– He advised young ones to invest in their time wisely
A 60 year-old man who has decided to go back to school is the talk of the town in Bomadi local government area of Delta state.
Adalabu Seribor is a junior secondary school two student at Izon College, Bomadi-Overside in Delta. Seribor,
popularly called Oyibo is a wheelbarrow pusher in the community. He revealed how he made the decision to go back to school at an old age. According to him, this development has kept many people wondering what he wanted to achieve by going to school at that age.
According to Punch, who cited Southern city news, the old man shed more light on his decision to go back to school.
“I am sixty years now and I decided to go to school at this age because I perpetually feel the pain of being an illiterate in this modern world where everything has to do with English and education.
“My mother died during child birth when I was a little boy while my father was a hunter. I was bred by a grandmother after the death of my mother and later taken to a step-mother when my father remarried.
“I went through pains and hardship at my tender age to adulthood. It would interest you to know that I was so tender at the time my mother died that I was crying for food while she lay dead.
“I went through struggles all through my life history. I had the opportunity to go to school at my young age, when a relative who was a magistrate at Ekeremor in Bayelsa state took me to his house.
“But because of early morning beatings due to my failure to greet him when rising from bed, I went back to my father. I had no opportunity to go to school since then, and continued in hard labor to survive in life, which I am still doing.”
While narrating what prompted him to take that kind of decision, the 60 year-old wheelbarrow pusher further stated that,
“I realized that without education, one cannot do well in this present society. I also do not want a situation whereby someone else would interpret or write for me if eventually I am chosen to hold an office in my community.
“I make a living by pushing wheelbarrow. After school hours, I go back home to look for work to do, which I have been doing for a living.
I pay my school fees from there. I am determined to complete my education because of the pains in my heart.
“I see that one cannot do well without education in this society. I do various menial jobs for a living. I pack dirt from gutters; I pack sand, clear grasses in people’s compounds and pack soak-away faeces in the dead of the night.
I am a JSS II student and by the grace of God, I will finish from this school.” The 60 year-old wheelbarrow pusher said he wants to be a teacher; in pursuit of this, he said he would move on to teachers’ training college at the end of his secondary education.
“I want to teach and I advised young boys and girls wasting their time and years roaming the streets to go to school.
If I can go to school, then why are young people wasting themselves,” he asked.
Edsemi Anesah, his class teacher described him as a dedicated and hardworking student.
“My encouragement to him is that he should hold onto his determination. He is the oldest student in the school and I advise young people out there to emulate him,” Anesah added.
Most people in the society are being conscious of the need to be educated.
The need to make money is not the sole reason for being educated, most people have discovered that to have a stable and happy life, education is important.
Most people’s dreams become a reality when they make the decision to ply the route of education.