EWAN: Summit Emphasises Proactive Measures to Boost School Safety​

Funmi Ogundare​

Stakeholders recently converged on Radisson Blu Hotel, GRA Ikeja, for the 2022 edition of the annual summit of Education Writers’ Association of Nigeria (EWAN) themed: ‘Towards Safe Schools in Nigeria’, aimed at engaging different experts responsible for keeping schools safe and consolidating their efforts to ensure the implementation of the safe school policy.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu was the chief host and Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, was the guest of honour.

Participants also included school owners and administrators, heads of security agencies, teachers, parents, educational institutions and education-focused civil societies, journalists, and students.​

They stressed the need to improve the safe schools policy, recommending a “codified policy” for schools that must be complied with by both staff and students and all persons working or living within the schools, including CCTVs to “monitor and ensure adequate security of lives and properties in schools, as well as the construction of perimeter fences around schools nationwide.”

The stakeholders also​ recommended the constitution of security committees comprising members of the schools’ host communities and staffers to assist security agencies in achieving their set goals, as well as the improved use of visitors’ registers across schools to monitor those who come in and out of school facilities.

They also stressed the need for school owners; public or private, to address the boarding system across schools that are vulnerable to physical attacks.

The participants also suggested the mandatory establishment of counselling units in schools to address academic and psychosocial challenges of staff and students, as well as adequate funding of schools to accommodate security facilities needed for safety, such as the alternative source of power in cases of outages.