I was privileged to attend a meeting of the Education Committee set up by His Royal Highness Etsu Agaie, Alhaji Yusuf Nuhu. The meeting held in Agaie, Niger State, on Sunday April 1, 2018. I found it extremely shocking when the principal of Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS), Agaie, spoke under Any Other Business (AOB) to lament the very deplorable state of the 39-year-old school. GGSS Agaie is the only boarding girls’ secondary school in Agaie/Lapai federal constituency. Yet, it is the only boarding girls’ college without a perimeter fence in the 42-year-old state.
There was pin drop silence in the meeting hall when she closed her complaint with a call for urgent intervention in the school. After the meeting, I sought permission from the principal if I could go with her to see the school to enable me ascertain what she had told us. The principal who told me she came to the meeting venue on a commercial motorcycle obliged my request.
Soon, we arrived at the school which is just about three kilometers from the township, along Agaie-Katcha road. What I saw was an eye sore. From a distance, the school looked like a deserted settlement; abandoned several decades ago. The wilderness that filled the vicinity of the school promptly reminded me of the 29 Battalion of the Nigerian Army that once inhabited the same land that now hosts GGSS Agaie.
The 29 Battalion was deployed from Asaba, now in Delta State, to Agaie in the early part of 1974. The account of the presence of the army in Agaie isn’t a cheering one that should be re-told on this page. Agaie community had to spiritually seek God’s intervention to rescue it from the brutal human rights violations it was experiencing then in the hands of soldiers who were still suffering from the hang-over of the ‘madness’ that characterized their fighting in the Nigerian civil war. When Allah answered the community’s prayer, officers and soldiers of the entire 29 Battalion relocated in disarray and confusion from Agaie to Jaji in June/July1977.
GGSS Agaie, which was established in 1979, has had 16 principals to-date. The age of the physical structures in this school obviously justifies their current state of disrepair. Regrettably, the only patronage of government ever enjoyed by this school after 39 years of existence is one block of three classrooms built in 2010 as an ETF intervention project; meaning that the state government has added no structure to the ones provided at inception. Almost every classroom in GGSS Agaie has some pronounced cracks in its walls; each having just half of its ceiling hanging in the air. I couldn’t visualize the crowded nature of the classrooms when I was told that over 80 students sit in each class; with very limited number of seats. I also gathered that the ceiling of one of the four existing dormitories in the school collapsed about two months ago.
While the boarding house accommodates 500 students, only two members of staff (the principal and the examination officer) reside on the school compound because staff quarters are non-existent. Over a thousand of the schoolgirls also attend this school as day students. Two units of two-bedroom bungalows that would have ordinarily been used as staff houses separately serve as Administration Block and central store. A section of examination officer’s block accommodates female NYSC members (when available). The dilapidated Administration Block comprises of the principal’s office and a cubicle that was converted in to a ‘clinic’ that lacked everything required for it to be called a first aid treatment center. In the principal’s office is one large “colonial” table, two archaic chairs and a long timber bench for visitors.
Granted that the situation in some other schools in the state may also be bad, the case of GGSS Agaie is worse. The fact that it is a girls’ boarding school further makes it a special case. The lack of fence in the school exposes the schoolgirls to several security threats. At a time, the harassment of students especially at night became so incessant that the Etsu Agaie had to, after visiting the school, employ a group of vigilantes to watch over the students at night. Some Malams had to be commissioned to also offer prayers. Cattle and other animals equally trespass into the school premises at will.
What I saw in the two classrooms converted into science laboratories were no less an insult to the teaching of basic science subjects. The few apparatus in the improvised “labs” are, at best, not better than a heaped-up collection of scraps. Such is the distinctive characteristic of a school which the principal said has been “upgraded” to a science secondary school. The science laboratory built at the school’s inception has since collapsed.
Given the spate of insecurity in parts of the country today, keeping 500 schoolgirls in an unfenced location in the bush is outright invitation to criminals of all sorts. The vulnerability of these schoolgirls is further revealed by the presence of just two staff members; one of whom is a female (the principal) in the school compound. The principal mentioned that their day is usually cut short as fear would always grip them (staff and students) when it is 5pm. The risk in accommodating this large number of girls in the boarding house without a functional clinic or serviceable vehicle is better imagined. Without being pessimistic, the survival of any student bitten by snake especially at night is at Allah’s mercy.
Niger State Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello (a. k. a. Abulolo), paid a scheduled visit to the school last year. The governor reportedly left the school in anger because of the principal’s professional misconduct for failing to keep the school environment tidy including the staff room where she was leading the former to inspect. While it was apt that the principal was removed, it was a misstep that His Excellency “threw away the baby along with the bath water” by not going round the school’s failed facilities.
It is sad this school could not benefit from the intervention provided in 600 schools across the state under Abulolo. The cost, no matter how huge, of fencing this school is certainly less than the cost of the grave consequences of leaving it un-fenced. In any case, if it is irritating that the state government refused to fence GGSS Agaie, it is excruciatingly agonizing that all the past and present federal and state lawmakers who represented the area over the years could not convince successive governors in the state to intervene in the awfully tragic condition of the school. May Allah (SWT) touch the heart of Governor Abulolo to save the souls of the defenseless schoolgirls at GGSS Agaie, amin.
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