Sixty-five year-old Oluwabukola Ilesanmi is the proprietress of Achievers Garden Nursery and Primary School in Abeokuta, Ogun State. She had run the school relatively smoothly since she established it 14 years ago.
But since the Nigerian government closed all schools in March as part of the lockdown to contain the novel, Mrs Ilesanmi’s school has not been able to pay workers’ salaries and its utility bills.
“It is not like the business moved well before the outbreak. As a school owner, you have to keep sending letters to parents to pay their children’s school fees so you don’t stop paying staff. However, the pandemic has thrown a blow at the business,” she said. Mrs Ilesanmi’s experience is shared by private school owners across Nigeria. Some of them in Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory , Oyo, Rivers, Nassarawa, and Enugu states who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES for this story said the impact of the pandemic has been very hard on their operations.The respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, and has spread worldwide has continued to cause fear and uncertainty among humans.
Over the years, private schools have gained popularity and acceptance in Nigeria because of inadequate public schools and their ‘failure’ in delivering quality teachings. In the last one and a half decades, private schools from elementary to tertiary levels have proliferated across the country as they position to fill the vacuum in the country’s education system.
“Based on the school calendar, we were supposed to resume at the end of April or first week in May for the third term. But now, we do not know when we are resuming,” she told PREMIUM TIMES. Mrs Ugbede said one of the reasons that private schools do not have ‘steady hands’ as teachers is because of their delay in paying salaries.
Simon Amodu corroborated the testimonies of Mrs Ilesanmi and Mrs Ugbede. The examination officer at Topmost Grace Montessori School in Rivers State said a lot of private schools are struggling to pay salaries now, especially the ones that are not big. “We were told to pay half of the school fees, and if they resume before the end of the term, we will balance it and pay other levies,” she said.
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