Secondary School Principals urge Nigerian Government to secure schools

The All Nigeria Confederation of Principals of Secondary Schools (ANCOPSS) have urged the Nigerian Government to secure all schools in the country.

The President of ANCOPSS, Mr. Anselm Izuagie, said the Nigerian principals are not happy with the situation and decried the spate of kidnappings in the country especially those of students.

The President of ANCOPSS, Mr. Anselm Izuagie who made the call during the official commissioning of ANCOPSS secretariat in Gwagwalada, FCT, yesterday, lamented that principals feel helpless that they cannot protect children under their custody.

He added that, “It is an unfortunate thing for people to target innocent children and use them as bait to make money and nobody is doing anything about it. You can see it is on the increase, everyday schools are attacked and children are kidnapped for ransom. I think God will not forgive those people because I know some of them are also fathers and if this kind of thing happens to their children, they won’t be happy.

“It is an unfortunate situation which ANCOPSS is not happy about but we are helpless because we cannot create security for ourselves so our cry is for the government to be committed and safeguard all schools in the country”.

On the welfare of teachers, Izuagie said though teachers are not rewarded for their hard work, they take consolation from the fact that their reward is in heaven.

According to him,“Reward of teachers is both in heaven and on earth. Jesus Christ was the first teacher on earth and he did a good job and he was rewarded in heaven so when they say our reward is in heaven it is assured that nobody can take it from us”.

A former president of ANCOPPS and now a serving senator, Malam Ibrahim Sekarau, who was the special guest at the event, emphasised the need for more budgetary allocation to education sector.

“It is true education has not been receiving the appropriate funding but it is very pleasing that last week our president was among others in the UK where they took a decision and passed a resolution that all the nations involved should allocate not less than 25 of the national budgets to education. In fact, the United Nations requirement is minimum of 26 per cent of any nation’s fund to go to education.

“I can understand we have never gotten there before because of the serious challenges that we do have; we have so many social challenges. Up till today some communities are drinking water from the same pond with their animals—this is health challenge. We have problem of roads, problem of agricultural facilities, all these put together are part of the challenges.

“Education, of course is top priority but food first. If you build schools and people are hungry, nobody will go to school. If people are sick, you build school, nobody can go to school. So you have to tackle all these challenges but I can say education is the wheel on which all development programmes rotate, so we will continue to see that both the legislature and the executive give the sector the attention it deserves,” he said.

Shekarau also said welfare of teachers was still not good enough.

“Welfare of teachers is the same thing as we talk about the welfare of the security agencies. Mallam Aminu Kano used to argue that any nation that neglects three categories of people will never grow. If you neglect teachers, security operatives and you neglect the old among you, you will never progress. But this government is coming up, not too long ago, the president passed a law which gives teachers a good salary scale and we are looking forward to many more privileges to the teachers. If you don’t make teachers happy, there is no way they will make your child happy so the whole thing reverts to the society. Only patriotic minds produce patriotic citizens and if there is no welfare, you cannot be patriotic and therefore you produce unpatriotic citizens. The earlier we all agree to make the life of a teacher better, the better for all of us,” he added.

Nnenna.O