To have a child is usually an indescribable feeling. Even for people who have children they never planned for or even wanted, at some level, the joy of bringing a new life into the world must be indescribable and irrepressible.
To bring a child into the world and to watch that child grow, to be responsible for that child and to see that child become somebody who can take care of themselves as well as be responsible for other people must be very satisfying.
It is why parents and teachers take such joy and play such critical roles in the life of any society at any point in time. Because they are largely responsible for raising and forming children, they shape society in many ways.
Parents have children and nurture them at home before sending them to school to continue their training. In school under the watchful eyes of their teachers many children take formative steps that go a long way in shaping what they end up becoming .
Education, especially early education, is arguably the greatest gift any child can be given. This is because at that foundational stage of their lives, children can be shaped in the best possible way when they are given quality education.
In Nigeria, decades of deterioration have been presaged by a shocking slip in the standard of education. As windows have come off decrepit school buildings with reptiles making their roost in classrooms just as the quality of teachers has dropped, Nigeria’s struggle as a country has been perfectly mirrored by the poorly educated citizens that pass through its schools.
A chief cause of the decline in the standard of education in Nigeria is that is that over the years many of those who have been entrusted with managing education in Nigeria have been plainly indolent at times while moonlighting as saboteurs at other times.
A perfect illustration was illuminated last year when Nigerian students were left stuck at home by an unfortunate strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities. While the students were stuck at home, some prominent Nigerian politicians, many of them serving government officials, whipped up a venue of vultures where millions of naira were frittered away on dubious party politics and bribes.
As public schools have disintegrated in Nigeria, private schools have come to the fore, many of them with their peculiar brand of academic abracadabra. While many of these schools hang around, cut as many corners as they can, to try to stay in business while pretending to deliver quality education or at least something better than what public schools offer, the grander schools charge millions in school fees and exaggerate their efforts to replicate the kind of education found in developed countries.
It is never a good thing to hear about the death of a child. When a child dies in school, under the watchful eyes of their teachers, few things break the heart more violently. The past few days have been days of unbridled agony for the parents of Whitney Adesola Adeniran, a twelve-year-old student of Chrisland Schools Lagos who died in mysterious circumstances during the inter-house sports of the school at the Agege Stadium on 9th February,2023.
While contrasting reports have trailed the death of the child, the fact remains that a child died in school under their care. The painful deaths of Sylvester Oromoni who died on November 21,2021 at Dowen College Lagos, and Keren Akpagher a 14-year-old SS1 student who died while a student of Premiere Academy Lugbe Abuja on 12 June 2021 are recalled with painful ferocity.
Have some of Nigeria’s most expensively and expansively appointed schools become graveyards for children?
What are the standards and who is enforcing the standards? When these schools demonstrate remonstrable negligence in handling children entrusted to their custody, who ensures that they do not slip through the net of sanctions so loosely held over many aspects of life in Nigeria?
But of course, these deaths are to be expected. In a country where death seems to stalk everyone and everything, it is little surprising that school children are now being picked off. Those who expect consequences for these schools may be hit by a gale of bitter disappointment at the end of the day because many things keep falling through the cracks.
It factors into the larger basket of tough conditions children have to endure in a country that chills more than it thrills. Nigeria’s number of out-of-school children stand at a massive 20 million. As conflicts have turned many parts of the country into war zones, it is children that have been left to bear the brunt of a failing country, scalded as they were by the coals of a burning country.
Unless Nigeria moves to shut down some of these killer schools, the country will continue to be schooled in the art of unaccountably losing its children.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
