In Kogi State, a silent crisis is unfolding — classrooms without teachers, graduates without jobs, and children without a future.
“When a classroom is empty, a child’s future is silent.”
Across the towns and villages of Kogi, silence now replaces the hum of learning. Pupils gather in classrooms with no teachers in sight. Chalkboards remain untouched, lessons untaught, futures uncertain.
What began as a gradual neglect has become a full-blown collapse. Public schools once alive with promise are now ghostly halls. Meanwhile, private institutions flourish — feeding on desperation, transforming education into a privilege for the few and a punishment for the poor.
“We built the classrooms, but forgot to build the future.”
In Ibaji, Dekina, Igalamela and beyond, aged teachers have retired without replacement. Thousands of young university graduates, trained and waiting, roam jobless across the state — willing, ready, but ignored. The irony is painful: empty classrooms and idle graduates, side by side, in a state bleeding potential.
Children return home early, clutching books they cannot read. Parents mourn dreams deferred. Dropout numbers rise. Illiteracy spreads like wildfire. Hope fades.
“Graduates roam jobless, while classrooms beg for teachers.”
The government points to painted walls and new furniture, yet the soul of education is not in the bricks — it is in the teacher. And in Kogi, that soul is missing.
Private schools, meanwhile, tighten their grip. Their fees climb beyond the reach of market women and farmers. Parents sell farmland, take loans, and still lose the fight. Education has become a luxury item in a land where it should be a birthright.
“Education in Kogi has become a mirror of inequality — clear for some, clouded for many.”
The silence in these classrooms is more than ignorance — it is abandonment. A state that refuses to teach condemns itself to darkness. Each neglected pupil is a lost doctor, a silenced poet, an untrained leader.
Yet the answer is within reach. Recruit the unemployed graduates. Replace the retirees. Restore dignity to the teaching profession. Regulate private schools to protect the poor. Rebuild the social contract that promised every child a seat, a book, and a teacher.
“A nation that neglects its teachers prepares its own funeral.”
Kogi stands at a moral crossroad. The children wait. Their silence is not consent — it is a cry.
“Empty classrooms today are the prisons of tomorrow.”
Unless urgent action is taken, the echoes of neglect will become the anthem of a lost generation.
The question remains: When will Kogi teach again?
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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