A week of the collapsing school and LG autonomy

The earth shifted last week, and 20 promising lives were lost. By now, a lot has been said about the tragic school building collapse in Jos last week and how 20 families have lost children they have invested dreams and hopes in for years. And for these dreams and hopes to perish in the field […]

The earth shifted last week, and 20 promising lives were lost. By now, a lot has been said about the tragic school building collapse in Jos last week and how 20 families have lost children they have invested dreams and hopes in for years. And for these dreams and hopes to perish in the field where they are supposed to be nurtured—in a school—gives the event a particular haunting resonance.

But the incident at Saint Academy, Jos, is a warning. It highlights the neglect that the school system has been suffering, especially in Plateau State and most parts of Nigeria as a whole.

In the last few years, especially, there has been a rash of private schools sprouting indiscriminately in Jos like pimples on the face of a teenager. Most of them do not have the facilities, conducive environment, or qualified teachers to be called schools. Very few are purpose-built. Where they are not, they are often private residencies or uncompleted buildings converted to classrooms.

This epidemic of private schools is brought about by two things. The first is that the public school system has been so bastardised that those of us who had a public school education do not recognise what passes for public school education these days. The second reason is that because of the lack of job opportunities, especially in Plateau State, educated Nigerians who could not find jobs have realised that there is a killing to be made in the education sector. So, they convert every available space into schools, invite other educated people who could not find jobs to teach, even if they are not qualified for those roles.

In fairness, one cannot blame them. They are providing essential services to communities in desperate need of them and making a living for themselves and their families. These are services that the state should provide but has shirked those responsibilities.

But that is not the only responsibility being shirked. Every school is supposed to obtain a license to operate. Looking at the structures of some of these schools and the calibre of teachers on their roster always raises the questions: How did these places get the approval to operate? What considerations were given to students and staff safety? What mechanisms are in place to ensure quality education is delivered to these students and that the teachers and other employees in these schools are not being exploited?

In theory, someone is responsible for ensuring that these things are checked and approved. However, the government agencies in charge have not been fulfilling their duties diligently. I have personally witnessed “school buildings” that would not have been approved if even basic checks had been carried out.

As a result of the failures of the public-school systems, parents flock to enrol their children there. To accommodate these rapid expansions, the schools hastily add structures such as classrooms and halls, or move to bigger but dilapidated buildings without obtaining approval from the development control or education inspectorate.

As expected, a probe committee has been established and actions are being taken to give the appearance of addressing the situation. However, if things do not change, a report will be submitted and ultimately buried in the government’s collection of forgotten files, while vulnerable children continue to attend classes in unsafe shacks and rickety buildings.

In addition to the optics of our habitual official performative grief and outrage, the government must actually ensure that public schools are in a condition to provide quality education in a safe environment for students. They must also ensure that private schools adhere to basic standards of proper and suitable space, as well as employ qualified personnel, before granting them licenses to operate.

Moreover, certification or licensing should not be a one-time event; there needs to be periodic assessments by school inspectors to ensure that these schools and their facilities remain safe for students and have the necessary qualified personnel to deliver educational services.

It is not enough to express sadness and outrage over the needless loss of lives; these deaths must lead to improved safety for children in schools and sound the death knell for decades of governmental neglect in education.

However, it was not just a school that was brought down last week. A system that indirectly facilitated the neglect of schools and fostered a democratic tyranny also suffered a blow when the Supreme Court freed the local government system from the control of state governors, to some extent.

For years, local governments have been stripped of fiscal autonomy by a system that allowed state governors, through the joint accounts, to determine how much allocations the LGs get and when they get it. Coupled with the constitutional provision that allowed state governors to dissolve LGCs, appoint caretaker committees and conduct council elections through the state electoral commissions, (SIECs) these have completely stripped the LGs of any kind of agency.

The LGs are the closest government to the people. They are supposed to pay staff salaries, including teachers, build community roads and provide primary health care facilities and other basic infrastructure, including schools. This system has deprived them of the opportunity to deliver these services.

This is the latest flip in the issue of local government autonomy which started as far back as 1890 when the colonial administration established a system of indirect rule which tried to establish a form of local administration through traditional authorities. This was a rudimentary system of local government. By the 1930s, the indirect rule system was properly entrenched until the modern local government system came into effect in the 1950s.

Following the reforms of 1976 and the Etsu Nupe-led reforms of 2003, which  resulted in  the  recognition  LGs  as  the  autonomous  third  tier  of government of Nigeria, but also allowed for the creation of the joint account that became a shackle to the LG, the councils have suffered reversals in fortunes from having greater autonomy to not having any at all.

The Supreme Court ruling has cleared the fog over the delegation of authority between the states and local governments in areas of concurrent responsibilities and allowed for direct payment of federal allocations to the LGs’ accounts.

This means that people can know exactly how much the councils are being paid and can therefore hold the LG authorities accountable for their spending and project execution. What remains is the constitutional amendment that would strip state government of the power to dictate who gets elected into the councils through the State Electoral Commissions, which are often exercises that return 99 per cent of the council seats to whatever party has the sitting governor.

Only when this is done can the people at the grassroots level decide for themselves who rules them at the government that is closest to them and how exactly they utilise public funds. These will nurture truly the concept of grassroots democracy and strengthen our democratic culture.