The current crop of SMS operatives is, in all likelihood, not made up of individuals, who’d be sung whenever they quit office: their legacy – their contribution to the growth and development of the school system – alongside a rigid enforcement of discipline, and moulding of the character of the pupils – in readiness for the challenges of life after formal education – might, put charitably, be somewhat insignificant. It’s for such individuals’ performance –which could be a lot better – that CPPF, at its Layeni-Ifelodun congress was told of the need to have an SMS manned by competent hands – mainly professional educationists, whom because of the cardinal role they would have to play in the long-term security of society – which may find some glowing expression in the health of social engagement institutions, like the secondary school system (SS), and good conduct by its ever swarming products – who’d be well paid.

The perceived inefficiency of the SMS would seem to have infected, in part, the teachers in most public schools in Lagos: some teachers in Ifelodun Development Area (IDA), told this writer that they could not recollect when last their schools were invited by the skippers of the SMS, or when the same elements invited them for a general meeting, to map out programmes and strategies on how public schools – a visible majority of them in a deplorably advanced state of decay – and poorly managed – could win back long-lost public confidence – and, hopefully, give well-run, but, understandably, expensive private schools a robustly stiff challenge.

Some of the teachers did corroborate the views expressed by participants at the CPPF congress, to the effect that they had almost lost control of the pupils; they need to regain the power to enforce discipline: For now, they’d rather pretend not to notice their pupils’ undisciplined conduct, like lateness to school – than challenge them – and, possibly, cane them for so doing – for fear of reprisals. The story was once told of how a group of pupils of Araromi Senior Secondary School (ASSS), Sari-Iganmu, once threatened to kill their head teacher and his subordinates for taking disciplinary measure against them for lateness. When the police waded in, two of the pupils, who were arrested, later run away with hand cuffs. Most stakeholders, in the educational sector in the IDA, say such pupils – for their notorious disrespect for laid down rules and regulations, and even their defiance of the agents of the law – were a threat to the safety and security the area. At Gaskiya Senior College, one of the administrators of the school, told the CPPF congress, that lateness amongst the pupils had reached a crisis level – and, for which, he pleaded, the body should intervene. There already exists a law – the Compulsory Free Universal Basic Education Law of 2005 enacted by the Lagos State House of Assembly – which makes lateness a punishable offence. Section 8 (2) (a) and (b), (3) and (4) places the onus of regular school attendance on parents, with the assistance of the stakeholders in a given Local Government Area. It stipulates some financial penalties – a maximum of =N=50, 000 or imprisonment for a term of two months or to both – on ay parent on conviction, for repeated failure to see to the completion of primary and junior secondary education by his or her child. Section 16 (1), (a – h) provides for the establishment in each Local Government Area of the State, a Local Government Primary and Junior Secondary Education Authority, which has, as members, a part-time Chairman and representatives of some stakeholders – including parent-teacher association, religious organisations and traditional rulers. Section 17 states some of the functions of the Authority: (a) the day-to-day administration of the Primary Schools and Junior Secondary Schools; (h) undertaking general maintenance of Primary and Secondary School buildings and infrastructure; (i) stimulating, promoting and participating in the running of Primary Schools and Junior Secondary Schools; and (j) taking all reasonable steps to ensure full enrolment and attendance in all Primary and Junior Secondary Schools. Some of these functions are shared by Section 21, which sets up and spells out the functions of Community Education Development Committee.

Some legal opinions, weighing such persuasive environmental factors as urban congestion, the absence of effective, school-children-friendly transportation system and, amongst others, the level of parental control and the average distance – a maximum of one kilometre, during the Jakande years – each student covers between home and school, say such a legislation may be difficult to enforce – in that, for one, the Lagos State Government has no constitutional control over the police. The idea of wanting lateness, by school pupils, punished in a run-down area like the IDA – one of the slums in the Lagos metropolis – presupposes that the pupils could do otherwise. It presupposes, still, that what obtains in the IDA, like elsewhere in the state, is not an unrelenting economic pressure on parents, which compels them to pay more attention to how best to eke out a living than – in assisting the school – to mould the character of their children so as to make them useful, not only to themselves, but to the rest of society.

Mr. Silas Udoh, a Solicitor of the Supreme Court, figures that the issue of lateness by public school pupils is being stoked by the less conducive environment in which they learn: most of the school buildings are dilapidated, with their doors and window panes removed. Thus, in the event of a heavy rain – where the roofs of their classrooms are not leaking – the pupils may have no effective protection from a direct hit by the rain, just in case of a blustery wind – and the attendant cold. At such times, some of the schools do get flooded. The other extreme is airing the pupils to excessive radiation when the sun is unkind. Besides, Udoh thinks that, coupled with absence of such facilities as toilets, potable water and first aid, some pupils feel less compelled to leave home early for an environment – often times an over-crowed environment, with more than twenty-five pupils in a class – that they consider decidedly oppressive.

This development, say some stakeholders, most probably, underscores – if, for now, only tacitly – the long-term plan by government to either hand over such decaying school structures to professionals to manage, or sell their structures to reputable educationists. Still, pending all that, Udoh’s colleague, Barrister Augustine Okon, posits that government has a moral obligation to help the crisis in public schools – if only because the parents of the pupils, who attend such schools, are tax-payers, who may have voted its operatives into power. The underlying social responsibility implied in Okon’s thesis appears shot by the inability of government – as an agent of the state – to satisfy the demands of social security, which sound secondary education offers. This ought not to be the case, for as Udoh put it: “The young secondary school pupils, unhelped, are likely to be recruited – where there is no rewarding and fulfilling employment –by crime syndicates. In turn, they’ll become – in indicting an educational system that has failed them – an unrelieved threat to the safety and security of society”.