House Of Reps Wants To Stop Public Officers’ Children From Schooling Overseas

The House of Representatives is to revisit a bill seeking to ban government officials from sending their children to educational institutions outside the country.

The move is to halt the alleged lukewarm attitude of government officials to public schools, “which has led to the deteriorating state of education in Nigeria.”

Chairman, House Committee on Finance, Mr. Abdulmumini Jibrin, gave the hint about the lawmakers’ plan in Abuja on Tuesday.

Jibrin spoke at a public lecture, organised by the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy  to mark the 2013 International Youth Day.

 

He said the country’s education system needed “drastic solutions” to rescue it from further deterioration.

According to him, one of such solutions is to pass a law compelling public officials to send their children to schools in Nigeria as against the current trend, where many of them study in overseas countries.

Jibrin argued that so long as the children of directors, permanent secretaries, ministers and legislators studied abroad, there would be no commitment to address the falling educational system in the country.

Jibrin, who spoke on the topic, ‘The Role and Challenges of Legislators in Making the Nation’s Youth Resourceful and Self-Reliant’, argued that funding was not the problem of education in Nigeria.

He cited factors, such as greed, lack of commitment by leaders, mismanagement of resources and corruption as “the real issues that we must tackle urgently.”

The lawmaker added, “To achieve this, we need drastic solutions. Some of us in the House have considered the fact that we have to revisit the bill that makes it compulsory for public officials to send their children to public schools in Nigeria.

“The bill was first introduced at the Senate, but it failed.  We are going to bring it up at the House again.

“All public officers from the rank of directors or whether you are a minister or a governor; their children will have to attend public schools in Nigeria. We have to re-introduce this bill and make it a law.

“When the son of the Minister of Education or the Permanent Secretary is in the University of Abuja, for instance, they will ensure that things work well there because of their child.

“So long as political office holders and other public officers can afford to send their children to private schools and also send them abroad, the education system in Nigeria will not function well.”

Jibrin did not say how members would be mobilised to support the bill.

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