FG begins implementation of safe school policy– Minister Newsdiaryonline

By Funmilayo Adeyemi

The Minister of State for Education, Dr Yusuf Sununu said that the implementation of the safe school policy to prevent schools from further attacks has commenced.

Sununu was speaking in an interview with newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday on the responses to abduction of school children around the country.

He said that the ministry had instituted a joint committee with the Ministry of Finance, Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC) and other security organisations with national repute emergency response coordination centre.

According to him, the essence of the centre is to provide community with informations on the possibility and early signs of attacks and once that is done we put our proactive measure to see how we cannot allow the attacks to happen.

“The policy emerge following the abduction of the Chibok girls in Borno State and it became a serious issue that education must be protected from attacks and that brought us to the Safe School Declaration (SSD).

“And simply, the declaration says that education must be protected, education must be delivered to children.

“If there are attacked and they are moved to another centre, they should be providing access to education in their camp and also no school should be used for military activities.

“Nigeria is a signatory to that and also here locally we came down and launched the Safe School Initiative and in essence it is the stepping down of the interglobal declaration to Nigeria,” he said .

Sununu added that if attacks became imminent, the joint committee would quickly move ahead to evacuate the students from that area prone to the attack.

He said if the attack unfortunately happened, then the security agents can work hand in hand to ensure that the abducted children were rescued within the shortest possible time.

“We ensure that the children are moved to good areas where education will continue to be delivered to them.

“We cannot give up and we cannot surrender education to any attacks. It is a global declaration and education is a human rights issue and we must ensure that the right is protected.

“Every child must have that access to education.We have started implementing the policy.

“Just some few days ago, I was called up by the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Gusau and through instant information and coordination, the last school children that were abducted were rescued,” he said.

Meanwhile,  an ICT expert, Mr Frank Ohwofa has said that high-technology security and partnerships remained the only solution to the problem of kidnapping in schools across the country.

Ohwofa, also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Supersonic Technologies Ltd. said the safe school policy implementation is ongoing, noting that the results would soon be felt.

“The Federal Government Safe School Initiative policy is a welcome development and as I know the policy implementation is ongoing and the various security agencies have been fully captured in the policy for successful implementation.

“I think, yes, we might say the implementation level is low therefore, the results are not been felt and we still have issues of kidnapping of students, teachers and worker’s almost on daily basis.

“But I think in no time the policy will swing into action by way of implementation and for us as a company, I can say we are the very first pioneers of safe school initiative in Nigeria.

“We started this early enough in 2018 which resulted to a partnership with the Nigerian police force and of course police has, as a matter of fact, keyed into our programme before the COVID-19 outbreak.

“We have been working day and night to ensure that our partnership with the police to introduce high-tech security systems for the protection of place of learning across the country is implemented,” he said.

He added that other security agencies were gearing up to ensure that kidnapping in places of learning and the kidnapping of students comes to a final stop.

According to him, the technology we are introducing and partnerships will put an end to kidnapping and Nigerian schools will be one of the safest by the time we commence operations.

“There will be no hiding place for any kidnapper. The whole essence is that Nigeria is a very big country with huge land mass, it is practically going to be impossible for physical manning for places of learning across the country.

“Therefore, high-tech security solution is the only way to have an integrated security infrastructure across the country that can in return provide adequate security of places of learning.

He said,”not just only places of learning but personal security for every Nigerian and non-Nigerian that do business in the country.

“So, I can tell you that the federal government is not loosing sleep on this policy as funds has been committed.

“I think the policy is right on track and we as a company we are going to be working with security agencies across the country who are interested to use our solutions to make sure that kidnapping becomes a thing of the past.

“Kidnappers must be apprehended and brought to book as kidnapping cannot be a continued business in Nigeria and is coming to an end,” he said.

Ohwofa called on the government to promote more of Public Private Partnership (PPP) to proffer ways of protecting the hundreds of thousands schools across the country.

He said the government alone cannot achieve it as security is everybody’s business, noting that every stakeholder have roles to play.

He said that the Supersonic Technologies company had taken the initiative to partner with the government a long time ago to see that safe school was well entrenched in Nigerian system.

He explained that the country’s cities, communities shall be better protected, employing high-tech emergency security solutions if all hands were on deck to achieve safety in the country.

Also, the Co-coordinator, Save Public Education Campaign, Vivian Bello commended the policy, noting that this would bring an end to attacks on girl child.

“The safe school policy is a very good move to ensure that all schools are safely secured. We commend that but with a note of caution because here in this country, we announce fantastic policies and then end up in the pages of the papers and never get translated into real life.

“We are monitoring the statement of the policy to see if the words will be matched with actions . We want a situation where the attacks on girls child in schools ceased.

“We like a situation where the girl child will go to school to acquire education and learn in an atmosphere that is devoid of fear, terror and trauma, this is the only way that the girl child can excell and attain the height of her potentials,” she said.(NAN)

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