By Nsan Ndoma-Neji, Calabar
Factional president of the Cross River State chapter of the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools, NAPPS, Mr. Godwin Okwu, and his faction have called on the state Commissioner for Education, Senator Stephen Odey, to remove NAPPS clearance as a condition for WASSCE registration for private schools candidates in the state.
Okwu made the call during a telephone conversation with our correspondent on the crises rocking the Cross River State NAPPS on Wednesday in Calabar.
He said, “Our petition to the House of Assembly was for the House to plead with the education ministry to remove NAPPS clearance as condition for WASSCE registration.
“And the House of Assembly saw it wise and said that the ministry should remove NAPPS clearance as a condition for now since there are two factions of NAAPS pending when they are going to merge both factions together.
“If we pay the money to them, the money is going to go to the other group, given the fact that they have a desk officer there.
“They can’t collect levy from us. We are not their members. When they cannot give account of what had been collected.
“When they can’t even give account of what they had collected, sitting at the Ministry of Education’s gate to force members to pay levy to the association rather than making the association enviable for members to voluntarily pay the money to the association, I think that was why we went to the House of Assembly Committee on Education.
“Our going there for stakeholders engagement is not because of collection of government revenue. We went there because the other faction had made the association unattractive.
“The administration have made the association unattractive to the extent that people are not willing to pay levies again and the only way they want to collect the association levy is to work with Ministry of Education.
“That enforcement for the collection of levies for the association is what we don’t want.
“The ministry should allow us pay money willingly so that the people can be accountable to the association.
“What we are talking about is the association levy. The ministry said it wants to enforce it. We are saying don’t enforce association levy. Allow the association exco to do so, so that they would be able to account for what they had collected, so that people will willingly pay.
“That association clearance is what we said the ministry should remove from the registration conditions.”
But Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Mr. Francis Oyije, who reacted to the issue on behalf of the education commissioner in a letter titled CRS/MOE//VoL./223 insisted that one of the requirements for WASSCE registration by proprietors of private schools is to obtain NAPPS clearance from the Abraham Osok faction of the association, a development which the Okwu faction had kicked against, saying that his faction has nothing to do with NAPPS clearance from Osok’s faction.
