By Akinwale Kasali

Lagos State Government Secondary School Teachers have urged the Lagos State Government and the State Ministry of Education to shift the January 6th, 2025, resumption date of Students to a later date following the death of five of their colleagues  in a fatal accident while going for an Audit Exercise.

The victims were said to have been deployed from their place of Primary Assignment to Pobuna Junior Secondary Grammar School, Epe.

Adewuyi Adeyeye, one of the victims, was returning from a Staff Audit Exercise, when he died in an auto crash along Ijebu- Ode/Epe road. His death prompted his colleagues to demand that the State Government postpone resumption for public school students, particularly around the Epe axis of the State.

The teachers have also requested that the State Government suspend the ongoing staff audit or decentralize the exercise to prevent further casualties across the State.

They stated this after the deceased teacher, who was deployed to Pobuna Junior Secondary Grammar School, Epe, was laid to rest and the injured victims were rushed to other tertiary medical facilities for better healthcare services.

According to the teachers, the trauma from the auto crash, especially for the colleagues of the deceased and injured teachers, who were from the same school, is unbearable for them.

One of the female teachers who pleaded anonymity in a video stated that the deceased teacher and the 15 other victims were staff deployed to Pobuna Junior Secondary Grammar School, Epe. She said she does not understand how the school could operate with such casualty.

She added that a large number of teachers around Epe were already traumatised considering the poor welfare their employer, the Lagos state government, often subjected them to.

“We are concerned that the government does not care for us. We are often treated poorly. There is a need for an investigation into this accident and we do not want it swept under the carpet because a teacher was killed by cultists in Epe recently and till today, the culprits have not been uncovered. We do not want this to be like that”.

Speaking on behalf of the teachers, the Secretary, Lagos chapter of the Nigerian Union of Teachers, NUT, Gbenga Aiyetoba, stressed that death and injuries sustained during the auto crash would have been avoidable if the government had considered teachers deployed to schools in Epe and Badagry axis of Lagos before fixing locations for the audit exercise in the state.

Aiyetoba noted that the Government must often consider the terrain of schools where the teachers were deployed before mandating their employees to resume at the state capital, Ikeja, for an audit exercise that could be done without his colleagues traveling many miles.

According to him, it is sad that the audit exercise at the Alausa Secretariat in Ikeja is a waste of time and resources for both the teachers and the State Government.

“The number of audit staff attending to the teachers were insufficient which made the employees leave home very early, spend many hours waiting, and return home late. And the reason for this is that the government embarked on this needless centralized audit exercise.

“Based on this, we are demanding that the audit exercise be suspended to avoid recording another auto crash when the teachers travel to Ikeja in compliance with the government directives.

“And when the exercise is to resume, the government should be ready to decentralize the procedure to ease the pain teachers in Epe and Badagry could go through to present their documents before the audit team. If not, they will travel many miles to complete the exercise”.

In a chat with the Deputy Director of Public Affairs, Ministry of Basic And Secondary Education, Kayode Sutton, said that the request from the teachers has been noted, adding the Government will respond to their demands soon.

Sutton further added that the Government considers teachers’ welfare which was the reason the Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Tolani Alli-Balogun, visited the accident scene and the victims in the hospital, as well as, the family of the deceased teacher after news of the auto crash filtered in.

It would be recalled that when the incident occurred, spokesperson for the Ministry of Education had eaelier debunked reports that five people died, saying only one teacher died during the accident that occurred while they were returning from Ikeja.

“The Teachers, who were returning from the ongoing staff audit exercise organized by the State Government in a convoy, ran into an articulated vehicle driving against traffic and collided with the lead bus in the convoy.

1“Two of the severely injured Teachers had been referred to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), while others received treatment at the Epe General Hospital”.

Following this development, the LASG is yet to give a directive on whether the resumption date for the Students in the affected Schools and axis will be postponed.