BEVERLY HILLS, April 20, (THEWILL) – Five female students caught smoking shisha in a viral video on social media, have been suspended by the Lagos State Government.
The State Government, through the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Youth and Social Development, identified them as students of Oreyo Senior Grammar School, Igbogbo, Ikorodu area of the state.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Tokunbo Wahab, who confirmed the development, said the state government ordered their rehabilitation with immediate effect.
Wahab said: “Appropriate steps are being taken to address the issue with the aim of preventing future occurrence in the state.
“The appropriate ministry is already intervening. You see why the role of parents is so critical. We can’t leave everything to the government and school. This is heart-wrenching.”
A cross-section of parents and owners of private schools in the state described the development as a by-product of gross degeneration of societal values in the country and condemned it in its entirety.
They said, although parents or guardians were to blame because, according to them, it appeared the parents had failed in their roles to their children or wards, the school and the students themselves had their own share of the blame.
Reacting to the development, Deputy National President of the National Parent-Teacher Association of Nigeria (NPTAN) and South-West Coordinator of the group, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, and President of the Association for Formidable Education (AFED), Emmanuel Orji, and Chairman of the League of Muslim School Proprietors (LEAMSP), Lagos State chapter, Fatai Raheem, said they were shocked at the viral video.
They said they would not blame the parents alone for the bad behaviour because the students involved might have carried out the act during school hours when their parents would believe they were in the care of school authorities.
They said they could only encourage parents and guardians not to abandon their parental roles to teachers and the school authorities.
They charged especially the public schools to live up to their responsibilities particularly by ensuring that students remained in the school premises during school hours and reported students with bad behaviour including absentees to their parents.
They said it was disheartening that some students left home without getting to school and without parents knowing because they did not bother to visit their children all the year round, even on “open days.”
Shisha, according to health experts, contained tobacco mixed sometimes with fruit or molasses and heated with charcoal in a Shisha pipe to create the smoke.
Like tobacco smokers, smokers of Shisha are also at risk of developing heart and circulatory diseases, cancers, nicotine addiction and other health effects.
About the Author
