Forced Child Education: First Thing First, ACN Tells Commissioner

The threat of invoking the Child Rights Act against any parents that refuse to send their children to school by the Rivers State Commissioner of Education, Ms Alice  Lawrence Nemi has been described as placing the cart before the horse instead of vice-versa.

The Rivers State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), in a statement signed by its Publicity Secretary, Jerry Needam said the government should first and foremost put into place the necessary requirements and create a conducive learning environment for the pupils.

In this period of rampant kidnap cases the statement noted, government's primary concern should be the safety of lives and property.

The spokesman, Jerry Needam regrets that up till date most of the schools which students were dislodged on account of restructuring are yet to be reconstructed.

“Again, government acts as though Port Harcourt, the State capital is the entire State, while majority of the pupils are left unattended to, even in the shanties called government schools in the rural areas. Most of them have no desks, chairs and sit on bare floors”, the ACN spokesman lamented.

Payment of the teachers' salaries and allowances, in time and regularly, too is also part of the social security for the child so that he gets the best from the teacher. Anything short of all these necessities contradicts government's responsibility to the children and renders their threat hypocritical and a mere lip-service. What is worth doing is worth doing well, Jerry Needam concluded.###