Speakers at a public lecture organised by the management of Corona College of Education have called on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in the education sector due to the high level of insecurity in the sector and the attendant negative effects.
They made the call at the third public lecture of the school with the theme: Emergent Security Issues in Nigeria: The Facts, Puzzles and Remedies for the Education Sector.
The Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Prof. Eghosa Osaghae, who was also the guest lecturer, urged the government and every stakeholder not to handle these emergent security issues with levity.
According to him: “People really need to know what it means when there is a crisis in a sector. It means that the country cannot make any meaningful economic development or growth if we don’t fix that sector.
“The spate of the challenges, ranging from kidnappings, to banditry, militancy, terrorism, civil unrests, riots, environmental hazards, armed robbery and unprovoked shootings have a way of keeping our students out of school and when this happens, our youths will be easy to recruit by these bandits and terrorists.”
Osaghae lamented that though insecurity is a global problem, the state must see education as a veritable tool for defeating the monster and liberating the world. “Government must find a way of providing security for the sector and the nation must seriously invest in education, if we must catch up with the rest of the world on economic and infrastructure development.”
Earlier in her welcome address, the Provost of Corona College of Education, Dr. Olajumoke Mekiliuwa, said that the public lecture topic was chosen to capture the numerous security threats confronting the nation’s educational institutions, from primary, secondary to tertiary level.
According to her, the lecture was designed to generate discourses around pertinent issues in education with the effect of galvanising sustainable change in the education sector in Nigeria .
Dr. Mekiliuwa noted that the education sector is a determining factor of change for the development of any country, not just Nigeria, but Africa as a whole.
“Government should embrace more actions and less talk in solving the problems of education which include, but not limited to, lack of innovation, lack of infrastructure and teaching aids, poor funding,” she stated.
She noted that these are apparently challenging times for parents, teachers, proprietors, administrators, staff and students nationwide as the nation’s institutions have become the target of attacks from enemies within and without. She said that the the spate of attacks on schools in Nigeria in recent times was unprecedented.
Recall that major findings showed that insecurity of the school environment significantly affects the academic performance of students.