Last
Friday, the Minister of Education, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, announced
that all public and private primary and secondary schools are to resume
for the 2014/2015 session on September 22, 2014. This announcement
supersedes the earlier announced date of October 13.
Among
the preventive measures being put in place before the resumption are
the appointment and training of desk officers on Ebola information in
each of the schools; the provision of a minimum of two blood pressure
measuring equipment by the state Ministries of Education (what has this
got to do with Ebola? Methinks what is needed is thermometer or
temperature scanners); steady supply of water in schools while state
Ministries of Education are to establish a monitoring team for effective
supervision of school activities before and after opening of schools.
Since this announcement was made, a lot of rumpus has been generated as
the general public is divided on the appropriateness and timing of this
school resumption. While some have hailed the announcement, others have
condemned it.
Among those who have risen
stoutly against this order are the Nigerian Union of Teachers, Parents
Teachers Association of Nigeria and the Nigerian Medical Association.
Their main argument is that Nigeria had not yet successfully contained
the Ebola Virus Disease as new cases were still being recorded.
According to the NMA National Secretary-General, Dr. Olawunmi Alayaki,
“All schools ought to remain shut till all those under surveillance for
the Ebola Virus Disease in the country had been certified free.” He
opined further that, “Parents have no reason to be in a hurry because if
Ebola should enter any school, it will assume another dimension.
Children cannot survive isolation like adults. Nigeria is peculiar
because of her large population and we should be pragmatic and
proactive. It will not augur well for the country if we have another
outbreak due to carelessness.”
I am very worried at the way our
government officials reason. Why the haste to reopen schools? Some have
alleged that the private schools proprietors are the ones that mounted
pressure on the government to jettison the earlier resumption date. It
was insinuated that they are going to lose money if the resumption is
unduly delayed as they cannot afford to pay their teachers and other
staff for the vacation period. There is also the argument that the
school calendar will be negatively affected as they may not be able to
finish the school syllabus while those enrolled to partake in the next
West African School Certificate Examination will be the most affected.
As far as I am concerned, only the living go to school. It is better to
be safe than sorry. We must ensure that adequate safety measures are in
place before asking our children to resume schools. I know for a fact
that at present, more than half of public and private schools in this
country do not have good toilet facilities, water, sick bay, first aid
kit and basic requirement for hygiene and sanitation. How does
government intend to provide these facilities in less than two weeks
from now?
On the issue of terrorism raging across the country,
particularly in the north-eastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, I
develop goose pimples when I read of the atrocities being perpetrated by
the insurgents. How did we get to this sorry pass where human lives
have become so cheap, so much so that preventable deaths have now become
the order of the day? Who will deliver Nigeria from the hands of these
terrorists? Apart from the heavy causalities reportedly being inflicted
on the Nigerian Army and other security agents as well as the innocent
members of the public, there is now a growing population of the
Internally Displaced Persons. The IDP population in Nigeria is
conservatively put at about 3.3 million, according to the Internal
Displacement Monitoring Centre March 2014 figures. It needs be stated
emphatically that it is not only terrorism that is responsible for
Nigeria’s refugee problem. A natural disaster like flash flood as
experienced in 2012 is also a contributory factor. It is heart-rending,
therefore, that for no fault of theirs this huge population has now
become refugees in their own country. Indeed, some 70,000 of the IDPs
are said to be taking refuge in neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger
Republic.
According to the National Emergency Management Agency
assessment report of the IDPs published in the March 2014 Humanitarian
Bulletin Nigeria (a newsletter of the United Nations Office for
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), meal consumption has dropped from
three to one meal per day in most communities affected by the
rebellion; most of the IDPs have lost their livelihood to the
insurgency; out of the 2,500 boreholes in the states under emergency
rule, only 1,000 are functional; only 37 per cent of health facilities
in the SoE states are functional; there is a high percentage of
female-headed households and unaccompanied minors; in the IDP camps, the
ratio of persons to latrines is 500:1, and there are no view-protected
bathrooms for women. Isn’t that troubling? It needs to be understood
that this assessment was done on the IDPs in North-East Nigeria. The
IDPs are also to be found in Nassarawa, Benue, Taraba and even Kaduna
states where there have been inter-tribal and communal conflicts.
What
are the socio-political and economic implications of this IDP
challenge? First and foremost, the situation threatens our food
security. Many of these IDPs are farmers who produce food for the rest
of the country. Now, they do not have access to their farmland again.
They are now beggars. As it is, they no longer have the capacity to
contribute their quota to the growth of the economy, rather they have
been turned parasite, a burden, on the economy. They have to be fed,
clothed, and sheltered. Yet, all of these are in short supply. They do
not even have access to medicare and should there be an outbreak of
Ebola in any of the IDP camps, God save Nigeria! Cholera has been
reported in some of them, leading to preventable and untimely deaths.
Furthermore, for the children of these IDPs, schooling is out of the
equation. Who will teach them in their refugee camps? There have been
reports of armed robbery attacks on these hapless IDPs. Some of the
girls in the refugee camps are also being sexually molested by
unscrupulous elements who are taking advantage of their vulnerable
situation. These people cannot also vote during elections while those
who have migrated to safer havens out of the refugee camps are
constituting nuisance and security threat to the communities where they
are seeking refuge.
The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy
Centre in proffering solutions to this nagging problem had called for a
number of measures to be taken to ameliorate the plight of these IDPs.
The group, among other things, calls for a National Policy on IDPs;
timely development of database system on IDPs and up-to-date data for
use in national planning for IDPs. It also requested for the effective
implementation of the existing four-year Strategic Implementation Plan
of Action developed by the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants
and Internally Displaced Persons while also asking for the establishment
of effective early warning systems and proactive measures to reduce
disaster risks, prevent and resolve conflicts in any form to mitigate
the causes of displacement across the Federation. I personally commend
President Goodluck Jonathan’s terror Victim Support Fund initiative and
hope that the over N80bn realised at the July 31, 2014 fundraising
dinner by the Gen. T.Y. Danjuma VSF committee will be judiciously used.
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