By Frank Ulom
Last week Monday, a Junior Secondary, JS 2 Student stabbed a Senior Secondary, SS 3 Student in one of the public schools in Calabar, Cross River State capital.
THE PARADISE gathered that the SS 3 Student, Joseph Umoren told the JS 2 student (name withheld) to correct his stockings but the latter resolved to gang up with his gang and stabbed the former in the neck.
According to Mr Castro Ezama, Senior Adviser to Governor Ben Ayade on Education, Umoren was rushed to the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, UCTH and nearly lost his life – be it not for his intervention and other teachers.
Recall that in February this year, a female student of Government Secondary School, Ikot Ewa in Akpabuyo local government area of the state went to school with a shotgun to shoot her teacher for telling her to cut her coloured hair which is against the school’s rules and regulations.
Disclosing to newsmen last Tuesday, during his visit to Prof. Boniface Odey, Chairman, National Parent Teacher Association of Nigeria, NAPTAN, Cross River State chapter in Calabar, Ezama said there is so much moral decadence in the educational system.
“There’s a high level of moral decadence amongst our school children. In the course of interacting with them I realised that some of them at home drink alcohol, they are served alcoholic beverages. And of course, we know that giving alcoholic beverages to children that are younger than age 18 is not acceptable. There are advertorials everywhere. Of course, we know the far-reaching health implication.
“Secret cults have penetrated our secondary schools and even some of our primary schools. Just recently in one of our secondary schools, a prefect of a school was stabbed because he asked the junior student to take off his wrong stockings. He got his boys around and they stabbed him on his jugular. It took the intervention of the school management, my office, security agencies and the health officials of UCTH to put that boy to live, and we thank God that the boy is alive.
“I think that if we go about bringing parents on board where we have resource persons, government officials get to talk to our parents on the need for them to be more vigilant at home in taking care of their wards and children – it will go a long way to eradicating the antisocial activities we now find”.
Ezama noted further that “The Governor, Senator (Prof.) Ben Ayade will always stand for zero tolerance to cultism and other social vices. In line with these fundamental principles, we will work with you to ensure that we organise a capacity workshop with the theme, ‘The Role of Parents in Children’s Education’. We will do this across the three senatorial districts, where parents will all be invited and we will drum it and come up with a bigger resolution to see how we can help our children”.
Responding, Prof. Odey, NAPTAN Chairman, Cross River State promised the Special Adviser on Education that the parents will sit up to ensure social vices are being eradicated in schools.
His words: “I’m happy you are here. I’m happy they showed you what we have achieved in our schools. Like what you say here, we parents must surely come in to see that the moral decadence in our schools is handled to the barest minimum. I heard of the incidences of children carrying pistols, carrying knives and stabbing their colleagues in schools. We parents are not relenting effort to see that that stop any moment from now because in the school the teachers are there to impart knowledge and carry out the syllabus and curriculum. We parents are the ones to train our children in our homes – how children should behave before they go to school. It is not the work of the teacher to teach children to behave.
“We parents have problem on how to handle our children at home because if we have done properly well, these problems we have in schools will not come up. We are promising you we will sit up as parents to make sure the vices we are having in our schools today are no more in no too distant future from now”.
The NAPTAN Chairman also appealed to Governor Ayade to approved the proposal the association sent to his office so that it will enable the association to build a 50-computer set Computer Laboratory in all the 267 public Secondary Schools in Cross River State.
