EDUCATION DURING EMERGENCIES: NIGERIA'S BASIC EDUCATION LAW AGAINST HOME EDUCATION AS A RECOURSE

Emergencies will continue to happen; havocs will be wrecked and education will not be spared. This is the concern of the paper, reviewing the outbreak of Covid-19 as an eye-opener to the lack of preparedness for and against emergencies that are capable of halting continuous schooling and education in Nigeria. Various alternatives were explored during Covid-19 lockdown, ranging from all available social media tools such as WhatsApp, You Tube, Skype etc. for e-teaching and e-learning; more significantly was the extensive adoption and utilization of virtual options; including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Google Classrooms, Yahoo Groups etc. for teaching and learning to continue. The paper showed that these were effective respite during the stagnation experienced, but their limitation in the eyes of the law and national education policy provisions constituted the barriers, particularly as it concerns the Universal Basic Education. Though, no one is conscious of this as a possible object of litigation. It is therefore found to be of concern that home education of pupils or students using the alternatives to schooling at UBE level is not sanctified for use in the times of emergencies for academic continuity. These impediments are the laws of Nigeria and the policy provisions which were extensively discussed in this paper. The conclusion indicates that all the legal instruments connected to education in Nigeria place emphasis on schooling, as it is only the legal means to be educated and certificated in the UBE. It is therefore recommended that UBE laws be revisited for the consciousness of emergency situations that can halt schooling and make official, home education and the deployment of electronic media, including virtual tools as pragmatic recourse to salvaging education during emergencies.