Abuja — “We are compelled to speak out against the increasingly despotic and overreaching directives issued by the Imo State Commissioner of Education in recent times on social media.” With these words, Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, Archbishop of Owerri, criticized the education policies of Bernard Thomson, Commissioner for Education of Imo State, in southeastern Nigeria.
In a statement published on September 4, Archbishop Ugorji said that recent directives affecting mission and private schools in the southeastern Nigerian state undermine collaboration, academic freedom, open dialogue and the participation of key stakeholders in the education sector.
The Archbishop of Owerri stressed that “a healthy education system relies on collaboration, open dialogue, academic freedom, and mutual respect among administrators, teachers, parents and students.” In contrast, according to Archbishop Ugorji, emphasized that the current leadership of the Imo State Ministry of Education had instead embraced “dictatorship and high-handedness.”
“This top-down approach threatens the foundational principles of our educational system. strips educators of much-desired initiatives and decision-making power, and replaces them with rigid and flawed directives,” he said.
Archbishop Ugorji described as “particularly concerning” recent policies that centralize absolute control and micro-management of mission and private schools, compelling Christian schools in Imo State to observe Islamic holidays, dictating dates for the resumption and closing of schools, issuing threats of punitive measures against educators who voice professional concerns, and trying to exclusively choose textbooks from the list of government approved textbooks and unilaterally fixing their prices.
“These measures do not serve the best interests of our children,” the Archbishop warned, cautioning against the risk of creating “an environment of fear, coercion, intellectual subjugation and stagnation.”
Archbishop Ugorji instead stressed that education should promote critical thinking and diversity of thought rather than enforce what he described as “rigid ideological conformity.”
The Archbishop of Owerri therefore urged the Commissioner for Education to immediately halt what he described as unilateral directives and engage in transparent and meaningful dialogue with stakeholders in the education sector. Archbishop Ugorji also appealed to the Imo State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodinma, to call the commissioner to order.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.