Sub-Saharan Africa has historically been on the receiving end of the global learning crisis. A recent report by UNICEF shows just how much COVID-19 has worsened this crisis. Young African students are now predominantly suffering from the inequalities in access to tools and technology needed for remote learning, in the wake of this global pandemic. This situation is even more so in Nigeria, which, according to the World Poverty Clock, now has the highest number of poor people in the world. Extreme poverty has no doubt become a bane to quality education in the country. Before the advent of this pandemic, public school students had been victims of a broken educational system beset with underfunding, dilapidated facilities, and frequent strikes by public school staff(s). These issues have become a huge setback to their right to qualitative education. What is more, public school students in developing countries such as Nigeria are unable to avail themselves of the online learning opportunities that are available to their counterparts in developed countries. This inability is largely due to infrastructural and socio-economic problems which have limited their access to a stable power supply, reliable internet service, and conducive learning spaces.

As such, the Federal Ministry of Education must take proactive steps to, at the least, encourage continued learning and productivity among these youthful students. Although this pandemic has necessitated stringent restrictions on large physical gatherings, as one would find in a classroom, there are other innovative measures that the ministry could take to stimulate educational growth during this era of COVID-19. Specifically, the ministry should institute a policy that provides a range of at-home learning resources for public senior secondary school and university students, including radio, TV, and paper-based lessons, as well as books, stationeries, planners, and accessible curricula. We do realize that there is a plethora of logistical challenges to implementing such a policy, including the availability of funds, corruption, limited infrastructure, and the question of distribution. Notwithstanding such barriers, the ministry cannot afford to sit idly by as the intellectual ability of its youth population continues to dwindle in light of the pandemic.

My support of this petition stems from my own experience as a former public-school student who was suddenly thrust into a period of undefined academic hiatus in 2013. That year, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) embarked on an indefinite industrial action which led to the closure of public universities across Nigeria. The undefined duration of this strike left thousands of students idle and waiting, hoping that ASUU would call it off shortly and that universities would reopen. The strike did not end until about six months later. As an undergraduate student at the University of Lagos, my educational life was in disarray during this strike period. I made little to no academic progress and received zero support from the ministry or the federal government at large. Had the ministry of education provided me some remote learning resources, I am convinced I would have made better use of that forced free time and that I would have emerged from the encounter as a more productive member of society.

Ironically, this pandemic now offers the ministry an opportunity to seize the initiative and act on its mandate of service to the educational sector in Nigeria. We must therefore demand a right to quality education for every public-school student. Education rights are human rights!

#WeAreWoke 

Signed, 

Emmanuel Osayande for Woke Foundation