It was a cold morning in Lau Local Government Area of Taraba State. The date was Tuesday, May 23, 2023, and time was a few minutes after 10.
One of our correspondents had embarked on a trip to Karim Lamido LGA for an assignment, when he suddenly sighted the LGEA Primary School in Tsakuma community and beheld a strange scene several metres away.
The Jalingo–Lankaviri–Lau Road, where the school is located, is less than 40 kilometers away from Jalingo, the state capital.
Our correspondent observed that over 40 pupils were camped under a makeshift tent, which served as their classroom.
They sat on logs, and given their population some sat in the sun outright as the shade provided by the shed could not cover them.
And on a closer look, the majority of the pupils looked malnourished with their hair unkempt, while their torn and tattered clothes of different styles and colours – clearly with no uniformity in dressing – reeked of abject poverty.
Further highlighting their situation was how their tender feet were soaked in the dust, with no footwear in sight, exposing the several tiny sores which riddled their legs and feet. Seemingly oblivious of their plight or out of innocent indifference, they played around joyfully on the unprotected premises.
Concerned by the ugly situation and the pupils’ noticeable resolve to be in school, Sunday PUNCH took further steps to interrogate the daily reality of these leaders of tomorrow. One of their class teachers, who simply gave his name as Musa, and was the only one available at the time of visit, told one of our correspondents about the pupils’ dedication to their studies.
Although most of the pupils were not fluent in English language, they spoke fluently in their mother tongue, Hausa, the dominant language in the area.
Luka Tanko, who wore a pair of light green sport shorts beneath an orange T-shirt, alongside his friend, John Ishaya, who was clad in a pair of black sportswear under his yellow shirt were eager to lament the hardship they faced in their bid to get education, hoping help would eventually come their way.
Tanko in his tender voice said, “I’m from a family of nine, and I’m number seven. My siblings do not go to school. Some of them assist my mother on the farm while the eldest, who is a fisherman, does not live with us.
“I trek a very long distance to school every day, and because my mother could not afford to pay my school fees of N2,000, I use to join other pupils who also could not pay school fees to work on people’s farm every Thursday so that our teacher can help us raise some money for our fees.”
His revelation, which was a reflection of what many of his age face in the North, and indeed other parts of the country, was heartbreaking. This is more so considering the billions budgeted for education yearly by the federal and state governments.
Ishaya’s experience is equally distressing. A primary three student, he confessed to not having writing materials, but that instead of staying at home, he preferred to trek the long distance to school every day to learn and interact with his friends.
This, Ishaya says, he looks forward to every day, hoping things would get better someday.
“I cannot stay at home when my friends are in school. I copy my notes in Luka’s book. I lost my books two weeks ago when we went to the farm. Since then, my mother refused to buy new notebooks for me.
“I love education. My teacher said if I go to school I will be a great man. I want to drive a car and build a house, and my teacher said I can be anything I want if I have education,” Ishaya said as he moved around restlessly.
He said his mother had promised to relocate him from the village to join a relation in Jalingo after his primary school education. There, he had been assured, he would continue his education. He noted that he couldn’t wait to leave for the city.
“Uncle, can we follow you to Jalingo?” One of the pupils interjected as the crowd of pupils swarming around the Sunday PUNCH reporter began to swell.
Like Tanko and Luka, another pupil, a nine-year-old indigent female pupil, Sewuese Godwin, equally shared her frustration in her bid to achieve her aspirations and educational goals.
She stated, “I am getting tired of going to school in this village. I want to go and meet my uncle in town where I can also attend a good private school and actualise my dream of becoming a lawyer.
“The suffering here is too much. We trek about 10 kilometres daily to school and any day it rains, we wouldn’t be able to go to school because we do not have classrooms built with blocks. We receive lessons under mango trees.”
Godwin, who attends the LGEA Primary School, Tse-Facii in Chanchanji Ward of Takum Local Government Area of Taraba State, like Tanko, Ishaya and others, observed that many pupils attending schools, especially at the primary and secondary levels in northern Nigeria only see classroom blocks on the television.
This, she said, was only for those privileged to watch television, as she argued that many of the pupils and junior secondary school students in the locality do not know what a modern classroom looks like because most of them study under makeshift tents or trees.
Adamu Inuwa of Suka Secondary School in Kano State told Sunday PUNCH that he preferred private schools to public schools because of the deep neglect – evident in physical structure and quality of education – suffered by public schools.
Another primary school pupil, Nasiru Garba, of Kano Public Secondary School in Kano said his parents could only afford a public school, given the fees charged by private schools.
He explained his situation more succinctly, “I’m from a poor home, and my parents cannot afford to pay the fees charged by private schools, especially with the present economic challenges. In the government school where I am schooling, tuition is free, but our counterparts in the private schools pay between N80,000 and N100,000 per session, depending on the category, standard and rating of the school.
