Schools Closure for Security of Pipils, Jega, Gbagi

THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Federal Ministry of Education yesterday attributed the security of pupils as the major consideration for the extension of resumption for public and private schools in the country.

In a joint media briefing at the headquarters of INEC yesterday, the INEC’s Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega and the Minister of State for Education, Kenneth Gbagi, while speaking on the outcry against the extension of resumption of schools, said the decision was taken as a pre-emptive measure to forestall any untoward security situation.

According to Jega, “it is the INEC that assessed the overall situation with regards to the preparations for the conduct of the registration, which commences on January 15 and requested the intervention to have schools closed within this period, in order to enable us have a very successful voters’ registration exercise. The justifications for these are as follows:

“There are close to 120,000 polling units, we have done a thorough verification of the polling units, and as at the moment we know that for a fact, 119, 976 polling units are spread in public schools. In fact, in many schools, there are three to 10 polling units. Indeed, about 70 per cent of our public schools are either used as polling units or are going to be used as registration centres, where we are going to store the equipment, such as DDC machines throughout the duration of the exercise and where we are going to count some of the personnel that are going to participate in the exercise.

“Obviously, in each school where these activities are going to take place, there is possible disruption of school activities, because thousands of people will be going into these schools to be registered and we felt that it is important that in order to avoid these disruptions, it is better that the schools are closed down during these periods. Similarly, it is important that we also take into consideration the security of the pupils because if there are such massive movements of people into the school environment during the registration, many people will be coming into the school environment and that can cause a security risk for our pupils as students and we felt that, it is better, under the circumstances to request for the closure of the schools.

“People are asking why is it that it is now that we are making the request, it became very clear against our initial thought that we could manage under the circumstances, but it became clear that the way we are mobilising for the voters’ registration, the way people are responding, we need to take extra measures in order to secure the students and in order to also ensure that there is no breach in terms of security of our men and equipment as we conduct the registration.

Gbagi, while corroborating Jega, said the extension for the closure had no undertone, citing the need to ensure adequate security, adding, “we took the measure as that of a pre-emptive measure not to allow any accident. The country has oversight function on all schools and the children are Nigerians, so we felt we should ensure that the children are secured, it is for the good of our children.

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