As if being a teacher is a curse, Tope Olaleye says she regrets being a teacher in a private school. The twenty-something-year-old has been left to ponder the future ever since schools were shut down by the Federal Government in March to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
“How do they want us to cope?” she asks angrily. “The last time we received our salary was in March, we have not received anything since then, not even a call to know about our welfare during these hard times.”
As she feels abandoned by the management of a private nursery and primary school at Idimu area of Lagos where she teaches, Olaleye says she’s been made to believe that Covid-19 has come to show private school teachers that they have no job yet.
She vows not to go back to teaching when schools are reopened.
“I am already looking for another job. I don’t want to die of hunger. once I get any other job, I am not going back to teaching,” she says.
She says the proprietor who employed her neglected her and other teachers at the school since the shutdown.
“You can imagine. They’re even renovating the school and they are not paying us. What do they want us to eat? We are suffering and nobody cares!” she laments.
No one prepared for this
In March 2020, the Federal Ministry of Education ordered the immediate closure of all educational institutions nationwide in a precautionary move aimed at curtailing the spread of coronavirus disease in the country.
Nigeria has seen the number of Covid-19 cases grow rapidly. As of July 27, over 40,000 cases of infection had been recorded with over 800 deaths across the country.
At the same time, the emergence of the pandemic has exposed the imbalances, fragility and outright neglect, if not rot, in the structure and functioning of some sectors including education.
For example, many private school teachers have lamented the non-payment of salaries by their employers since the lockdown began. This has led to some of the teachers making a direct appeal to the Federal Government for support so as to save them from starvation.
According to their spokesperson, Abdul-Ganiy Raji, it would be callous of the government to wait for owners and teachers of private schools to start dying of starvation before it comes to their aid.
Meanwhile, the president of the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools, Nigeria (NAPPS), Yomi Otubela, has disclosed that a total of 1,000,143 teaching and non-teaching staff in about 84,614 private schools are directly affected.
The teachers and non-teaching staff are now jobless as a result of the shutdown, Otubela says. This has also led to both Federal and State Governments losing over N72 billion in tax earnings due to non-payment of salaries to teachers in the private schools since March.
One proprietor’s unofficial disengagement
One school proprietor, Tope Balogun, owner of Paragon Children School at Iganmu area of Lagos, confirmed that he laid off his teachers unofficially because he could not pay them.
His school has over 100 pupils and 15 teachers. Balogun says he was able to pay his teachers in March, but April became a struggle because pupils had stopped attending and parents would not pay fees.
“I had to call a meeting and I told the teachers that the school can’t keep on paying them. Already we have invested in the facility we are using. And I had to disengage them unofficially,” he says.
“I told them to go and find other things they can do to sustain themselves. So, when the school finally re-opens, they can all come back.”
Balogun also says the government did the right thing by shutting down schools because of the ravaging pandemic. The issue, however, is that the government ought to have given considerations about relief support for those working in the educational sector.
“Directly, it has affected me as a proprietor because I’m an employer of labour and I can also say I’m an employee, because it is a business that pays me a salary. So, I’m being affected from two ends as an investor into the sector and as a worker in the sector,” he laments.
The proprietor of Paragon Children School appears to be an exception.
Many teachers in private schools in Lagos and Ogun States say they have been totally forgotten by their individual school management. Some feel they had been treated as not having any employment rights.
The attitude of such school managements also throws some light on the underbelly of employment in the private school sector.
For example, eight of 10 private school teachers interviewed from different schools in Ogun and Lagos States said they had no formal letter of appointment and admitted that this made them more vulnerable when schools were shut down.
Ademola Owolabi, a lawyer who was contacted on the issue of employment rights said, however, that retaining private school teachers without paying them salaries in this period of Covid-19 goes beyond the issue of illegality.
According to him, school owners could not have sourced salaries of teachers elsewhere, when they’re not getting the income (through fee payment by parents).
“The private school depends solely on school fees paid by parents to make up their income from where they pay teachers. So, if students, for reasons such as Covid-19, stay at home, where then will school pick up the payment from?” Owolabi asks.
“It is not an issue of illegal employment and engagement; there are limits to what the law can do. When we look at it from the angle of pure law, we could say it’s not legal, but where will the money come from? The banks are giving loans at 22 percent, and so will they go and borrow money to go and pay their teachers?”
He adds that nothing is wrong if, by now, the government gives private school teachers some palliatives.
“That is what serious nations are doing for workers that are also taxpayers,” he says. “It goes beyond an issue of illegality to the issue of governance; the country is not properly governed.”
This view is shared somewhat by the chairman of the Nigerian Union of Teachers in Lagos, Adedoyin Adeshina, who says that while private school teachers are not part of NUT, he has sympathy for them, noting a complexity in their plight.
“If Covid-19 is not around and they’re owed salaries, it is another thing. It is when the parents pay that they too get salaries. The aim of any private institution is to minimise costs and maximise profits. The private school owners cannot go to the bank to borrow and pay salaries. So, it’s a problem, a big one,” he says.
Fee payment relief for parents perhaps
According to a proprietor, Olalekan Akeju Sunday, owner of AKSUND International School in Agbado Local Government Area of Ogun State, parents of pupils in his school have shown no concern about the well-being of the teachers of their children in this period of hardship.
“With what is happening, the pandemic has really affected us. Private school owners usually get more money during exam periods,” he says.
