Mohammed Shekwo and his friends were playing within the school compound by 1pm, still during school hours. There were about six other boys with tattered clothes, barefooted and pouring sand on themselves as they shouted in their local language.
A “How are you?” greeting by our reporter seemed to have stunned the children. But it was soon to be discovered from three elderly women shredding guinea corn nearby that the children although in school, could not speak English.
Mohammed tried harder to form an English sentence but became confused; he said he was in primary three by saying: “Class three”. Immediately, he corrected that saying it was primary five then said primary four.
This is the standard of education Mohammed is exposed to at the Local Education Authority (LEA) Primary School, Shaga in Gwagwalada Area Council in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and there are hundreds of other children that way. All the children approached by our correspondent could not communicate in English Language as they either speak Hausa or Gbaygi languages.
A closer investigation at reasons for this poor quality of education reveals one thing – the lack of teachers, and this is again linked to the difficult terrains and poor access road to the Shaga Community.
A resident, Kasimu Danlami, told our reporter that many teachers posted to the school had difficulties getting to the community. There are also more communities with similar challenges across Gwagwalada and Bwari Area Councils.
Shaga is about one hour’s drive from Tungan Maje town from the Abuja-Lokoja Expressway. Shaga is sandwiched between two rivers and one will have to wade through the two rivers to reach the community.
“The nearest teacher to the school resides in Shanagu, about eight kilometres away but never makes it to the Shaga school whenever it rains due to the bad terrain,” Danlami explained.
The first river, few kilometres from Chitumu, hardly poses a serious threat as motorcycles and vehicles can wade through it but the second river, ‘River Cantona,’ as called by residents, is ‘a no-go area’ due to its depth, residents said.
While pupils attend school, teachers hardly make it to the school. On a Monday that our reporter visited the school, no teacher was available even when it did not rain. The security man said only the head teacher came but left quite early.
Asked to narrate the ordeals, the community head, Yakubu Madaki, said the pupils bear the brunt of difficult terrain as their education suffers, adding that they attend schools just for the sake of it.
“How can our children get quality education? When teachers can teach them today and tomorrow there would be no classes. How do you expect the pupils to assimilate?” Madaki asked.
He said the pupils attend school to play cumulatively for more than three months in a year. There are about 17 academic weeks within these periods. Although, he revealed the community had made this complaint to authorities, the FCT Administration or the area council is yet to note the concern.
Since authorities have failed, the security man said he only ensures the pupils are safe as he could not teach all of them. So he dismisses the pupils at about 1:30pm whenever the teachers don’t show up.
“When the rain was heavy, no teacher would be able to come to the school. They will come to the school, stay till closing, then return home,” he said.
A parent called Yakubu Madaki, said he enrolled five children in the school and feared for their education. Another resident, Shuaibu Adamu Shaga, also enrolled five children in the school but regrets that they can’t speak English.
“My older children who graduated from the school turned out better because some teachers resided in the community then in the 90s’ and early 2000s’ and were not affected by rain.”
Records from the website of the FCT Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB) show the school was founded in 1992 but there was no record of teaching staff and enrolment figures.
For Muhammad Pada, another resident, his three children in the school have been sent to a school in Zuba, a town several kilometres away. “There, they would retake primary five and six before they would be admitted into Junior Secondary School,” he said.
In Shidna community, Gwagwalada Area Council, the pupils are left without teachers for about nine weeks. According to the security at the LEA Primary School in the community, Dauda Jeremiah, the roads to the school are very bad and impassable during the wet season.
He said there are six teachers in the school but only three teachers who reside in Gwagwalada, sometimes, make it to the school after a downpour.
He said he was not a teaching staff but he takes some classes if the teachers do not come.
“This year, because of the rain, we did not get teachers for some weeks. If the water does not recede, the teachers cannot come,” he said, adding that three of the six teachers in the school live in Gwagwalada and Ibwa.
He said three teachers are left with about 80 pupils so the teachers merge the classes.
Pupils languish in Bwari communities
Pasepa in Bwari Area Council is over 30 kilometres away from Shaga and they share same fate. Teachers don’t live in Pasepa, it was learnt. They live in Kubwa town or other more developed places, and would contend with four rivers to get to the Pasepa LEA primary School. The wooden bridges are washed away during the rainy season, it was observed.
The community leader, Alhaji Muhammad G. Pasepa, told our reporter that teachers miss classes for several days because of the bad roads to the community. As the pupils continue to suffer poor learning from this issue, the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) initiated a scheme for the senior pupils to teach the junior ones.
“When it rains, sometimes, they come to school. If it is so heavy from morning till noon, that means they cannot come since the school closes by 2pm,” he said.
Pasepa who is a member of the PTA said: “Those in primary six and primary five will now be shared into the other classes so that they will be teaching them when teachers are absent. The pupils are not learning effectively in such a situation,” he said.
Another resident, Aliyu Gyazanyi, said the bad roads to the community affect everybody. Pasepa is about 10 kilometres from Kubwa town but the bush path to the community provides a haven for notorious motorcycle snatchers.
Some few kilometres away, there is the Zhiko Community still under Bwari Area Council. A visit to the community also shows that teachers don’t stay there but come from Kubwa town. They miss classes during the wet season due to the bad road.
“There are two major rivers to be crossed when coming from Kubwa; teachers coming from nearby towns in Niger State would also have to contend with poor access road when it rains,” the community head, Bulus Wakili said.
He said over 200 pupils attending the school are left at the mercy of two teachers that reside in the community. The implication is that there are about 100 pupils to one teacher when it rains. There are also pupils from neighbouring communities of Akoyitapi, Ijabisa within the FCT and others in Niger State that attend the school.
Some of the teachers could not be reached but the head teacher at the LEA Primary School Shidna, Abubakar Sule, said despite the difficult terrain, teachers in the school try their best in attending classes. “There are times, few of the teachers residing in Zuba, stay in Shidna all through the week so that the pupils do not miss out. In other cases, when they had to return to their families, they could also use the road from Gurfata in getting to the school,” Sule who confirmed the poor situation, noted.
He further said the school is already building staff quarters for the teachers.
Communities need bridges; we can’t fund them – FCT UBEB
When contacted, the FCT Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB) said the remedy to the situation was the construction of bridges on the rivers to these communities.
However, the Director, Junior Secondary School (JSS), Mallam Hussein Bako, said such constructions were capital intensive and not within the purview of the board.
Bako who spoke on behalf of the board chairman, Dr. Kabiru Ibrahim Matazu, said the board often liaises with the area councils and development partners in ensuring that amenities such as good roads are provided.
Another official of the FCT UBEB said as temporary measures, the board would urge teachers to stay within the communities or places closer to the school especially when there are indications that they may be challenged by access roads. “Some teachers make extra arrangement with the pupils to either teach them in the evening or find a time when the roads situations are better to arrange makeup classes,” the official noted.
This investigation is supported by the Daily Trust Foundation and The MacArthur Foundation
