Secondary school male students in Bauchi on Monday protested the state government’s plan to separate male and female students.
The government’s plan was earlier in the month revealed by the State Commissioner for Education, Mr Aliyu Tilde, while addressing newsmen after the State Executive Council (SEC) meeting in Bauchi, noting that it would only be executed whenever and wherever it was possible.
He explained that the idea was to address moral decadence, which he said has become prevalent among students of secondary schools.
According to him, private schools would take a cue from the initiative and separate their males who would be attending their academic activities in one institution and the females in another separate institution.
The commissioner further explained that where they can not be separated completely, their seating arrangement would be so that the males would occupy one side of a classroom and the females at the other side of the classroom.
“The most important thing is that we don’t want to undo the progress that we have made in the past on girl-child education by allowing this trend to continue.
“We came up with an idea, let us extend that 1978 abrogation of core education policy to cover our Day secondary schools as well, wherever and whenever it is possible.
“Wherever it is possible, is talking about the geography and whenever is possible is talking about the distribution in time. That is, maybe it is possible tomorrow or not in terms of separating them completely.
“Wherever is possible is where perhaps we have two-day secondary schools within the same vicinity, we’ll allocate one to girls and the other to boys,” he said.
On Monday, photos of the male students surfaced online holding leaves in a protest march.
The protest is coming on the heels of the resumption of schools across the state today, Monday.
See photos below:
