From Dan Maduagwu, Umuahia
The leader of federal government team for National Personnel Audit (NPA), Mrs Ada Oguche has lamented that some schools are preventing her team from carrying out the assignment in Abia State.
She said that the exercise is a nationwide programme which takes place every five years and enables the federal government under the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) to determine the projects to be done in such States by UBEC.
She listed school infrastructure, toilets, instructional materials etc as some of the benefits the enumerated schools in Abia would enjoy after the exercise, adding that the programme would last for three weeks.
To this end, Abia State Chairman of Universal Basic Education, Elder Josiah Anonaba has warned that any public or private owned school that found resisting the national personnel enumeration would be closed down.
According to Elder Anonaba, “The NPA programme is compulsory for every school in Abia State both public and private schools that harbour the Abia child must open their doors for this national group of enumerators to collect the needed information.
That is what UBEC and federal ministry of education requests from us.” “Any school that resists the enumeration exercise would be shut down”, he warned.
Findings by News Echo showed that management of some schools especially the private- owned ones, were not interested in the personnel enumeration initiative as they claimed that no benefit accrued to them from some previously held exercise.
The private school owners who spoke under anonymity denied locking their doors against the federal government officials, explaining that they their service security men at various school gates only tried to scrutinise the identity of every visitor to their schools, especially at this period of general insecurity in the country.
Meanwhile, public primary/secondary schools in the State are yet to call off their ongoing strike, which they embarked on, at end of May.
