By: Ugagaoghene Ogheneyole
Some days Ago, the story of collapsed residential story building turned school in Lagos which left so many children dead and some many others injured broke into the air. Many reactions has trailed this accident including the hypocritical action of the Lagos state government to commence the demolition of about 89 buildings in the area which has been originally marked for demolition since over two years.
In all said and done about the collapsed school building, what happens to the dead innocent children who only went to school to become better people in the society? What happens to those parents who all their children in the school? I guess in the shortest period of time, their stories will be forgotten, their families will be left to bear and live with the trauma and emotional breakdown and heart great, meanwhile the society has moved on.
Nobody will take responsibility for approving such a sham looking old residential building as a school, nothing will be said about negligence of duty by Lagos state education inspectorate department, nothing will be said about the bribery taken, compromises by authorities who allowed it or the illicit activities of a desperate school owner who subjected these children to risk.
This is the situation we find ourselves in a highly disfunctiinal society, where leaders thinks only in terms of politics, money and power.... we all are victims of this failed system.
As the story of the collapse building makes the wave, a trending video of success the little school who protested being chased home for her parents inability to pay as at when dey but rather insisted that they should have flogged her and let her remain in school than chasing her home began to trend on facebook.
The trending video alone the not give a full explanation of the magnitude of the disfuntionality of our society, but the reactions that trailed the video said it all.
Studying the statements of this little child, you would sense the problem in our education system and also the lack of access of the extremely poor to basic quality education. From her grammatical expression, you will see that something is fundermentally wrong with the system, looking at her complete attire you will notice all is not also well with the system, pictures and videos of the school in question told the story of a failed system, which in other climes will raise questions and even revolution about the state of education and the failed aystem that we have but how did we react?
Firstly some fraudsters started sending fake account numbers to those who are interested in the girl, so to these persons, it was a great opportunity to defraud the unsuspecting public. To Politicains it was an opportunity to score cheap political points, so they all started running over each other and competing on who get first to the girls house and who gives the biggest amount. They all went to the girl, handed her huge cash which was never specified for her education, non of them bothered to place her on full time scholarship but all the politicians including the local government chairman just handed cash to her and took pictures to show off, no one bothered to open an education fund account fit the girl.
Worst of all, non of these politicians cared to visit the school with the aim of finding out how many children are suffering same fate, no one cared about the non trending children who are in same or even worst situations.
When the masses begin to condemn the sorry state of infrastructure in the school as seen in several videos and pictures. Our government rushed to Deny such claim, insisting that the child was in a private school. no panel of enquiries, no investigations, just denial.
Now it is glaring that the school is a government school, and despite the government stating that the government is operating free education in basic and secondary schools across Delta, nobody has bothered to ask why Primary school children has to pay as much as one thousand Naira for examination fees. No headmaster have been questioned,
This is the sorry story of a failed system, highly disfunctiinal and we all are victims
0 comments:
Post a Comment