By Fifelomo Dawodu
“Di’mama what is your opinion and honest counsel, even as a literate of the law and educator. I know you are not a religious bigot, please share your opinion with your boy maami.”
The subject of the above inquiry was the announcement of the closure of both public and private schools for 5 weeks, in some States in Northern Nigeria, namely Kano, Katsina, Bauchi, Kebbi and Jigawa during the last Ramadan. The announcement emphasized that there must be full compliance by all schools. The announcement was made in Governese which is a noun coined by this writer to describe the language of government and government communication. Governese is typically presumptuous, overbearing and thinly veiled threatening.
The announcement caused quite a bit of furore which was not surprising because the narrative was framed to suggest that the school closure was because of the Ramadan fast. This stoked the fringes of the already frayed seams of nationhood. As a people, issues are no longer analyzed from an informed, robust, balanced and developmental perspective. Rather issues are addressed from the stand-point of our cleavages, North /South, Christians/ Muslims, Ruling Party /opposition, tribesman/alien, friend or foe. Arguments become parochial and pedestrian. The buzz around the announcement of the closure is therefore understood as an outcry against real or imagined marginalisation or domination, rather than any real activism advancing anybody’s right or access to education.
In the same vein, the ‘calling-out’ in the question at the opening of this piece is quite audible because the enquirer should be sufficiently informed about the facts of the subject-matter. A cohort of 7 of us recently completed a post-graduate programme of various Educational Foundation courses, where we studied some of the fundamentals regarding the issues regarding the contentious directive and subject of inquiry. Being fully aware of the elephant in the room in the inquiry and in a bid to live up to the allusion of being open-minded, the response would stick to facts from an informed perspective shorn of any parochial tendency or primordial sentiments.
The response has also been timed deliberately to after schools have re-opened in the hope that there would be a more temperate and unbiased reception of the points. Though one is not a consultant to any of the Governors of the 5 States involved, the answers are also intended to be a resource that would prepare and equip us against next time.
This intervention would speak to the following points; Reasons why schools may be closed, capacity of Governors to close schools in their States, implications of school closure and how to mitigate same. The effectiveness of the communication announcing the closure and conclude by making suggestions of alternative strategies to sustain teaching and learning over the period of closure and forestall undue contention going forward.
Some reasons why Schools may be closed include,
- Public health reasons: The global closure of schools during the Covid -19 pandemic are fresh in the annals of recent memory.
- Safety reasons: The gruesome slaughter of boys in their dormitory in a college in Birni Yadi shortly after the kidnap of hundreds of girls from a school in Chibok led to the near indefinite closure of schools in those parts. Because of the activities of insurgents attacking schools, kidnapping and even killing of students in the North- East and other parts of Northern Nigeria schools have remained closed for extended periods.
- Crisis situations: Schools have been closed because of the unfortunate situation of loss of lives of students due to negligence, bullying or other crisis situations. Governments have been known to order the closure of schools to douse tensions and to investigate crisis.
- Labour matters: Teachers strike used to be a regular phenomenon occasioning the closure of schools for weeks on end and the ubiquitous ASUU strikes underscores the point.
- Adverse weather: Adverse weather such as torrential rainfall, blizzards or heatwaves are valid reasons why schools may close.
- Sundry other factors: Political, cultural and even religious reasons, are some other factors that could compel schools closure.
Capacity of Governors to close Schools
Every tier of government can establish schools and regulate them accordingly because education is on the concurrent list. There are municipal/ local government schools, State primary and secondary schools as well as Federal government secondary schools in most States. There are also private entities that offer educational services through schools as business enterprises whether non-profits or commercial.
For uniformity the Universal Basic Education Act 2004 prescribed a minimum standard for basic education throughout Nigeria. The educational system in Nigeria is also premised on the Centralised Theory of education which posits that for uniformity and standardization, all aspects of the school system, such as the calendar, curriculum, school hours etc. should come under a central control. As such on broad areas of regulation what applies to the public schools must be complied with in the private schools.
Further, Schools run on a pre- arranged calendar agreed upon at the beginning of the school year. Matters such as the number of weeks that make up a term, the date of resumption, duration of vacation etc. are regulated by the superintending authority usually the State government through the Ministry of Education, and every school whether privately owned, local government owned or state owned must comply. An exception would be Federal Government educational institutions which are regulated by the Federal Ministry of Education.
Therefore, the directive to close schools should not apply to the Federal Government schools in the affected States. It may be tempting to also argue that private schools should be free to remain open, but the counter pose would be that all businesses regardless of the sector of enterprise must comply with the directives of its Regulator. Private Schools would therefore have to comply with the directives of the State government as the Regulator.
It is safe to surmise from the foregoing that State governments can order the closure of schools and can close schools. The Governors in the five States acted within their remit to direct that schools should close during the Ramadan.
Other Issues about school closure
Ramadan and of Eco-wisdom
Eco-wisdom is a personal favorite contemporary education theory. It posits that to sustain the interest and desire for education and the formal school system, teaching and learning must be expansive and flexible to accommodate the historical, cultural and environmental peculiarities of the players in the space. The essence of this theory was reflected as a narrative in Abdulrazaq Gurnah’s book Gravel Heart (2021 Nobel prize winner for Literature.) The colonisers in Zanzibar were compelled to include Koranic Studies in the school curriculum, and employed the most revered cleric, Maalim Yahya into the school’s faculty, though he did not have the requisite formal qualifications. But they were desperate to earn the trust and get the buy-in of the indigenes into the newly introduced formal school system.
