Oyo State Takes School to the Market — Literally

The Oyo State Government has come up with one of the more practical education interventions in recent memory — instead of waiting for market children to come to school, it is bringing school to the markets.

Free evening classes are launching across major markets in Ibadan from April 27, 2026, running daily from 4 pm to 6 pm. The pilot covers three key market clusters: Mokola/Sabo, Bodija, and Agbeni/Idi-Kan, with designated learning centres at St. Brigid’s Primary School in Mokola, St. Patrick’s Basic School in Idi-Kan, and Methodist Primary School in Bodija.

Commissioner for Education Olusegun Olayiwola, who announced the programme on April 23, explained the thinking behind the approach. Many of the children who are out of school are not idle — they are working, running errands in markets, helping families survive. A standard school day was never going to reach them. Evening classes, timed around when their obligations ease up, might.

“Every child has a legal right to basic education,” Olayiwola said, framing the initiative not as charity but as the government meeting an obligation it has no business walking away from. Critically, the administration chose flexibility over enforcement — creating a realistic pathway into education rather than simply penalising parents for circumstances that are rarely straightforward.

Groundwork has already been done. The Director of Basic Education, Susan Oladipo, confirmed that sensitisation campaigns have been carried out across the target markets, and that market leaders have pledged to help identify affected children and encourage their participation. That kind of community buy-in tends to make the difference between a programme that launches well and one that actually sustains.

For the children working in Oyo’s markets — the ones the formal school system has effectively written off — this is a small but meaningful opening. Whether it grows into something that genuinely shifts the out-of-school numbers depends on execution. But the instinct behind it is right.