“We have only two weapons we are using. The first one is during midterm tests, if they do not pay their school fees, we send them home and their parents respond immediately or when it’s about time to start writing their exams.
“But that period was when all schools were asked to shut down. So, since schools closed, there’s been nothing coming in because parents don’t pay during holidays.
“Some parents are even rejoicing because they don’t have to pay school fees. No parent has come ever since to ask about how the teachers are doing.”
The proprietor says many of his teachers are now into some kinds of trade which, he says, might not be beneficial to them and their families.
“But I can’t blame them. We’ve not been paying. Many of them are even on my neck, they call me day to day and tell me about their problems,” he says.
“We are seriously in chaos now; it has not been easy because most of my staff are not working. They are just at home and some don’t have anything to eat and they have to beg their families and friends.
“The same thing is affecting me, because the little we have had been spent. Nobody is prepared for this pandemic. If it is something we knew then, we would have prepared for it. Personally, I didn’t prepare for it because we never thought it would last this long,” he says.
Online teaching not an option
When asked about the much-taunted online teaching of students, some private school owners sounded unequivocal that it is not an option.
They believe that a combination of poor infrastructure, lack of capacity, unavailability of technological know-how and resources would make online learning difficult in the Nigerian context.
One of the proprietors, Oladapo Olasunkanmi of David Heroes Academy, Matogun, Ogun State, says he tried to organise online classes for his pupils so as to sustain payments of his teachers but the online sessions did not go successfully as planned.
“For instance, most rural schools can’t afford these online classes because it involves a lot of money and they don’t mostly deal with educational technology,” he says.
Olasunkanmi notes that 98 out of 100 private schools hardly use technological means for learning.
“But with the emergence of Covid-19, we have no option but to do online classes. Even with online classes, we still need the students physically for better explanations,” he explains.
The proprietor also laments that parents of pupils and students of the school have not shown enough concerns regarding the payments of their outstanding debts.
“We’ve not seen any parent that will come and say, let me pay part of my debt. We have to pay our teachers April salary, even when we closed schools in March, because there was no other means of income for them. How will they take care of their families?” he asks.
“At a point, I advised my teachers to take home lessons, so anything they get, they’ll use it to sustain themselves before schools resume.”
Where do private school teachers go from here?
For teachers in private schools, Covid-19 pandemic and the attendant closure of schools brought a nightmare of helplessness from which many may yet not recover. Many talk of everyday struggle to feed their families.
Abiola Azeez, 27, says the lockdown period was the worst he has ever experienced.
“I had to beg my friends to give me something to eat,” he says, shaking his head pitifully.
Azeez, who teaches at Orire Private School located in Badia area of Lagos, says he has been doing all sorts of menial jobs he could lay his hands on to sustain himself.
Modinah Olayinka, 36, another teacher, says catering for her family has become challenging.
“I’m not being paid and my husband’s work isn’t stable because of the lockdown,” she says.
Olayinka, who teaches at Albarkah Private School, Ijora, Lagos, says she last received her salary in March. If she had her way, she would be leaving teaching for a better job.
Azeez Kamil, a 25-year-old teacher at Success Solution School in Oke-Aro area of Ogun State, says he has had to rely on his parents for support and without them, he would have starved.
“Ordinarily, we were owed some two months salaries before schools were shut down. So, for us, we are still struggling to get paid for the other months, we’re not even talking about the recent ones. It’s sad,” he says.
Another teacher in the same school says he has enrolled himself as an apprentice to learn house painting.
“It’s not easy at all. I could not afford staying at home doing nothing,” he says. “Mine is even still good. At least I’m still single. Some of those teachers have families to cater for, yet they’ve nothing doing and are not being paid their salaries.”
Who monitors the shutdown anyway?
Amidst the uncertainties around re-opening of schools and lack of information from the government, some school owners in Lagos State would appear to have resorted to operating through the back door without adhering to the social distancing order.
This reporter discovered that many private schools in some rural parts of the state have asked their pupils and students to come to school without putting on their school uniforms.
A school owner in the Iganmu area of Lagos confirmed such discreet schooling, but suggested that it was not acceptable.
“Proprietors hiding to teach their students are not patriotic enough because the reason for this closure of schools is not because they want to punish us deliberately, it was to reduce the spread and that is why they restrict us,” the school owner says.
When asked whether he was also planning to organise such classes for his students, he said: “It is an embarrassment to the school if any authority starts asking me questions. At my age and level of education, how will I justify trying to put people’s children in danger?
“If the government wanted to reopen schools then they would have told us the measures to take. But now, we don’t even know the measures to take. And, those organising the lessons don’t take any health measures.
“They are running the lessons like normal school activities and nose masks; thermometers and other stuff are not provided for them. When any of the pupils get infected, they will infect others and also take it home to their family members. So, those that are doing it are really not considerate and I think they’re being selfish.”
The proprietor, however, says the best thing is to find other alternatives for survival, because trying to teach pupils through the back door is like playing with fire.
“And if fire burns, it will eventually affect others and not just them,” he adds.
Decrying what he sees as lack of monitoring of compliance by schools to the shutdown by state educational authorities, he said that he had been minded to raise complaints but was being careful of “being termed overzealous” by his co-proprietors.
This report was facilitated by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) under its COVID-19 Reality Check project.
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