NIGERIAN SCHOOL WHERE PUPILS SIT ON THE FLOOR TO READ AND WRITE
• Pupils of Model Primary School, Ugbene staring at a bleak future
The question that will naturally come into your mind as you look at these photographs is: are these photographs real or is the reporter/photographer making them up? No, the reporter is not making them up. He has no need to. Your children may have the luxury of reading and writing, on a school chair and desktop but the kids you are looking at in these photographs are actually from a school in Nigeria where school pupils read and write while sitting on bare floor.
Want to doubt it? Then go to Model Primary School, Ugbene in Igbo-Ano Local Government Area of Enugu State. The school located about 15 kilometers from Nsukka university town, is anything but a model of what a primary school should be. Pupils sit on bare floor during classes, and study in unsanitary conditions, with neither a toilet nor urinary place to ease their discomfort. Like diamonds in the sky, visual aids or other instructional materials to enlighten their young minds are luxuries far from them. And for their lunch, they have bottles of water loaded with palm kernels.
A Palestinian boy had cause to write to God some years ago when their house was left in dilapidated form by an Israeli Armed Forces artillery shelling. 'Dear God,' he wrote. 'This is the picture (actually it was a drawing) of our house. Is it good?'
If pupils of Model Primary School, Ugbene, could write or draw like that Palestinian boy, they will like to send a photograph of their school, not to God, this time around, but to someone in a position to do something about the poor state of their learning environment. And, they will like to prefix their letter with 'Dear Governor' or 'Dear Senator,' or 'Our Dear Honourable Member of the House of Representative' or 'Our Dear House of Assembly Member,' 'Dear Local Government Chairman' or 'Dear Ward Councillor, this is the picture of our classroom, of our school. Is it good?'
The answer to their questions would be quite obvious, wouldn't it, to anyone who at any time, passed through primary school, even if without shoes! The school which has its motto as 'Knowledge, Discipline and Radiance' has, on account of its dilapidated structures and poor teaching and learning environment, obviously lost not only the knowledge and discipline but also the radiance, over the years.
STATE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The past administration of Chimaroke Nnamani carved out Igbo-Ano from the old Uzo-Uwani LGA to bring fresh touch of development to the lives of the rural folks. Unfortunately, the reverse is the case. In Nimbo, Opanda, Abbi, Ugbene, Nrobo and Ezikolo communities, the state of public schools has deteriorated over the years, despite the efforts of the World Bank that chose Uzo-Uwani as one of the beneficiaries of its school pilot projects in the state.
During the visit, Education Review was greeted at the door by chaos generated by nursery pupils who could no longer take their idleness for granted. The absence of teachers in their classes gave them the license to poke fun at one another as they rolled uncontrollably on the dusty concrete floor. The raucous disorder quickly attracted one primary 1 teacher, an aged woman who advanced menacingly towards the pupils with a cane and rage in her eyes.
'Keep quiet', she thundered, while hitting the long stick on the rough wall blackboard. The pupils let out mischievous cries that brought a hush of silence in the expansive hall. The teacher, who looked weary as she spoke, told Education Review that the school lacked sufficient teachers for all the classes. To save the situation, she was compelled to jump from nursery class to primary 1 at short intervals, she said.
Before leaving the class, she wrote out the A-Z alphabets and ordered the kids to recite them by turns. No sooner had she left the kindergarten to attend to the other class than the noise returned. The same scene replayed out itself in other classes as Education Review went round. Like sheep without shepherds, pupils bare-footed and dressed in tattered uniforms, sprawled on the bare floor and scribbled away in dirty and tattered exercise books, some incomprehensive words while waiting for the school bell to ring for homeward journey.
The Headmaster, Mr. James Amah, said the school has a population of 212 pupils with only six teaching staff. According to him, his repeated entreaties to the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) and the Secretary, Igbo-Ano Local Government Education Authority, Chief Thaddeus Ogbobe for more teachers in the school have not yielded positive results.
While decrying the lack of facilities for learning, Amah said the 10 benches in the school couldn't accommodate all the pupils, thereby compelling others to sit temporarily on the naked floor.
