-Blank NEWS Online (NIGERIA) –Education Desk

Delta State government has ordered the immediate closure of all Lesson Centres across the state in order to ensure sanity in their operations.

The Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr. Patrick Ukah, who disclosed this in Asaba yesterday (17/02/2021) when members of the Delta State Child Right Implementation Committee paid him an advocacy visit, said that the decision is as a result of public outcry on the level of child abuses by the operators of the centres.

Mr. Ukah stated that most of the centres were operating miracle examination centres, adding that they operate in the day time in contravention of laid down education guidelines for extra moral classes which are supposed to operate purely as evening lessons, noting that there was need to regulate their activities so as not to end up endangering the future of the children.

He advised operators of the centres to reach out to the ministry, through the appropriate department, for proper documentation and regularization of their operations and ordered the department of Inspectorate and Quality Assurance of the ministry to ensure strict compliance with the directive by immediately closing down such lesson centres across the state.

The Basic and Secondary Education Commissioner, who emphasised the strong need for stakeholders to brace up to the challenge of ensuring effective implementation of the Child Rights Act, stated that the ministry had established an Advocacy and Mentoring division, just as he pledged the ministry’s collaboration with the committee towards realising their terms of reference.

Earlier, the Chairman of the committee, Mrs. Oghenekevwe Agas, said that the Child Rights Act was signed into law in 2008 while their committee was inaugurated in 2020, explaining that the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education was very strategic in the enforcement of the child right.

Mrs. Agas, who is the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community and Social Development, reiterated that the committee was charged with the responsibility of enforcing the right of every child, adding that the committee was designed to protect them.

While calling on teachers to play key roles in ensuring that children were adequately protected from any form of abuses, Mrs. Agas recalled that the increasing population of children in schools could make monitoring a bit difficult, even as she decried cases of rape either between students and teachers or among students.