A former Head of Service of the Federation, Prof. Oladapo Olatunji, has urged the federal government to give new private schools tax holidays, while schools that have been in existence for a reasonable number of years should pay tax.
Olatunji stated this Friday in Abuja while speaking with journalists at the graduation ceremony of KIA Lakeside Academy, Abuja.
The former Head of Service who is also the Board Chairman of the school said KIA Lakeside Academy was established in 2008, saying the school has the best teachers that give dedicated attention to students.
He said: “New schools should be given tax holidays, but when your school is matured to pay tax, you should pay appropriately. But by the time you are producing really good quality students, you can use the performance of the students to give tax rebates.”
Olatunji also called on the federal government to take a holistic approach to review the implementation of education policy in the country.
He stressed that the review became imperative in order to have good quality education and a good quality skill set that will serve the country’s labour.
He said: “When you go to a good quality secondary school and you have a very poor quality university, you won’t go there. This is why you have many students that are going “Japa” (schooling abroad). It is because they’re looking for good quality. Sometimes they miss it, because it’s the name of the country that they go for, they don’t know what is inside. Some of our universities are better than some of the ones they go to abroad.
“So we need to do some real work. I hope this new government will pay attention to tertiary institutions. In a way, government will take a holistic way to review the way we are implementing our education policy, and review the education policy in a way that we have good quality education, good quality skill set that will serve our labour.”
Also, the Keynote Speaker,, Mr. Tope Fashedemi, said while the graduands have spent a lot of time in the classrooms, learning mathematics, economics, and languages of the West, the most important lessons they have learnt would not be from the textbooks but from their interactions with people.
He added: “During this period of your stay in school, you would have experienced upside and the downside, you would have learned perseverance, you would have succeeded in some tasks, you would have failed in other tasks, not winning targets. You must have learned what it means to fall, to fail and to rise again to give it another shot.
“These are all important lessons. That will serve you well in your journey into adulthood. As you put your head in this life journey, never forget all the foundational lessons that you had during this stage of your life.”