Before and after Nigeria's independence, teachers were well respected and seen as role models. Parents even send their children to live with teachers to learn good behaviours and shape their lives. Parents do that because they believed that teachers live a life worthy of emulation going by their truthfulness and uprightness.

However the situation has changed, teachers are no longer what they used to be in the past. They now live a corrupt life full of affluence even when it is obvious that their salary cannot meet the kind of life they live. In order to meet these kinds of flamboyant life, they resort to cheating in all manners, which include collecting bribe to pass children, illegal fees, unwarranted extra moral lessons and making unnecessary demands from parents. This is more rampant in private schools but has also crept into public schools especially in big cities like Lagos where it is believed that parents can afford the demands. Those in public schools tell all manners of lies in the name of government to ask parents to pay for this or that, claiming that it was government directive.

Recently in Lagos State, the governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, in fulfillment of his 2007 electioneering campaign promise of making free education one of his cardinal point decided to give free text books on core subjects to pupils and students in both primary and secondary schools. The government, after the launch of the free textbooks, decided to give the books through school Principals and Head Mistresses to each pupil or student for easy distribution based on trust of the principals and head teachers. Rather than distributing the books they resorted to charging some money before a student or pupil can collect his or hers. Not only that, the school uniforms which the government gave directives that it should be sold at N1,500 each are being sold at N5,000 or N4,000 and the extra goes to the principal's pocket. The principals/head teachers collect other illegal money in the name of furniture without the consent of the government.

Some years back, during the a administration of Bola Tinubu, a school principal was arrested and detained for two days at the task force office for collecting registration fee from students for the West African Examination Council (WAEC) for the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) when the state government had paid for the WAEC fees for all students in the state. The principal was later suspended, but not known if he was dismissed later.

Recently it filtered into the ear of Fashola that teachers are collecting money from parents before their children or wards could collect the free books and other unscrupulous activities of the principals/head teachers and asked the Deputy-Governor, Mrs. Serah Sosan, who is overseeing the Ministry of Education in the state to talk to her people before the axe fall on them. Fashola, Sosan said is worried over the activities of these schools' heads.

Last week, the Deputy-Governor summoned all school principals in the state to a meeting at the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Maryland, where she expressed government worry and disappointment on the heads of schools over their activities, saying that they are painting the government black.

She lambasted the Principals, saying that they are subverting the government's intention of ensuring free and qualitative education in the state.

"We get calls, text messages and e-mails on how you people extort money from poor parents, using government name to make money. Many times, the governor would call me to say, go and talk to your people they are painting us black. I have kept quiet but the complaints are becoming too much and that called for this meeting," she said.

Sosan said many of the principals have failed in their duty as parents by encouraging examination malpractices and other illegal deals in schools, saying that government is spending so much to make education accessible to the poor.

"At the beginning of the term we stated prices for school uniforms which is N1,500 for one but some of you are selling it for N4,000, N5,000, demanding one thing or the other from these poor parents," Sosan said.

Sosan warned that henceforth any principal found collecting illegal money from parents would be dealt with, adding that immediately the principal would be suspended, and if found guilty would be dismissed from the service of the state government and later be prosecuted.

"Why would you collect money to make furniture? Are you a furniture maker? The government is making furniture available to schools on gradual basis and we will get to all schools. Government is spending so much in rehabilitating schools and soon all schools would be reached. We do not want you to exploit parents but rather you should pity them," she said.

She announced that the state government has banned the use of its Secondary and Primary schools as tutorial centres by Universities, Polytechnic, Colleges of Education and others.

She said any institution that wants to operate tutorial centres or run part-time programmes should buy a land and develop it for such schools. Lagos State University (LASU), Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH), Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education (AOCOED) and other tertiary institutions in the country have part-time programmes they run in Lagos using both primary and secondary school facilities in the state.

She also announced that any body or organisation who want to use school compound for activities like wedding and other parties should pay to the bank the sum of N35,000 and obtain a receipt and not to pay to school authority, adding that with such payment an approval letter would be issued before the venue would be used.

Sosan who said that the government is worried on how school principals give out these schools while the money generated are not put to the improvement of facilities in the schools but are diverted to private pocket.