Multi Million Naira Almajiri Schools build by former President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in Sokoto State has been left to collapse.
According to sahara reporters, the schools is left without proper control. The children are not guided properly, while teacher in the schools put the blame on the parent of the children, saying that they are doing their best, but their parents are doing not to help the children.
The report read, “tering harmattan morning, on Monday, at exactly 9:45 am; the williwaw-wind assails the journalist left and right, back and front as if to befall him. He has just alighted — from a rack-dangling motorcycle — in front of the Tsangaya School, Gagi in Sokoto state. Since the security man is nowhere to be found, he heads straight to the reception room, where a cluster of cobwebs welcomes his red-watery eyes. The principal is also nowhere to be found and no one knows his whereabouts. But one dark, short man who simply introduces himself as Abubakar leads the newsman to the Vice-Principal’s office.
Now, it is already 10:05 am, chewing stick is still roaming in the oral cavity of the Vice-Principal — in his office. At the sight of the visiting reporter, he stiffens his bilabials as if to bestow a consoling kiss on a weeping toddler. But he will not kiss; he only pushes out the remnant of the seemingly stinky spit from his mouth through the proxy window to him. At the entrance of his office, a lineup of men and women understood to be teachers are seen writing attendance. “Rankadede” says a dark woman in ground-touching purdah, waving with smiles on her face at the Vice- Principal.
“Who are you and what do you want?” The Vice-Principal mutters, curiously asking the alien reporter to state his mission in the school, which he does, exponentially and expressively. But Surprisingly, Abubakar cuts in, interpreting — word-for-word — the English spoken by the reporter to the said Vice-Principal. He, the reporter, observes that the man apparently does not understand him. The simple English he speaks seems to be high-falutin phraseologies to the man. So, he directs Abubakar to guide the journalist round the school premises.
Get not lost! This is (Tsangaya) Almajiri Integrated Model Boarding School, situated at Gagi village Sokoto South Local Government Area of Sokoto State. It was the first — among many other multi-million naira Almajiri schools projects in Nigeria. Commissioned on April 10, 2012, by the then President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the school was the first of its kind built by the federal government to provide equal access to qualitative education for the almajiri.
“Federal government has so far constructed 35 of such model schools. States with large populations of Almajiri will have both boarding and day schools.
“Unfortunately, and in spite of the best effort of government, the goal of providing access to quality education has not been fully realised in Nigeria as the North-West geo-political zone alone accounts for almost five million which is over 60 per cent of the total population of Almajiri nationwide,” former President Jonathan asserts, while inaugurating the existence of the school in Sokoto.
According to the United Nations Intervention for Children and Emergency Foundation (UNICEF), “even though primary education is officially free and compulsory, about 10.5 million of the country’s children aged 5-14 years are not in school. Only 61 percent of 6-11 year-olds regularly attend primary school and only 35.6 percent of children aged 36-59 months receive early childhood education.
“In the north of the country, the picture is even bleaker, with a net attendance rate of 53 percent. Getting out-of-school children back into education poses a massive challenge.”
As if that is not enough, UNICEF also statistically states that “in north-eastern and north-western states, 29 percent and 35 percent of Muslim children, respectively, receive Qur’anic education, which does not include basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. The government considers children attending such schools to be officially out-of-school.”
However, beyond the shoddiness in their world on the streets, another kind of shadiness is meted out on the very few itinerant children who have — in one way or the other — found themselves in the school. Even as you read, what is most disgusting is not the falling structure of the multi-million established facilities in the Sokoto’s Almajiri School, but the dominating teachers who are magnates of incompetence and salaries lovers but enemies of services.
In spite of the availability — though ruining — of facilities such as class rooms, computer room, science laboratory, recitation hall, library, language laboratory, dormitories and etcetera, this reporter can accurately report that the system of teaching and learning western education in the school is too poor to be averagely called standard”.
Are They Really Schooling?
Read full report at Sahara reporters
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