Pupils In Enugu Study On Bare Floor, Leaking Roof

Despite promises by the Enugu state Government and its council areas that it will prioritize education in the state, investigations has shown that the state of primary education in many parts of the state could still be described as “shameful and embarrassing”.

 Press who went round the state observed that primary schools in Igbo-Etiti and Udenu council areas are among the schools neglected by the state government.

Ironically, Igbo-Etiti prides itself as the Local Government area that has produced the highest number of professors in the South-East geopolitical zone.

With over sixty professors from the council, and its immediate past local government chairman clinching the most prestigious ALGON best local government chairman award, nobody would have believed that thousands of its primary school pupils still receive their class lessons sitting on bare floors in dilapidated buildings.

To say the least, teachers also sit on their motorbikes to write lesson notes.

When DailyPost visited the Union Primary School, Akaibite , Ohebe Dim, a teacher who spoke under anonymity for fear of victimization explained that the school has been forgotten by both the state and the local government.

“In fact, this school has been forgotten by the government. There is no help whatsoever coming from the government. During rainy season, teachers and pupils are always in trouble because the roof of this building is leaking. Also in the dry season, heat is always too much here.

“Many pupils don’t attend school during rainy season for fear of the building collapsing.

Painfully, this school is supposed to be the center for the Common Entrance Examination this year. But, we were denied this because we don’t have seats talk more of other facilities for the comfort of both the candidates and examiners”, he lamented.

“We have made several appeals to the government but nothing is coming our way. The parents have done the best they can all these years.

So right now, we are surviving by the mercy of God, but my concern is for the pupils, because I wonder how they would compete with their counterparts in other parts of the country”, he added.

One of the pupils in primary four who said they were not happy studying on bare floor, said that he would like to be a computer scientist.

Asked why he would like to study the course, he explained “I will invent a machine that will be able to detect when one is telling lies or not because the government people tell lies a lot. I’m not happy that our school does not have seats and tables for both the teachers and pupils.

“We are begging government to help us provide all these and even renovate our school building. Many of us sit on the floor during lessons while our teachers sit outside on their motorbike to mark our class work”

For the Chairman of the Parents’ Teachers Association chairman of the school Mr. Robert Ezike, the community’s effort had already been over stretched.

He explained that the school was built through community effort, pointing out that there was no basic facility being provided by both the local and state governments since the school started more than three decades ago.

He said: “This school was built evenhandedly by the poor community dwellers. We have cried to the government to help us at least renovate the building, all to no avail. If nothing is done to ensure the renovation of this building this year, it may collapse.

 

“As you can see, pupils here don’t have any seat. Teachers don’t have tables and seats. Parents here are very poor and have tasked themselves so much to run this school”.

At the Central Primary school, Ozalla, the situation seems worse. But for the presence of the pupils outside the school building, a visitor to the school will mistake the building for an oversize cave. The building that houses the over 200 pupils of the school is one pre-colonial dilapidated structure playing host to holes in their large numbers.

One of the teachers stated that they had been trying to get the attention of the government towards the completion of an abandoned school block in the school compound to no avail.

“You can see that uncompleted classroom block. It would have reduced our problems. When the headmaster was posted here in 2010, he made all efforts to see that this building was completed.

“He even got the phone number of the contractor but when he called the contractor, he said that government had not paid up the agreed contract amount to enable him finish the building.

“Another problem is that we don’t have enough seats, tables and public convenience. You can see for yourself that our pupils sit on bare floor while many sit on logs”.

He also disclosed that apart from some text books supplied by the state government this year and last year, no other help had ever come the way of the school.

“When we got to Enugu last time, they told us that they don’t have even chalk to give us. We use our money to buy chalk here. We need the help of the government here”, he pleaded.

At Egbu Primary School Amalla Orba in Udenu Council Area of the State, it was another pitiable sight.

Lamenting over the situation, one of the teachers said: “our school is in total collapse. We don’t receive any help from both the local and state government. There is no incentive whatsoever from the government. We use our money to buy chalks and other teaching materials.

The headmaster provides chalk, provides seats for the pupils. Most of the pupils sit on dusty ground to receive lessons”.

More disturbing is the teacher’s ratio in the school with the over 200 hundred pupils receiving lessons from only 11 teachers.

In many other schools visited in the area, it was the same tale of woes. At Amukwu Primary School, two school blocks have already collapsed, leaving the pupils to squeeze themselves in a dilapidated block.