Nigerian government support for students in the fight against COVID 19

Nigerian government support for students in the fight against COVID 19

www.9jaacademy.com

The federal government of Nigeria at the start of April 2020 announced that it is considering using mediums like radio and television programs to convey education to the millions of Nigerian students who have been forced to stay home as their contribution to the fight against the spread of coronavirus, this consideration is seen at some areas of the Nigerian society as very welcomed and in other areas, the reverse is the case.

Nigeria has come a long way from the early years of its independence from the English, in previous years, successive governments in retrospect did abandon the plight of all Nigerian students, I  remember a case in point where when the academic staff union of Nigerian universities when on strike demanding better pay and working conditions, that action lasted for an upward of five years which had and is still having adverse negative social and economic effects, let me explain.

The ASU strike in the '80s lasted approximately five years, but the thing there was also that Primary and Secondary school teachers were not part of ASU so their students kept climbing up the academic chain towards the universities which were then closed, so in essence students from secondary schools were graduating and leaving the secondary levels but had no university to go to.

After some years of waiting, youth and boredom starting getting the best of the vulnerable students leading a high number of them into various levels of crime, at some point in the early 90s the situation got so bad that robberies and other violent crimes were committed by secondary school students, it then became obvious that the governments at that time did not care about the issues in the educational sector.

The deepening polarization of the Nigerian educational system resulting from years of government neglect and lack of proper government support saw many Nigerian upper- and middle-class families send their children out of Nigeria for education. Although applauded by many as a viable solution to the dying Nigerian educational system at that time, most people now realize that sending your child to some other country for education could guarantee a future for that child but what would that future be? or how would that future look like? If the country is over-ran by criminals and terrorists, how would your child who has spent years in another country cope with the daily Nigerian crime statistics?          

Scientists and researchers the world over have pointed direct correlation between the lack of good education and the increase in crime rate, a fact is already known and to some degree accepted by the Nigerian government thus the effort to acknowledge the existence of problems in leaving students with learning.

A radio station as a medium to convey education to the millions of Nigerian students staying home to avoid coronavirus infection can be seen or taken as a very laudable step by the Nigerian government, however, radio program as a learning medium would be more successful in the 1970s, '80s and perhaps to some extent it might yield some favourable results in the 90`s but we are in the '20s and times have changed.

In education there is no one size fits all, this is a fact that cannot be disputed by academics even in Nigeria because even a classroom settings present a wide variety of learning patterns which the academic staffs try to work on, so how can a single radio program suffice for millions of students, there are lots of unignorable setbacks to this radio plan.

One major setback in this radio plan is disability ratio between Nigerian students, World health organization estimates that there are between one to four million students with some form of disability or the other, having radio as a means would completely leave out students with hearing disabilities and also the slow learners just to mention the least another point to consider is that if the Nigerian students were so capable to have unsupervised learning then why do we need teachers in the first place?

The television program idea, once again a laudable effort from the Nigerian government but again it is too little as the television learning program lacks inclusiveness what is guaranteed under supervised learning and again it also lacks consideration of others with disabilities.

Good education and not just any type of education is the fundamental right of all Nigerian students regardless of age, gender, religion, disabilities and the government should be held to task on providing productive education in Nigeria. In western countries, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, schools were closed and students ordered to learn from home, this did not imply self-control learning from home but rather schools took to online platforms for communications between their class teachers and students.

In some countries schools form WhatsApp groups where there is the unavailability of a proper online platform, others use retail platforms like Udemy and google scholar. In Nigeria, the new trend is Naija-academy (www.9jaacademy.com ) and this is for several understandable reasons which I will break down in a short comparison between these retail online platforms.

One major reason for the overwhelming preference of 9jaacademy in Nigeria over Udemy and Google scholar is to high cost which creates in its self-limitations for Nigerian student as Udemy charges per person and it's considered by most Nigerian schools because it is a drop and pickup website or like a YouTube for courses and thereby no classes created there or even feeling of being at school, another thing that Nigerian schools consider is that Udemy is not flexible to enable the integration of Nigerian schools basic philosophy.    

 

Google classroom, on the other hand, does provide classrooms and some useful tools but then again too expensive as the payments are charged per person and the google online classroom is very rigid and not flexible enough for most Nigerian schools thus making it not particularly fitting for the Nigerian educational

structure.

Another thing is that neither Google nor Udemy has channels of negotiation with Nigerian schools in matters of late payments or inability to meet up, even payments apart, if used by Nigerian schools then they (the School) will have to also comply with rules laid down by these websites.

Leading Nigerian schools now use 9jaacademy for several reasons and not just because they are leading schools, for example, 9jaacademy now offers full one-year free premium membership for all Nigerian schools and school level. The platform provided by 9jaacademy gives schools the possibility of adding all students or all classes, grades, and levels. Why should the future of any Nigerian student be put into disarray in their learning and development process? 

      For Nigerian students, it does not matter if you don't have money, 9jaacademy is and will always remain free for all Nigerian students, all it takes is that your school is a registered member of 9jaacademy. In this time of global coronavirus pandemic and of course, any future event of similar or greater events 9jaacademy ensures that all Nigerian schools have their fully customizable web presence.

With 9jaacademy school sessions are in fully functional order, with live classrooms, video streaming classes, video lessons uploading, assignment setting, assignment collection and submission, global bookshops for affordable books for all school class types, these are just a tip of the iceberg 9jaacademy putting it shortly is a school away from school. The 9jaacademy bookshop provides books from publishers national and global covering every subject topic.   

9jaacademy prides itself in working with Nigerian schools to help schools improve their standards and quality of education, I think parents and academic staffs responsible for children MUST demand that their schools be registered in a managed platform like 9jaacademy the reason being that management of owned platform is costly and with high manageability issues for a simple school, IT staffs. Several main academic institutions of western nations can agree on the fact that the advantages of managed schooling platform far outweighs the disadvantages, this is because of most leading online school use managed platforms.

Join the fight against CORONAVIRUS in Nigeria register your or your child's school today to bring their schools to your Livingroom !!!