…joint team storm Gboko, Kastina-Ala

By Peter Duru, Makurdi

The Benue State Bureau for Education Quality Assurance, BEQA, and the Board of Internal Revenue Service, BIRS, have commenced a joint exercise to shutdown about 2,460 unapproved, poor standard and unregistered schools in the state.

The exercise which commenced in Gboko and Katsina-Ala Local Government Areas, LGAs, of the state Wednesday is being led by the Director General of BEQA, Dr. Terna Francis and the Chairman of BIRS, Mr. Sunday Odagba.

In Gboko over 200 schools have been marked for shutdown while 48 schools have been penciled for shutdown in Kastina-Ala LGA.

Speaking on the mission of the joint exercise, the Director General of BEQA explained that “It is an enforcement of quality education in the state in collaboration with the Board of Internal Revenue Service, BIRS.

“This exercise has become necessary as a result of the due diligence that we carried out last session when we discovered that there are over 2,000 schools in Benue state that are unapproved. And so we have a mandate of ensuring that schools operating within the state are in conformity with relevant laws.

“Many of these schools are in deplorable condition. The structures are not there, the manpower is completely not there. In most of the schools we have visited you discover that the teachers are just secondary school leavers. They cannot offer quality education as it is prescribed by the National Policy on Education.

“And so we have commenced the closing down of these schools so that parents will withdraw their children from the schools that are substandard, that are operating without quality and take them to schools that are approved and operating with quality.

“This exercise is a continuous one, we have just started with Gboko, we are going round. Before now we had informed proprietors, we had called a stakeholders meeting and we advised proprietors operating without approvals and gave them time to come to the office and do the right thing and make their records straight.

“Many of them have complied and we have removed them from the list of unapproved schools and we have given some of them approval to operate. But those ones that are adamant, those ones that have refused to improve the condition of their schools, those ones that have refused to come and get government approval we are closing them down until the right thing is done.”

Dr. Francis noted that “so far within Gboko metropolis alone we have over 200 schools that are unapproved. All together we have 2,460 schools that are unapproved within the state. After Gboko we are going to Katsina-Ala, Otukpo, Ogbadibo, Makurdi the all other LGAs of the State.”

The Chairman of BIRS, represented by the Board Secretary and Legal Adviser, Ushahemba Dekaa stated that as a revenue generating agency “we are also here as part of our sensitization in respect to compliance with our processes and the relevant provisions of our laws which perhaps most of the schools we came to, failed to live up to in terms of standards and expectations.

“And most of them have failed to satisfy the provisions of our law which has to do with the collection of approvals for schools. And because it is an inter-agency partnership we also understand that most of them have not sort approval from the Bureau for Quality Assurance and they are operating illegally. And for doing that it is not out of proportion to seal them out of operation so as to ensure that the right thing is done.

“So it is an inter-agency collaboration which we started in Gboko and moving to Kastina-Ala and also stretching to other parts of the state.”

The crackdown saw the enforcement team move round the communities in Gboko and Katsina-Ala LGAs to shutdown specified schools.

Some of the schools affected in Gboko LGA were Laurel Children Academy Mkar, De-Ps Academy Mkar, Unique Nursery and Primary School, Abundant Life School, Nictom Academy and Malanathan Academy among others.

Those sealed in Kastina-Ala LGA were Novelty Kids Academy, Continental Nursery and Primary Schools, Hamcy Nursery and Primary School, Semen Model School, Rutula Day Care Nursery and Primary School, Unique Success International Nursery and Primary School and David’s Purity Special Academy among others.