CALL TO ACTION

Covid19 has had a significant impact on the Health Sector in Nigeria. The combined effort of the Government and Private Sector is the game changer. I am amazed at the number of new health facilities that sprouted up in less than 1 year.

With the unprecedented development in the Health Sector comes a worrisome decay in the Educational Sector. All the public institutions in Nigeria were closed for almost all of last year, the worst hit age group are the primary and secondary school students.

When the schools were opened, we felt relieved thinking that the Educational Sector would finally be able to get on its feet, unfortunately, the upsurge of insecurity nicked our hope in the bud.

To properly describe the severity of the situation, the students of public primary and secondary schools in Niger State have only had about 120 hours of learning hours in the past one year.

You were shocked? Yeah! 120 hours in the past one year.

UNESCO data showed that the state has approximately 30,000 public school students in the Upper Secondary section while there are approximately 3000 of their counterparts in Private Schools.

That means in the past 1 year (ignoring the existing decays and low quality of public education), only about 9% of the students in the Upper Secondary section in the State have had access to education at all.

This is more disturbing when you realize that all of these students will compete for the same opportunity in years to come.

There is a Yoruba proverb that translates to “An untrained child will eventually destroy a built legacy”. No matter the gains we have made in the Health, IT and other sectors, with such a level of decay in Educational sector, our future is bleak and currently dancing on the brink of a landmine.

For a lot of us that feel we will be insulated by the impending holocaust if allowed to fully fester, it will be shocking to us that it will consume all of us, these children will be in the majority in few years to come. They will decide how safe we will live, we will be at their mercies, in fact, they will make political decisions for us.

This is a wakeup call for all of us to join hands and salvage this situation, if we fail to take proactive steps and continue to leave it at the hands of helpless and seemingly clueless government, we will eat our pounded yam as half-done yam.

The question is, how might we harness technology to ensure that these students are educated even with the closure of physical schools?

Can we partner with with relevant sectors to provide them with school away from school experience?

It calls for a deep thinking and deliberate action from all us as concerned citizens.

If you have any ideas and willing to play your part in solving this problem, you can reach me via israelayomidefehintola@gmail. I will be glad to hear from you.