LATEST by Monday, September 18, primary and secondary school students will return to school for a new academic session across the country. Already, many are back in school across the country and ordinarily, this ought to be a routine, happy event. Having been home for weeks, some of which they spent on holiday lessons, the students will be happy to be back in school and start a new academic year. On their part, parents also ought to be happy taking their children to school, knowing that education is one key investment that they cannot afford to toy with. Unfortunately, however, given the present troubles in the land, the situation is not pleasant. As a matter of fact, it is pretty ugly. For most parents who are barely able to feed themselves, let alone feed their families, children resuming school means a fresh round of struggle made worse by the insincerity of the present tenants in Government House who continue to make life harsh for the people on whose behalf they are supposedly wielding political power.
As most schools in the country reopen for another academic session, there will be a poignant reminder of the current context of dire straits. These are really trying times when failure seems to dog the Nigerian establishment’s oft-trumpeted desire to use education to liberate the people and break the yoke of poverty. If the lofty dream fails, the failure will be hinged on a constellation of factors, chief of which is leadership failure. Thousands of factories have wound up thanks to the economic crisis in the country, and parents grappling with dwindling resources and extremely poor living conditions can hardly afford to feed their children, let alone send them to school in a happy mood.
A new academic session has started with students and their parents and guardians having to cope with and survive within the context of dwindling living conditions and associated privations. In the wake of the peremptory removal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) by the government, necessary and adequate ameliorative programmes and actions, including upward adjustment in government workers’ salaries in order to grant them and citizens in general some opportunity to cope with the deleterious effect of the policy, have regrettably not been put in place. This unfortunate situation, exacerbated by worsening insecurity, is now going to be compounded by the need for parents to provide for their children and wards for the new school session. That, we believe, would be expecting them to proverbially draw water out of stones given the apparent lack of concern by the government to make living conditions in the country more bearable.
To say the very least, the insecurity in many parts of the country will hobble the resumption of schools. Particularly in the North, terrorists have continued to threaten the safety of Nigerian school children with demonic relish. For years, they have made school children their enemy, kidnapping and killing them for sport and making their families miserable, inflicted with everlasting wounds. Sadly, there is no indication that this horrible phenomenon is going to end any time soon, as the terrorists are still at their murderous games. It is therefore important for the government to recognise the current situation as being inimical to existence and to change it. There can be no cause for cheer when the conditions of living do not permit most Nigerians to be able to attend to the most basic responsibilities. Feeding, transportation and other existential demands are almost out of the reach of most Nigerians now, and there is no justification for a continuation of this scenario.
There must be urgent and drastic remedial actions by the government. If only for the sake of the children returning to school and their future that will be jeopardised under the current situation, the government must address the problems of living in the country and bring real relief to the people going forward.
