Delta State government has ordered the immediate closure of all Lesson Centres across the state in order to ensure sanity in their operations.
The government said the decision was as a result of public outcry on child right abuses by the operators of the lesson centres.
The Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Patrick Ukah, made the disclosure in Asaba, when members of the Delta State Child Right Implementation Committee paid him an advocacy visit.
Ukah stated that most of the centres were operating miracle examination centres and they operate in the day time in contravention of laid down education guidelines for extra moral classes which are supposed to operate purely as evening lessons.
He therefore, said there was need to regulate their activities so as not to end up endangering the future of the children.
He advised operators of the centres to reach out to the ministry, through the appropriate department, for proper documentation and regularisation of their operations and ordered the department of Inspectorate and Quality Assurance of the ministry to ensure strict compliance with the directive by immediately closing down such lesson centres across the state.
Ukah emphasised the strong need for stakeholders to brace up to the challenge of ensuring effective implementation of the child right act.
To this end, he said that the ministry had established an Advocacy and Mentoring division, just as he pledged the ministry’s collaboration with the committee towards realising their terms of reference.
Earlier, the Chairman of the committee, Oghenekevwe Agas, recalled that the Child Right Act was signed into law in 2008 while their committee was inaugurated in 2020.
He explained that the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education was very strategic in the enforcement of the child right.
Agas, who is the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community and Social Development, reiterated that the committee was charged with the responsibility of enforcing the right of every child, adding that the committee was designed to protect them.
While calling on teachers to play key roles in ensuring that children were adequately protected from any form of abuses, Agas recalled that the increasing population of children in schools could make monitoring a bit difficult, even as she decried cases of rape either between students and teachers or students and students.
