By Adewale Oshodi
MRS Bukola Ladoja, wife of a former governor of Oyo State, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, over the weekend, took her ‘readers are leaders’ initiative to Bashorun area of Ibadan, where school children were imparted with the importance of reading.
Ladoja, who is the president and founder of Reading Awareness Society for Development in Africa (RASDA), has taken her pet project to several states in the country, including Ogun, Lagos, Imo, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), among others.
The project aims to make the younger generation to be aware that they can achieve whatever they set their minds on by acquiring knowledge to help them move towards their goals.
Last Saturday, students of Bashorun High School and other schools in the Bashorun area of Ibadan converged on the Winners Chapel, Bashorun, to benefit from Mrs Ladoja’s mentorship.
Speaking to the students, Mrs Ladoja, who described them as her children, said the major focus of the event is to identify the challenges facing Nigeria and then find those who could work to solve them in the future.
The students were first tasked with the assignment of identifying the problems confronting the country, and the responses include corruption, money rituals, infrastructural challenges, insecurity, lack of human capacity, among others.
Before going on, Mrs Ladoja made the participants realise that the challenges were not created by Nigeria as a geographical entity, but by the people who live in Nigeria.
She, therefore, admitted that to solve the challenges, then the students must be educationally-equipped to broaden their horizons and contribute positively to the development of the country.
She charged the students to, in their own little ways, not create further problems for the country by becoming cultists, internet fraudsters, drug addicts, or engaging in examination malpractice.
“Once you have any challenges you are facing, finding a solution only requires you to broaden your minds on that problem; for example, someone who wants to join cultism only needs to read about the problems cultists create in the society.
“Or if you want to engage in smoking or taking hard drugs, you only need to read about the dangers these substances can cause in one’s body system. Some substances even make one go insane, so through reading, you will be able to know what is right and what is wrong.
“Therefore, we are not here to only teach you about the importance of reading, but we are forming a group through which myself and other professionals can continue to monitor your progress academically.
“We will also be there for you, maybe when you need to gain admission to higher institutions of learning and you have no one to assist you secure admission.
“We will also help look for scholarships for you, and that is why I said you have become my children from today, and a mother only wants the best for her children.”
Other professionals who spoke at the event include the Director of Training, National Broadcast Academy, Dr Ayodele Aliyu; a civil engineer, Pastor Godfrey Asije; and wife of the Senior Pastor of Winners Chapel, Bashorun, Mrs Bukola Alabi.
It was, however, not all lectures as the students also displayed their talents by singing and dancing, before they finally wrote short stories which they submitted to the organisation.
Mrs Ladoja then said through the group created, the students will have access to a book every week, adding that this will encourage them to read the books in a week before signing up for another one.
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