By Audu Moses
For several years, schools in the North Eastern part of Nigeria, and indeed it's entire educational system were in ruins and rots. They were visibly and intentionally targeted.
Schools were burned, teachers and learners were killed, while thousands more were displaced or abducted, with entire communities left with an equal generation of children, whose only history and places of abode are IDP camps and displacement homes.
It has been over 15 years of traumatic and horrific stories. This reality confronted the entire country and even the international community. The insurgents did not only attack schools, the inflicted violence on the psyche, attempting to destroy it's fundamental ideals, and fabrics through demoralizing and radicalizing the system.
Education is not just about grades and certificates, it's about survival, and a generation.
It is within this context that the North East Development Commission's educational program of rebuilding and sustainability, across Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Gombe, Taraba, and Bauchi States, deserve not just mere bureaucratic acknowledgement but public appreciation.
Since June 2016 through 2018, the story has been terrible and horrific; schools were reduced to rubbles, textbooks were burned, teachers and learners killed or displaced.
For the NEDC, the approach is not about press releases but the prioritization of actual reconstruction of classrooms, laboratories, libraries, conveniences, and protective perimeter fences. This is because, they understand that there can be no school without a roof, because no child learns under the tree, especially during the rains, or when the sun bites.
Truth is, a roof and a blackboard may not guarantee learning but the sure make it possible.
Those structures are clear testaments that something foundational and normal is already taking place, and that the initial barriers has been eliminated , and the people were never abandoned by their government.
For the people of the North East, the greatest challenge remains the "lost cohort", those children who were within the 12 years to 17years bracket, who suffered the real pangs of insurgency, and had missed school for between 4years to 6years. To this group, the thought of jumping classes, or just being promoted notionally to the Junior Secondary School class will not just be counterproductive but stigmatizing. Hence, the innovative accelerated learning centres and integration program for IDPs and almajiri students.
Although critics will conclude that the plan is not a perfect one, but it remains the most pragmatic approach, as it gives the out-of-school children a second chance, with the possibility of not just eliminating the situation created by grown-ups sitting in the same class with children young enough to be their children, but granting the perfect ambience for formal education, an an alternative for vocational training, as it stops the cycle of permanent exclusion of thousands.
The focus on local capacity building remains cardinal approach that functions side-by-side with infrastructural development, as infrastructure without teachers will only be a shell or a museum.
Notably, fixing the teachers through retraining, is like fixing the pipeline which results in fixing the future. While, the incentives for educators to study educational courses abroad, with a return-to-serve condition, solves a job security challenge for the teachers who will now return back home to a sure ready job.
Through this local teaching workforce, sustainability is entrenched by a group of teachers who understand the context of the environment and are not afraid to remain, ensuring and consolidating the development of an enduring system who have a stake in the state.
This is a trite fact that, interventions in the educational sector are slow, expensive, and at times vulnerable to the setbacks against the sidelines of insecurity and conflict.
But by making education the core pillar of NEDC sustainability program, in its collaborative fight against insecurity and insurgency, NEDC has demonstrated it's avowed commitment in ridding the region from child recruitment for instability by insurgents, at the same time stabilizing the region.
NEDC indeed has demonstrated that it is an agent of confidence and trust building as it continues to train and produce more graduates, thereby growing the human capital base that is necessary for the future sustainability of the region.
It stands to the NEDC that it has remained focused over the years on a sector that does not necessarily create or attract headlines.
However, the superlative works of the NEDC has to be amplified and applauded by well-meaning patriots, as this will certainly reenforce it's focus and priority.
Indeed, NEDC has changed the narratives in the North East from destruction to rebuilding, and from displacement to reequiping and retraining.
They have also restored the dignity of thousands of communities who were told that the government has abandoned and forgotten them because they do not matter. NEDC has eliminated the supply chain of insurgents recruitment into violent groups, giving youths better positive alternative, while building huge human capital base needed by the region as it progressively recover from the years of destruction due to insurgency and conflicts.
A functioning school in town that was once a ghost town is good for all, no matter the political party, religion, or race. This is not flattery, it is a push to keep moving on, because the next generation needs education and the North East needs a chance to redefine itself beyond conflicts and insurgency.
Soon the narratives will no longer be "out-of-school children" but will become "what these graduates have achieved and produced."
This conversation is worth having and the North East Development Commission (NEDC) is making it happen. This indeed is worth appreciating and supporting.
Moses wrote this piece from Abuja.
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