By Damola Kola-Dare
The President, Association for Formidable Educational Development(AFED), Hon Emmanuel Orji has appealed to Rivers State Government not to close down low cost schools as such will portend danger to the country.
Orji, who made this plea in a statement, noted that the 13 million out-of-school children in the country remained a cause for worry, adding that shutting down low-cost schools would only compound the problem.
He insisted that the association, which over the years has brought these schools together to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) in education, is worried.
Orji said: “With the number of out- of-school children in Nigeria at over 13million, which is almost the population of two to three countries in West Africa put together, it is embarrassing to wake up every year with the news that a government has no other business to do in education other than the news of shutting down schools.
He noted that over 5000 private schools operated in the state, saying: “The governor set up a committee for Accreditation of Private schools.
The committee chairman at a briefing acknowledged that over 5,000 private schools were in the state.
“The committee, however, received a total of 2511 applications, out of which 1415 were given full accreditation, 659 received interim accreditation while 437 were denied accreditation. This implies that 2074 private schools will cater for a state with an over 10,000,000 population,” he said.
While decrying the situation, Orji said: “Assuming one goes by the over 5,000 private schools statistics, it simply implies that about 2,500 schools will not operate anymore in Rivers State. This appears to be a kegof gun powder waiting to explode.’’
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He noted that “if each of these schools has a minimum average of 15 staff(academic and non academic), 37,500 people will lose their jobs instantly. And if these staff have at least two dependents, another 75,000 people would have been rendered hopeless”.
He said if these schools had a minimum of 120 students on the average, then over 300,000 children would be out of school in Rivers.
He chided the government for not providing adequate facilities to cater to the upsurge in the population of public schools, hence, the low cost schools should remain.
Orji added:”The fact remains that government does not have sufficient facilities to accommodate this surge as government schools are already saturated in the state, also, these children who were predominantly in low fee charging schools cannot afford the high fees of the many of the accredited schools due to the high level of poverty in the land.”
He also disclosed that the association is in partnership with the Polish government, the British government, Newcastle University, Buckingham University, the government of Lagos state, Ogun and Anambra.
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