The truth is with or without the adverse weather advisory, stakeholders in the five states affected by the closure, would most probably opt for school to be closed all through the month of Ramadan given the choice. That Ramadan this year fell during the near boiling point heatwaves made it a no brainer that schools should close. The advisory was to avoid being outdoors at the highpoints of the day and though we are yet to properly factor the reality of Climate Change into planning and decision making generally, but it was the cultural intelligent thing to do in the circumstance.
Though it may be valid to ask if Ramadan should be reason for schools to close, but the uproar around the closure in the opinion of this writer was most unnecessary. The drama of religious organisations threatening to institute legal action against the State Governors was needless and the counter attacks from the opposite religious groups equally misguided.
What was evident above the noise was the ignorance and wrong assumptions about the directive, yet it is anathema in education to advance a one sided story. Teaching and learning need not cease because brick and mortar schools have closed. Yet most of the fuss about the school closure was focused on the wrong assumption that because schools close, teaching and learning would stop and the period of teaching and learning would be lost forever. Concerns heightened because in many of the affected areas there was already the challenge of high poverty rate and disproportionate burden of out-of-school- children. But this clearly needs not be so.
Instead of the cynicism and rumbunctious dissent, conversations should have been constructive and centered on practical ways to mitigate the loss of teaching and learning time outside brick and mortar classrooms during the period of closure. School could move online. A better argument should have been about how to ensure access to the resources necessary to deliver online schooling especially to the economically disadvantaged and others that would be excluded for several other reasons.
The agitators could also have engaged in debate about strategies to claw back time lost during the period of closure. The time can be easily recovered by extended school hours and the usual 2 or 3weeks vacation at the end of the second term can be scrapped to make up for time lost. There certainly could be several other creative strategies that would allow the necessary flexibility that would ensure a win- win situation. The sensibilities of the stakeholders can be validated and still keep learners interested and engaged in the formal school system and their teachers also catered to. Keeping those who are already in the formal school system in the affected states can be quite nuanced and tactfully accommodating what is important to them would go a long way to reinforce their belief in the school system.
The announcement / communication
A final point before concluding is to examine the communication with which the announcement was made. The relics of the military era remains prevalent in the way government business is conducted in spite of years of our manifesting democratic tendencies. Executive overreach and government lording things over the populace is the norm in our parts of the world. The tone and thrust of the communication of the closure was more of a directive than an announcement which is the typical tendency of government and its Agencies.
Framing the directive to suggest that schools should close for Ramadan may appear to ignore the plurality of interest of the stakeholders. It could have been better written. The missive could have also referenced the facts for the closure, briefly stating the science, sociology and relevant sundry facts.
The warnings of imminent severe and adverse weather conditions with unprecedented heatwaves had been predicted and publicised. The five States that closed schools were some of the worst hit States and the decision to close schools was informed more by the adverse weather advisory. However because Ramadan follows the Lunar calendar its timing rotates differently to the school calendar that follows the Gregorian calendar. This year Ramadan fell in the peak of unprecedented heatwaves that wreaked a lot of health havoc. If only government considered how the people would feel, the announcement of the closure should have been more delicately conveyed. The adverse weather advisory should have been stated as a matter of fact of the closure. Tempers would not have risen to match the weather if the decision to close schools was communicated as a public health protection strategy, instead of the suggestion of an act of religiosity.
The communication should have also referenced that the decision was collaborative and all stakeholders were duly carried along given the extent to which it would impact them. The use of seemingly exact replica message by the different States as ‘leaked’ on social media also suggested something sinister and could be justification for the cynicism of critics.
Conclusion: To conclude, this piece would attempt to draft an announcement for the closure of school for 5 weeks during Ramadan that would be ideal and not stir unwarranted contentions.
School Closure During Ramadan
The State Governor his Excellency Prof. Dr has approved the closure of all schools in the State between the period 32/13/ 20XX to 64/13/ 20 XX which would coincide with the Ramadan fasting period.
The decision is based on the confirmation by the Metrological Agency that adverse weather conditions would pervade the State with unprecedented heatwave during the period.
Following the previous advisory, and in anticipation of the consequences of the situation which was discussed extensively at the July 20XX Stakeholders engagement for the 20XX/20XX school year, School Administrators had agreed on a tentative calendar, designed with different levels of interventions to respond to the situation , and was detailed in the issued Communique.
Stakeholders are therefore advised to activate the alternative strategies proposed to ensure that teaching and learning hours do not cease totally during the period and/or be completed after the period of closure. Plans for Online schooling, extended hours and or cancellation of the 2nd term holidays to make-up for the 5 weeks closure as agreed earlier should also commence.
All resources necessary to ensure that the State’s academic standing is not unduly compromised should be deployed and schools should be adequately supported in that regard at this time.
Faithfully Serving
Revd. Dr, Chief Government
Fifelomo Dawodu: A_plusteam@yahoo.com