“I want to appeal to the state government to improve on the infrastructure and general standards in public schools so as to get more children enrolled in public schools and compete with their counterparts in private schools.”
Quest for improved education
The experience of the pupils is a general reflection of the state of public schools in many northern communities. The neglect of public schools in many states, including those in southern Nigeria, has continued unabated despite the yearly budgetary allocation to education by the states.
Checks by Sunday PUNCH revealed that access to basic quality education remains low in the North
“The lukewarm attitude of governors in northern Nigeria towards the educational sector, leading to the neglect of the sector over the years, has placed the region on the lower rung of the educational development index as evidenced in the performance of students and pupils in national examinations and competitions,” said Mr Songo Theophilus of Reaching the Unreached Refugees and Peace Initiative, a non-governmental organisation based in Jalingo, Taraba State.
Analysts have noted that the dilapidated state of infrastructure at both public primary and secondary schools, which essentially are the foundation, coupled with the quality of teaching and learning in the schools, have given rise to undergraduates who struggle to maintain or graduate with good grades.
They said the forum of 19 northern governors would need to look into the state of education delivery in the region and come out with a comprehensive road map to effectively tackle the problem in the sector so as to secure a better future for the growing population in the region.
Worried by the state of the educational sector in his state, Governor Agbu Kefas of Taraba State within two weeks of assumption of office declared a state of emergency in the sector, in addition to free and compulsory primary and secondary education in the state.
The governor also slashed by 50 per cent the tuition fee of the state-owned Taraba State University and College of Nursing and Midwifery, Jalingo, to reduce the burden of financing education on parents and students.
Not a few observers have noted that going by the steps taken by the governor, he had demonstrated an understanding of the role of education in human capital development as well as sending a message to his counterparts in the region that education remained the way to go in developing the region.
Sunday PUNCH found that apart from Kano State and recently, Taraba, budgetary allocation to the sector by states in the region never exceeded nine per cent, which had continued to witness a steady decline.
In 2022, for example, the Kano State Government budgeted N51.6bn for the sector, representing 26 per cent of the total budget of N196bn. This year, out of the N268bn budget, the government allocated N62bn to the sector, representing 27 per cent.
In Taraba State, Kefas, in a supplementary budget approved by the state House of Assembly, voted 24 per cent of the N206.7bn budget to education to actualise his free education programme in the state.
Meanwhile, despite the budgetary allocation to education in Kano State, many public schools in the state are in a dilapidated state.
The state Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Umar Doguwa, told journalists in Kano recently that the state government needed at least N60bn to provide furniture for the existing 9,063 public primary and secondary schools in the state.
Doguwa said the figure was arrived at following the assessment of the education sector conducted by his ministry on the directives of the Governor Abba Yusuf. This he said was in response to the poor state of public schools infrastructure and furniture in the state.
He stated, “We found out that the majority of the 5.2 million children in our schools have no chairs and desks. In fact, during one of my inspection visits, I found a school, Dawanau Special Primary School, in Dawakin Tofa Local Government area, with 5,618 pupils, all seated on the floor.
“This is how bad the situation is. I was emotional when I visited some of the schools. I visited a school with over 500 pupils, with only the head teacher as staff member. Even though the immediate past Governor Abdullahi Ganduje introduced free and compulsory education in the state, the policy has not been able to achieve the desired result of providing sound education to children, following the huge number of enrollment in both primary and secondary schools in the state, which requires huge amount of money to implement.
“Apart from the lack of furniture, other challenges confronting schools include lack of infrastructure, resource materials, utilities and teachers, as well as the issue of out-of-school children, culminating in a total collapse of the education system in the state, but we hope to reverse the trend.”
The poor state of education occasioned by bad governance and corruption leading to the diversion of yearly budgetary allocation to fund education is said to be at the core of the problems facing education in the country.
In Bauchi State, our correspondent reports that no less than 79 schools in Misau Local Government Area have only the head teacher teaching all subjects from primary one to six.
The Director, School Services, Bauchi State Universal Basic Education Board, Korijo Usman, told one of our correspondents that many schools across the state had inadequate teachers.
“For instance, in Misau Central Primary school, they have 1,726 pupils with 24 teachers. If you do the calculation, you will see that the minimum standard of teacher to pupil ratio is 45, and you will find out that we don’t have it in practice here. In Bauchi town, there are classes with even 150 to 200 and sometimes 220 to 250 pupils with only one teacher,” Usman added.
Some of the teachers who spoke with one of our correspondents in Bauchi on the condition of anonymity decried the lack of training, overcrowded classrooms and poor welfare, saying these are some of the factors contributing to the low morale among teachers, especially those who work in rural areas.
Findings by our correspondents across states revealed that most governors only pay lip service to education, fuelling the rise of private schools across country.
