Following the wrong accusation orchestrated by some secondary school principals against Hon. Mrs. Rose Ezewu, the Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education in Delta State whom they alleged is mandating N20 thousand for the portrait of the governor, has come to say that the reason some of the principals are against her is simply because she is fighting them for extortion and unnecessary activities that are going on within the basic and secondary school sector.
Mrs. Ezewu made this revelation while interacting with journalists in Asaba on Tuesday, stating that when she resumed office, she set up an educational task force that is made up of educationists and some insiders to checkmate the principals, teachers, together with students, and their lesson notes, and other activities within the schools.
She said it is from this engagement and monitoring carried out by the task force that she found out that some of the school principals are extorting money from the students and parents while alleging that some of the principals are collecting money above the approved admission fee the government asked them to collect.
The Basic and Secondary Education Commissioner also alleged that some of the teachers do not want to teach the students, as they just come to school, stay as they like, and leave.
According to her, the negligence of the teachers is what led her to direct all principals to ensure that their schools always conduct morning and closing assemblies, to enable their teachers to impact knowledge unto the students.
“It is this extortion and negligence that I am fighting against that they are saying they want to fight the honorable commissioner by twisting the whole story. You cannot be taking forty thousand for admission.”
“This has made me demote some principals and take some of them from the small schools to go head these schools.
“Do I look like someone who is going to schools and extorting money from principals? How much are they going to give to me?
“Most of these principals are just after their extortion and when the honorable commissioner storms the schools to stop them, they will rant and say they want to kick against me. What extortion do I want to extort? Go to the school, and go take money from them or what?
“Soon, WAEC enrollment will start and some of them are already lobbying to go to a bigger school to extort.
“Is there anything wrong or insensitive in the education sector if we constitute a task force to checkmate all these activities that are going on in the schools”, she asked.
Mrs. Ezewu in her justification, revealed that the reason His Excellency, Rt Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori approved the collection of PTAs in all schools is for the principals to key into the M.O.R.E Agenda to be able to have little cash-on-hand to help develop some urgent needs of these schools.
“Some of these principals who were supposed to collect N1250 to admit students into their various schools are now extorting N40000 from them. Tomorrow people will say the M.O.R.E Agenda does not consist of free education.”
“I don’t collect money for admission. I don’t put children in the school, they are the ones doing that. So when I heard those stories that they were saying against the honorable commissioner, I just laughed because I knew my hands were clean”, she said.
The education commissioner also frowns at the attitude of some of the parents towards the teachers who punished their kids for misconduct as she cites an incident that happened at a school in Agbor where a parent came to the school to harass a teacher which eventually led to his death.
According to her “If a teacher should punish a child, the major thing is that he should not inflict strong injury on the child. There are corrective measures because the type of parents we have nowadays is something else. They cannot even train the children at home, so how then do they want the teacher to be able to teach them? The teachers are helping them to train these children and they want to castigate their efforts and make them feel like slaves. They don’t want the teachers to discharge their duties. If they don’t want the teacher to do their jobs, they should keep their children at home.
While calling on everyone to support the M.O.R.E Agenda of His Excellency, Rt Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori, Mrs. Ezewu equally thanked the Governor for approving scholarships for the children of the demise teacher who was allegedly killed in Agbor by the father of a student.
