Male secondary school pupils in Bauchi have taken to the streets to protest the government’s policy to separate male pupils from females across the state.
On September 22, the policy to reorganise the genders in both primary and secondary schools within Bauchi state was made public.
The government said that the development was in response to anti-social behaviours such as mock courtship and marriages by some of the pupils.
In 2017, some senior pupils of Sa’adu Zungur Model School were involved in a mock marriage, which infuriated the public and ignited the gender separation debates.
Peoples Gazette learned that by mock marriage, a male and female pupil will arrange marriage by themselves, with the help of their peers in the school.
Both will be announced husband and wife after the “groom” must have paid dowry, sometimes for as low as N500, and bought candy and biscuits for friends.
Following the 2017 incident, schools were temporarily closed by the state government in response to the public outcry that greeted the discovery.
When the schools were reopened by the Deputy Governor and Commissioner for Education, Nuhu Gidado, the government pledged to find a long lasting solution.
The outcome of that deliberation was a comprehensive plan to enforce the separation of gender in schools across the state, released on September 22.
The plan is to have a situation where boys and girls will not be allowed to enrol in the same school, or in the same class, or study at the same time as the case may be.