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General News of Monday, 9 August 2021

Source: punchng.com

CNG condemns sale of schools, says insecurity worsening education quality

School students file photo School students file photo

The Coalition of Northern Groups on Sunday met some northern civil society organisations, including students’ union bodies from the 19 northern states and Abuja, over the disturbing insecurity occasioned by kidnapping, banditry and other related crimes ravaging the region.

The various groups at a parley held in Kaduna also touched on the issue concerning embattled Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari and Ramon Abbas, also known as Hushpuppi and warned against not following due process in handling the matter.

According to the groups numbering over 50, the sundry kidnapping of schoolchildren by bandits, leading to the closure of schools in the North, is unacceptable.

The ongoing Independent National Electoral Commission’s voter’s registration, they also argued, was against northern interest owing to the stringent registration process, even as it called on northerners to discard their apathy toward the exercise.

Signatories to the communique issued shortly after the meeting are those of Communique Drafting Committee’s Chairman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, who is also the CNG spokesman, Ben Major Idoko (CNG), Abdulmalik Usman (NYPA), Abigel Maisamari (Glorious Women), Ahmad Danmani (NCMN), Kamaladdeen Kabir (KASCO), Jamila Kaduna (Women Empowerment Network), Abdulrahman Sani, Dr Mohammed Nawaila, among others.

They demanded a review of the suspension of Mr Kyari and an immediate revert to proper administrative procedures relating to discipline. On insecurity, they decried the potential threat to educational accessibility and affordability to children of the majority poor, posed by incessant hikes in tuition in several states across the region.

“Concerned about the deteriorating security situation and other threats to education and personal integrity and liberty of eminent northerners, a joint parley of civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations drawn from the 19 states of the North, held a roundtable with officials of all states coordinators and students’ wing of the Coalition of Northern Groups.

“The roundtable specifically placed a premium on the negative impact of the general and pervasive insecurity on the educational potential of the northern region with the widespread and indiscriminate forced closure of schools and distortions to the academic calendar

“It also noted the attempts by some state governments to commercialise or outright sell some institutions of learning at the expense of the region’s educational pursuit,” they added.

On the INEC’s voter registration, they noted that weekly statistics released by the commission showed that the North was lagging by a wide margin in the ongoing exercise.