Nigeria Content Online

As the government’s
directive that schools remain closed during the registration of voters
became public mid January, Zaria Academy, an elite college in Kaduna
State, summoned its teaching and non-teaching staff to make a point:
there is no break here.

For the two weeks
the exercise lasted in the first instance, the academy like a few
others across the country, held classes, offering parents – many
already keen at returning the kids to school- a sure sale that such
prolonged stay at home would only distort the students’ learning.

But according to
long-term staff there and others elsewhere, experts on private schools’
programmes and administration, such counter order, rather than aimed at
protecting the students’ interest, stands in many cases to serve a
vital live-wire for educational organisations whose economic wellbeing
tie squarely to turnovers derived solely from students’ pay.

“This is a private
business and even if they have money elsewhere which many times they
do, the owners will always prefer spending as they come,” said Joseph
Niaje, who has spent 22 years as a teacher in many schools, and now
runs Destiny Crèche, a day care centre for children in Kubwa, Abuja.

Even for relatively
bigger schools, many teachers say, salaries and benefits of staff are
spread through the year interspersed by new term resumptions, when
fresh fees are expected to help clear personnel and overhead spending.

However, that
balance will be altered by occasional interruptions to the calendars
annually, as with the two-week closure of schools ordered by the
federal government during the ongoing voters registration that would
now get another extension.

In the end, the
staff would assert that employees of privately-owned institutions where
monthly remunerations, and other running cost are chiefly fed by
quarterly student charges, would appear to lead a group hit by a
federal policy that has no direct bearing on their profession.

“Somehow we seem to be the last point,” says a middle-aged teacher who gave his name only as Simeon.

“They may not
accept it, but what makes the difference every new term is the fees and
now our January money cannot come and if they extend the registration
again, only God knows how long we will suffer.” For the two weeks of
the break leading to January ending, many of the teachers interviewed
and whose schools were closed said they had already missed the usual
dates when they get their monthly pay.

In many of the
schools, the pay had failed to come although the staff had been ordered
back to work by the authorities preparatory for the eventual resumption
of the students.

In a few schools
like the Zaria Academy where classes had resumed for some of the
students during the period, staff say they received their pay and that
funds were the major reason why students were recalled.

That position,
however, has been severely denied by management staff of some of the
schools who point out that the consideration of finance plays no role
and that their motive in defying the closure of the schools was purely
in the interest of the students.

“It is not about
finance, it is about the curriculum,” said Adebisi Adeniyi, Vice
Chairman of the Association for Formidable Education in Nigeria, a
group that says it seeks financial intervention for small and medium
schools that may face financial challenges.

Mr. Adeniyi said
although the schools are run as business with eyes on profit, concern
for the excellence of the students override immediate gains. “Even if
the schools were to open normally, the students will not return fully
until February and now that they are to open in February, they will
resume fully in March. Any time they come, the money will come.”

At the Zaria Academy where some students took classes throughout the
exercise, the principal, Gideon Wuyako, refused to answer questions
about the motive behind the school’s reopening.