By Monsur Olowoopejo

lagos—OVER 4000 private schools in Lagos State, including mission schools and well established private schools risk closure over their refusal to participate in the Lagos State Government registration exercise aimed at creating a central data for private schools in the state.

The exercise, which started on July 28th across the six educational districts and will end today, has captured 6,083 private schools, out of over 10,000 private schools expected to be captured.

Vanguard’s investigations across five of the six educational districts in the state revealed that substantial number of the schools already captured were those seeking government approval.

Speaking with Vanguard at Education District 1, Agege, Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Education, Mr. Adesina Odeyemi, lamented that the turnout had been low, saying “More school would have been captured if they had turned up earlier. After inspection, I discovered that the response had been very low since the exercise started.”

He warned “At the end of this exercise, if any of the schools failed to register that implies the school owner deliberately wants to hide and does not want the government to monitor the activities in his or her school.   The State Government will have no option than to shut the school because the registration is free.”