12/01/2021
This man Adamu Adamu is sick. Education is beyond the parochial permutations of people like Adamu. How will the private schools, the largest employers of labour in Nigeria cope? The teachers, the school owners, other investors in that sector. It is possible to keep public school teachers at home and still continue to pay them. The last lockdown showed that teachers are dying daily even with the peanuts some of them are paid.
The government is not sincere on this issue. They allowed airlines which is even more susceptible to the pandemic to operate so that they could fly since road transport is no longer safe for them. Some would say online. Online teaching is not even the best option in our own part of the world because of so many reasons some of which are po*******hy, epileptic power supply, lack of adequate pedagogy to cater for easy, uniform and appropriate assessment. Education, especially the private ones cannot afford another lockdown. As we speak some private schools have either placed their worker on half salaries or downsize them. Some are even paying teachers wages: pay per appearance.
This is in addition to the increase in: petrol and Diesel pump prices, cement price, electricity tariff, prices of foodstuffs, transportation fare etc. Is the government deliberately killing private school teachers?
My suggestion is that the government can encourage schools to run both morning and afternoon session to reduce contacts and support them with palliatives to reduce the effect
By Hassan Yusuf
Lagos
