Teachers demand drastic action on Boko Haram

A Bombed Primary school

• Say ‘Our learning environments have been desecrated’

Primary school head teachers across the country are demanding an immediate stop to what they call the desecration of schools in the North by the Islamist sect, Boko Haram.
The Association of Primary School Head Teachers of Nigeria (AOPSHON) says incessant attacks on public schools by the sect are damaging the future of education and of pupils.
Rising from a meeting in Abuja, the National Executive Council (NEC) of the association, an affiliate of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) asked the federal authorities to take more proactive steps to check the wave of  insecurity in the country and its  consequences on the education  sector
National President of AOPSHON, Mr. Lawal Mahmud, told reporters that the Federal Government has not shown enough political will to deal with the situation, particularly the brains behind the assault on the nation’s security.
He said: “We want the Federal Government to take proactive steps concerning this insecurity threat, because it’s already telling on the educational well being of the country. Our pupils no longer feel secured in their learning environment.
“This, government could do by ensuring that every school in Nigeria is properly given security attention,  like what is happening in Borno State  whereby  some  people will just go into school premises and set bombs and  in the process killing a lot of our pupils and teachers.
“Government should be very, very serious about it and I also use this opportunity to call on government to come out and deal with the perpetrators of this Boko Haram issue because we believe that there are people in high places that are promoting this group, government should fish them out and deal with them decisively”.
He also spoke of plan by the association to call out its members on strike over the non-implementation of the 27.5 per cent salary scale in some states.
According to him some of the affected state governors are being insensitive to issues of education in their states, especially those bothering on teachers’ welfare.
 “As far as we are concerned we are teachers, we were teachers before we became head teachers, every head teacher in Nigeria is a member of NUT, so the decision of NUT goes along with our decision, it is our responsibility to ensure that whatever the NUT stands for, we go for it,” he said.