By Udo Akam-Alo, ABAKALIKI
The National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS Zone B (South South and Southeast) has kicked against the E-learning program initiative of both the federal government and Ebonyi state government, saying it is bound to fail.
In a statement signed by Comrade Nwuruku Olisa Alfred, the Director of Special Duties, NANS Zone B and made available to Prompt News in Abakaliki, the students’ body anchored its rejection on what it described as “impracticability” of the scheme.
NANS Zone B posited that the country and Ebonyi state cannot make a success of the scheme because many homes do not have access to stable power supply and a stand-by generating set coupled with the high rate of poverty especially with ravaging COVID-19 pandemic.
The statement reads in part: “Nigeria as a country and Ebonyi as a State still have multifarious hinterlands that are yet to connect to the power supply, and unfortunately, the population of Nigerian Students is not limited to the numerical figure settling in the urban areas. So, it suffices to say that the population of students residing in the rural areas who are not also captured by electricity and most other population suffering power fluctuation would be cut off from this scheme, leaving the whole dream unattained.
“We have had enough time to painstakingly reconsider the pros and cons of the initiative in question, that is, the practicability of electronic learning in a clime as deficient as Nigeria, deficient of Stable Power Supply and deficient of sophisticated Technology, and have arrived at a conclusion that the plan would fail for want of enabling facilities, and personnel who would adequately man the facilities in view of the standard of our information technology.
“We cannot also alternatively resort to our generating plants, people that cannot afford the cost of their feeding cannot comfortably fend for the price of daily fuel utility, most others do not have standby power generators at all.
“We do not deny the inevitability and usefulness of this scheme to the Educational sector, especially at this trying time when the walls of classrooms are compulsorily shut down and Students locked at their respective homes by orders necessitated by the fight against COVID-19 global scourge.
“We are not also oblivious of the unending nature of this disease, so that the hope of resuming classrooms dims, safe to say, and cannot consequently relax our heads and hands, hence the need for any rights thinking country and State to consider virtual learning as an option, but we strongly refuse this scheme on grounds of its impracticability.”
