Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele has renovated Government Science College in Iyin-Ekiti, Ekiti State, in a project reportedly valued at more than N200 million, replacing aging classrooms and facilities with a learning environment built to last beyond one political season.
The project is the latest dot in a legislative record built around the same theme. Since becoming Senate Leader in July 2023, Bamidele has directed the passage or amendment of over 108 bills, including the Student Loan Act of 2024, which opened funding for more than 500,000 students through NELFUND.
He also secured federal funding to establish the Federal University of Technology and Environmental Sciences in Iyin-Ekiti, giving his own community a tertiary institution it did not previously have.
Beyond the school building itself, Bamidele provided buses for the college and for the Federation of Iyin-Ekiti Students and Indigenes, addressing a transport gap that often decides whether students actually make it to class. But his constituency record extends well past education.
Over 50 roads, 12 mini-stadiums, and thousands of solar streetlights have reached his district, alongside ICU facilities at five hospitals and new ambulances donated to health centres across Ekiti State.
That pattern traces back to Lagos, where Bamidele served as Commissioner for Youth, Sports and Social Development under Bola Tinubu, then as Commissioner for Information and Strategy under Babatunde Fashola, both roles built around visible, delivered projects.
The man’s political roots go back further still. As National President of the National Association of Nigerian Students in 1989, Bamidele was arrested repeatedly during Nigeria’s pro-democracy struggle, a history that earned him the national honour of Commander of the Order of the Niger in 2022.
A renovated science college will not stay in the news for long. But for the students walking through its gates each morning, the difference is immediate, and it will still be there long after the story has moved on.