Nigerian school principals decry incessant kidnapping of school children

The All Nigeria Confederation of Principals of Secondary Schools (ANCOPSS), on Wednesday, lamented the spate of kidnappings in Nigeria, especially the school children, saying God will never forgive those behind the dastardly acts.

ANCOPSS President, Mr Anselm Izuagie, who stated this during the official commissioning of ANCOPSS secretariat in Gwagwalada, Abuja, said the principals of the affected schools feel helpless that they could not protect the children under their watch.

According to him: “It is an unfortunate thing for people to target innocent children and use them as bait to make money and nobody is doing anything about it. You can see, it is on the increase, every day schools are attacked and children are kidnapped for ransom. I think God will not forgive those people because I know some of them are also fathers and if this kind of thing happens to their children they won’t be happy.

“It is an unfortunate situation which ANCOPSS is not happy about but we are helpless because we cannot create security for ourselves so our cry is for the government to be committed and safeguard all schools in the country.” He urged.

In his speech, a former president of ANCOPPS and serving Senator, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, who was the special guest at the event, called for more budgetary allocation to the education sector.

“It is true education has not been receiving the appropriate funding but it is very pleasing that last week our president was among others in the UK where they took a decision and passed a resolution that all the nations involved should allocate not less than 25 of the national budget to education. In fact, the United Nations requirement is a minimum of 26 per cent of any nation’s fund to go to education.

“I can understand we have never gotten there before because of the serious challenges that we do have; we have so many social challenges. Up till today, some communities are drinking water from the same pond with their animals. This is a health challenge. We have problems with roads, problem of agricultural facilities, all these put together are part of the challenges.

“Education, of course, is top priority but food first. If you build schools and people are hungry, nobody will go to school. So you have to tackle all these challenges but I can say education is the wheel on which all development programmes rotate, so we will continue to see that both the legislature and the executive give the sector the attention it deserves.

“Welfare of teachers is the same thing as we talk about the welfare of the security agencies. Mallam Aminu Kano used to argue that any nation that neglects three categories of people will never grow. If you neglect teachers, security operatives and you neglect the old people among you, you will never progress.” He affirmed.

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