As Nigeria gradually eases out of the prolonged lockdown to contain the devastating impacts of COVID-19, government has been tasked to classify teachers as “essential workers” to enable the country guarantee continuous educational service delivery during the pandemic.
The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, in its guidelines sanctioned by the security agencies, classifies essential workers as medical personnel, diligent journalists, courageous fire service personnel, and telecommunications workers.
However, a labour leader and member of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Jos, Issa Aremu, has made a case for teachers as essential service workers in his remarks at the fourth edition of the Kwara State chapter of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Virtual Annual Ramadan Lecture in honour of his late wife, Hadjia Hamdalat Aremu, anchored last Thursday in Ilorin, Kwara State.
Special Adviser to Kwara State Governor on Health, Professor Wale Suleiman, was the key speaker at the two-hour virtual interactive session, under the theme “COVID-19: Gains in Pain – Kwara Experience.”
Aremu, former Labour Party (LP) governorship candidate in Kwara State, observed that it was time the Federal Government focused on the sectoral impact of coronavirus, which has claimed 200 lives and ruined many livelihoods in Nigeria.
He called for an “immediate impact assessment” of the lockdown on education.
According to him, before the pandemic, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) indicated that the population of out-of-school children in Nigeria was 13.2 million, the highest in the world.
He observed that not less than 120,000,000 children and students were out of school in West Africa, mostly from Nigeria, adding that if measures are not put in place urgently, there might be worsening mass illiteracy in Nigeria and Africa.
“One of the eased lockdown measures as directed by the Federal Government should be on the education sector,” he said.
He said while the official focus had been on impact on businesses, employment and incomes, with series of bailouts, it’s time to critically assess the impact on education.
Aremu advised that the government use the period of lockdown to “reinvent public schools in terms of provision of water, sanitary personal protective materials for students and above all space for physical distanced interactions in the condition of pandemic.” He said COVID-19 had “once again exposed the underdevelopment of educational infrastructure and the inherent inequalities between the education of the children of well having parents and mass of children in abandoned public schools.”