A parent, Mallam Abubakar Yahaya, from the New GRA, Gombe, told one of our correspondents on the telephone, “It is now a thing of status symbol and pride for parents who take their children to private schools, despite paying through the nose, a situation that has been tied to the failure of public schools. But the pride of sending their children to private schools will not allow them to send their children to government schools even where such exists.”
A few years ago, Governor Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State declared a state of emergency in education, but till date, the effect of the policy has yet to trickle down.
So far, 1,000 teachers have received training, but many across the 155 senior secondary schools and many others in the primary level have not received any form of training in recent years. Classroom blocks in most rural communities also remain a luxury.
Meanwhile, a civil society organisation, Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for All, said without effective monitoring, governors couldn’t deliver on education.
The director in Taraba State, Mr Boniface Kosson, said the initiatives and plans by the governors to improve the level and quality of education were good, but that government policies on education would not make any impact without adequate monitoring and evaluation.
Kosson said, “For the past 10 years, there was no monitoring of teachers, thus, many teachers were no longer going to work. Since the governor has started paying unscheduled visits to schools and public offices, the teachers too have returned to work, so the monitoring of schools must be in place.
“From our monitoring, teachers that were hitherto not going to school started going to school before the holidays. In most cases, you will find teachers sitting under the trees, doing nothing during school hours. So, monitoring to ensure compliance is very important. The state of emergency in the education sector should be total and address the issue of infrastructure decay in public schools.”
How insurgency worsened educational standards in N’East
The about 14-year Boko Haram insurgency, which has ravaged parts of the North-East, especially Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, aided the collapse of the sector in the affected states, findings revealed.
Boko Haram, which translates to ‘western education is a sin’ has so far attacked and destroyed at least 512 schools and destroyed 2,246 classrooms in Borno State alone. This is aside from laboratories, staff quarters, libraries and water facilities, among other public infrastructure.
The abduction of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, in 2014 and the 110 Dapchi schoolgirls in the neighbouring Yobe State by Boko Haram in 2018 opened the wave of mass school abductions in Katsina, Niger and Zamfara states and dampened school enrolment in the region.
Apart from demoralising pupils and discouraging them from attending schools for fear of attacks, the insurgency also depleted the population, leading to the killing of at least 500 teachers between 2014 and 2019 in Borno State alone, according to a report obtained by one of our correspondents in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
The reports from Borno State further indicated that apart from massive educational infrastructure destruction, the insurgents forced between 60,000 and 70,000 pupils out of school.
Though the North East Development Commission and the governors in the region are rebuilding schools and public infrastructure destroyed by Boko Haram, some analysts believe that training and psychosocial healing of teachers and pupils were necessary.
The Mega Schools’ project, initiated by the Kashim Shettima administration, and sustained by the Governor Babagana Zulum in Borno State, has reconstructed 80 primary and secondary schools, accommodated thousands of out-of-school children from troubled communities and equipped the schools with state-of-the-art teaching and learning aids.
Poverty, early marriage and girl child education
Apart from the Almajiri system, which is a major contributor to the out-of-school children in the North, findings show that other barriers like poverty, early marriage and other cultural beliefs and practices also limit the chances of many girls getting education in the region.
Many experts have maintained that investing in girl child education was essential for improving the well-being of families and communities. This was also the message by the global girl-child education icon and Nobel Peace Price laureate, Malala Yousafzai, during her visits to Nigeria.
Also, the Emir of Daura in Katsina State, Dr Faruq Umar, told Sunday PUNCH that he and members of the emirate council were working towards having more girls in school.
The Emir said it would be a thing of joy for him if more girls from the state become successful professionals in future, hence his decision to personally lead a team that monitors enrolments of girls in schools.
Umar, who spoke through the Babajin Daura, Alhaji Abba Baure, noted, “We have a monitoring team that monitors girls’ enrolment and attendance in schools. Not only that, we ensure that they stay in school to complete their education. It will be my pride to see more of our girls becoming successful professionals in the future, such as medical doctors, architects, engineers and other choice professions.
“That is why I am personally leading my council members to tour all schools in our domain and meet various stakeholders to ensure that more girls are enrolled in schools, while ensuring that they stay in school to complete their education.”
While girl child education is said to be improving in Katsina State, there is a lot to be done across the region and nationwide to boost pupils’ enrollment in schools.
Some civil society groups with interest in the education sector blamed the trend on insecurity and poor enlightenment on the benefits of girl-child education. They said many families believe in giving out their daughters in marriage to pave the way for male children to go to school owing to poverty.
With the poor state of infrastructure, learning facilities and lukewarm attitude of some northern leaders towards inequality, education, poverty and child marriage, there are fears that education, and by extension literacy, may remain low unless real efforts are made by the 19 governors in the region to collectively tackle the decay and other challenges facing the sector.
