandoned and rotting away.
“Our people mismanaged the centre and they abandoned the place and it is now a shadow of itself.
“We are going to write to you, Jimi Benson, to assist us in rehabilitating the centre, so that it can serve our people again and others all over Ikorodu Division,” Oba Sekumade said.
But as things stand today the old structure which housed the vocational centre had been demolished some years ago to clear the way for the redevelopment of the land into what the Chairman of Ikorodu West LCDA, Hon. Sulaimon Kazeem Olanrewaju, said would maintain the vocational centre with an event centre.
In 2021, while speaking with THE IMPACT on allegations that his administration has given out the vocational centre’s land and another property that is located at Noah Junction in Ipakodo which also belongs to the council to a contractor to convert them into shops, Hon. Sulaimon Olanrewaju said:
“On the vocational centre, it was not my regime that awarded it but my predecessor at the same time.I made enquiry immediately I resumed, what the Council Manager told me was that the vocational centre remains a vocational centre. The contractor will only add value by adding an event centre which catering students will use for practical purposes. There will be WAPA’s office there too. That is the agreement they had with the contractor,” Hon. Sulaimon clarified then.
Meanwhile, nothing has happened on the said land since its demolition by the council.
Attempts to get the council’s position on the concern raised by the Sekumade proved abortive as the Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman has not yet responded to our reporter who sent him WhatsApp chats and also called him for his principal’s response for the past four days.
