Poor leadership behind student unrest

Recent incidents of students reducing school hostels, offices and stores to rubble is a wake-up call that something serious is wrong in our education sector.

Few weeks ago, a senior director from Nacada said drug peddlers had infiltrated county offices, education institutions and other organs where they are running their business from within.

In fighting high-handedness in schools, students turn their anger on the school properties.

You will realise that in most affected schools, the principals have headed them for the last 25 years and above, some have attained retirement age but have renewed their contracts in curious arrangements.

Most principals have turned public secondary schools into their private entities.

Service providers of most essential services to most of affected schools are provided by close friends or relatives of sitting principals or have registered their companies to loot.

In most cases, services rendered by their companies or cronies are substandard, prices exaggerated and not given in time.

Most public schools' principals have turned to be wheeler dealers, are rarely in school, are seen moving around towns and cities either looking for land deals, supervising their projects, looking for tenders to be suppliers to other schools or working behind their relatives' registered business companies to win supply orders.

It is near impossible for students, parents and other visitors to access principals' offices.

Students in the affected schools can confess that some never get near the principal's offices for the entire period of four years they have spent in school.

School managers employ their close relatives in most critical offices to help them conceal their illegal and illicit trade they are involved in within their institutions. It is time teachers unions start campaigns in schools and advice them to stop using street preachers as mentors to students.