In a letter addressed to the SUBEB Chairman, and other notable personalities of the town, including the chairman of Ugbene Town Union, Udeorah C-to-C, made available to Education Review, the Headmaster pleaded for more seats for the pupils while explaining that creaking wooden tables and chairs for class teachers also needed to be replaced.
When our reporter was taken round the school, it was like an institution recovering from the trauma of a civil war. The Headmaster's office had a wobbling shelf overloaded with books, which served as the school's library. With only a table and chair for him and his assistant, the bookshelf left no breathing space in the small room that was also crowded with other old materials. The room was so sparsely furnished that even the Assistant Headmaster had to stand when her seat was offered to our reporter.
DILAPIDATED STRUCTURES AND INSUFFICIENT TEACHERS
More worrisome was the fact that the school had no functional urinary or toilet for both the teachers and pupils. A urinary constructed with palm fronds serve the school while pupils go to toilet in the surrounding thick bushes during school hours.
When Education Review entered the staffroom, it was like a deserted abattoir, with broken chairs on dusty and patched floor. There were no louvers on the ant-infested window planes.One of the classroom blocks, Block AZ, was so dilapidated that students were evacuated hastily to avert disaster from the collapsing structure.
The six corp members serving in the school are working tirelessly to keep the students busy, especially those preparing for public exams. One of the corps members, Amara Nkechi, a graduate of Education/Economics from Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education, Owerri lamented the horrendous condition in the area.
'You cannot enforce discipline here because the school is not fenced. Even the staff are afraid of the students. The management of this school is very poor', she explained.
Efforts made to speak with the Commissioner for Education in Enugu State, Festus Uzor failed. But the Secretary of the Igbo-Ano Local Education Authority, Chief Thaddeus Ogbobe, attributed the insufficient teachers in rural schools to the unwillingness of teachers to serve in remote areas.
'Go to the schools in the urban area and see the heavy concentration of staff there. Their schools are over-populated with teachers. But those in rural areas suffer shortage of teachers because most of them refuse to stay when they are posted to remote areas. That is the real problem why these schools are under-staffed', he said. Ogbobe said the rural schools often depend on the services of federal feachers who are recruited by the federal government every two years, and expressed the hope that they would soon be posted to assist in areas of need.
On the dilapidated infrastructure in schools, Ogbobe held a contrary view. He argued that Uzo-Uwani is one of the local government selected by the World Bank for its pilot education project, leading to construction of new classroom blocks in virtually all the schools in the area.
The education secretary said it is the responsibility of parents to provide toilet facilities for schools in their area. According to him, part of the conditions for getting approval for a new school is for the community to construct toilet facility. Ogbobe further explained that he personally took up the task of providing 1000 seats for the school during his short tenure as Local Government Caretaker Chairman. He said he has taken the matter of unavailability of seats in the schools to the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) in Enugu and expressed optimism that the matter will be addressed.
TRUANCY AND BREAKDOWN OF DISCIPLINE
When Education Review visited a neighbouring school jointly owned by Abbi and Ugbene communities, groups of students were seen leaving the school for Eke market at about 11.10am. The Senior Prefect of the College, Eze Edward said students couldn't be effectively controlled in a situation where there were many bush paths in the area.
Our reporter discovered that the main entrance to the school has been over-grown by grasses and shrubs, allowing students the use of bush tracks. The senior prefect said several cases of truancy are recorded on daily basis as students often sneak out to local liquor joints for refreshment.
The English Language and Literature teacher, Mr. John Utazi, said the school has no teacher for Chemistry, Geography and Physics. He noted that the school converted one of the classrooms into a library, with few wooden tables, chairs and an old bookshelf. 'There is no literature textbook in the school library. There are no teachers for some of the science subjects. This is disturbing because some of the students in SSS 3 would be writing these subjects in their West African Senior School Certificate Examination', he said.
His claims were corroborated by one of the Science students, Anthony Okoro, who said he has never seen a computer. The 16-year-old boy, who wants to be a doctor, said they were taught Geography and Chemistry only in their first term in SSS 1 before the subject teacher left the school. Since then, the students have been reading the textbooks in preparation for the WAEC and NECO examinations.