During the week, a woman with her daughter not known to me was spotted waiting patiently in our front desk office. I had guessed she came to seek a favour and was probably not getting attention. When I was done with another visitor I was attending to, I turned to her and asked if she wanted to see someone.
“Yes sir,” she promptly responded and added that she brought her son, who is studying in a university in the South East, to do his industrial training. About 30 minutes later, the woman was still waiting.
When I stepped into the newsroom to monitor copy flow, Women’s Editor, Temitope Ojo, drew close to me with a gangling young man whom she said wants to do industrial training with us.
“His mother brought him personally to us so as to know where exactly the office is located,” Tope explained.
I tried to beat back the urge for laughter, because at that point, I did not need anyone to tell me that the woman who sat in the reception was the mother. But I needed to be sure, and asked the young man: “Will your mother be taking you to the places we will send you to investigate stories, now that she has taken a seat in our reception?”
The intending trainee journalist smiled shyly and nodded in the negative. Within a minute after collecting a copy of TheNiche to see the house style the boy left to rejoin the mother and sister. From the newsroom window I saw the trio leaving our premises.
“Editor, the mother said she brought him to know where we are because the boy is her only son,” Tope explained after their exit. We all broke into laughter.
Tomorrow, September 22, children all over the country will return to school after a lengthy vacation. Unfortunately, there are also those who will not return to school as a result of national insecurity caused by festering insurgency, particularly in the North.
Besides, primary and secondary school pupils will resume school amid fear of the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) one Patrick Sawyer brought into Nigeria from Liberia a few months ago.
Ordinarily, at a time like this, kids would be returning to school after the long vacation with great and good tales of how wonderful the holiday period was in terms of their experiences within or outside the country.
But alas, that may not be the case this time around, and even if there are pupils and students who have experiences to relive about the long holiday it will be the few who had travelled out of the country prior to the importation of Ebola.
The tale of the boy who wants to do industrial attachment is important for us to know the type of affinity between parents and wards and especially, between mothers and children.
During the week, sentiment ran high from parents, teachers and the government because of the insistence of the government that the September 22 resumption date is sacrosanct.
Apart from some parents who want schools to reopen on October 13 so that they would have more time to fetch school fees, others, including teachers, needed to buy time to monitor the level of insecurity and Ebola.
Many women from the North are like the Biblical Rachel wailing uncontrollably in the wilderness over her sons. They have children who cannot return to school tomorrow because of the fear that agents of Boko Haram are waiting in the wings to scoop them up like water to an unknown destinations, as they took the Chibok schoolgirls to the Sambisa evil forest on April 15.
The Nigerian environment, actually, is not very conducive for us to take our wards back to school because of Islamist fundamentalists, and of late, Ebola. But we must consider other factors in not asking our children to return to school now, after their long vacation.
A friend whose daughter is studying in the United Kingdom narrated how his wife had to personally take the small girl to school because of the humiliation foreigners subject Nigerian students to because of Ebola.
According to him, it does not matter whether you have a clean bill of health. As long as you are returning from Nigeria the tendency is for the school authorities to isolate you for quarantining.
This is unfair given that only a few months back, Ebola was not known in this country. But again, that is the extent Nigeria and Nigerians are loved or hated across the world.
All countries have their problems, what is important is how they solve them.
It is quite tenable, President Goodluck Jonathan’s argument that if we allow children to continue to remain at home because of Ebola, it will make the international community to continue to treat us a pariah.
Methinks we ought to collaborate with the government to ensure that the efforts to contain the disease, even if temporarily, are sustained.
But it is not appropriate for Jonathan to beat his chest over what the government did to check the spread of the virus. He should tell parents that all fear factors have been taken care of, whether for Boko Haram or Ebola.
As Napoleon Bonarparte would say, “a leader is dealer in hope,” meaning that Jonathan owes Nigerians the obligation to say he would take responsibility for the safety of children returning to school and their teachers, and by so doing, allay their fears and those of parents.
It is not enough for the government to ask parents to bundle their wards to school without a commensurate effort at making the environment conducive for learning. I sympathise with Jonathan, who, during the week, appealed to the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) not to embark on strike after the latter vowed to shun schools if certain facilities are not provided.
Jonathan should go beyond mere appeal and ensure that the materials teachers and students need are in place. By now, what the federal and state education ministries should be telling us is the availability of all materials required in school from tomorrow.
From what NUT President, Michael Olukoya, said the demands of the teachers are not what can cost the government an arm or leg in a country where money stolen from the public till makes politicians richer than the state.
Teachers want the government to provide infra-red thermometer, running water, hand sanitiser and other facilities that can ensure hygiene in school.
It will be shameful if the government cannot provide these facilities in public schools, and more shameful if private schools – who claim to be Ivy Leagues just because they charge outrageous fees – do not have them.
Our children are our pride and they must be treated so. No investment is too big for the government to make for the sake of those we call our leaders of tomorrow, if indeed we are prepared to entrust our tomorrow into their hands. We cannot afford to toy with them, nor with our future as a country. Never.
A lesson, though, has been learnt from this ugly development. We must always be prepared for the unknown and be challenged by situations to put our house in order. That is the only way we can stay confident when the vicissitudes of life come knocking on our doors.
