With the level of decay of 40-year-old Ofante Community High School, Ofante-Ogugu in Kogi State, where learning has become a nightmare, the community and the old students are calling on the state government to rescue the school. CALEB ONWE, who visited the school, reports.
For the steel signpost erected at a junction, nothing would have depicted that a school is existing in Ofante-Ogugu community in Olamaboro Local Government Area of Kogi State. Falling roofs, collapsed classrooms, decayed infrastructure and poor facilities with attendant lack of pupils and teachers’ furniture, as well as shortage of quality teachers are some of the challenges confronting the only secondary school serving no fewer than five adjoining communities in the area.
That is the sad story of the 40-year-old Ofante Community High School, Ofante-Ogugu, which was founded in 1978, but is today a ghost of its shadow following the level of dilapidation and rot characterising its existence. Despite the woe betiding the school due to the level of collapse, there is no sign that the government was ready to fix it. However, the age-long neglect by the concerned authorities has continued to raise questions over why children should be kept in such school as a learning centre, where they are exposed to stress and allowed to learn under harsh conditions.
According to members of the community, the state of the school should not be an example of what a learning centre should be in the 21st Century knowledge-driven society, but a reflection of value and attention the state government placed on the education of the children from poor background.
The rot in the school, which members of the community described as “an abandoned colonial solitary detention camp,” could be blamed on the failure of the government, which is alleged to place education, at the back seat of its scheme of development. When New Telegraph visited the school, the gory sight represents an abandoned school structures overgrown by weeds and habouring reptiles and other dangerous animals.
“The dilapidation of this school is a stack revelation that those who are privileged to get to political power and should be responsible for the needs of the people are only pretentious about infrastructural and human manpower development,” the people lamented. Meanwhile, further findings revealed that the school had produced notable people, who are professionals making impact in their various fields of human endeavour, but closed their eyes to their alma mater. Worried by the neglect, the people are demanding why the only secondary school accessible to the children of Ofante hinterland and its environs had been abandoned to rot away.
Though, stakeholders are saying that Community High School, Ofante- Ogugu level of rot, is not be an isolat-ed case in the country, but hinted that the neglect like many others across the country had further exposed the rotten state of the nation’s education sector. Further findings by New Telegraph revealed that the children at their formative age are left to their fate, as they sit on rough woods in dust infested floor in classrooms without windows and doors.
To worsen their situation, the students and their teachers go into the bush whenever they are pressed to answer the nature’s call, even as the community described the school environment as no longer safe for human habitation, saying their major concern is that dangerous snakes and other reptiles might have taken refuge in the collapsed buildings. Some members of the community, who spoke with New Telegraph, regretted the misfortune of the school and the state at which their children are forced to acquire education.
“This is an agrarian community, where we are persistent farmers. We neither can afford the cost of sending our children to private schools, nor attempt to send them to the city for alternative. Therefore, it won’t be out of place to conclude that abandoning the school like this is a deliberate action to deny us and our children the right to education and good living,” the noted.
The people stressed: “Merely looking at the five blocks of classrooms that have the resemblance of ancient shrines, one could conclude that no meaningful education can take place in the school where our children sit on long benches and some on the dusty floor since education is not on the priority list of the state government.”
Meanwhile, a former student of the school, who visits the community once in a while, Mrs. Rachael Ahmadu, who bemoaned the level of decay of her school, said she was always heartbroken whenever she visited the community and seeing her alma mater reduced to a shadow of itself due to age-long neglect by the government, which obligation is to provide the people unfettered access to qualitative education irrespective of geographical location or socio-economic background. She confirmed further that as the school is set for resumption for a new academic session, the students and their teachers, as well as parent have begun to worry over the nightmare they face in that environment.
Mrs. Ahmadu, who lamented the fate of the children and their teachers, however, appealed to both government and all stakeholders to come to the rescue of the students and school, which according to her, is the only hope of the people in the area. She said: “This appeal for the renovation of Ofante Community High school building has become important following the psychological and emotional problem the students and the teachers are passing through.
They are learning in a uncongenial school environment with caved and leaking roofs, broken floors, fallen classroom walls with pupils sitting and learning on dusty floors is having on the pupils of the school.
“The students are daily subjected to inhuman condition especially during the rainy seasons, when the classrooms and school compound are flooded. Many teachers deployed to the school due to the condition of the school environment are either absconded or seek redeployment, while the few that eventually stay expressed worried that if the situation of the school was addressed it would negatively affect output of the teachers and performance of the students.
“The situation of the school has forced many parents, who have the wherewithal to withdraw their children and wards, and enroll them in private schools, a development which has negatively affected the population of the school. Speaking further, Mrs. Ahmadu added: “We want to use this opportunity to appeal to the Kogi State Government and other well-meaning individuals in the state to urgently intervene to rescue the education of the children.
The government should direct its relevant agencies saddled with the responsibility of overseeing primary and secondary school education in the state to commence the process of renovating the school. Also well-meaning old students of the schools should rise up to the challenges of fixing their alma mater by partnering the state government in ensuring timely renovation of the school, which is in dire need of their support.” Also, another old student of the school, Jacob Shaibu also decried the level of neglect of the school resulting to the present rot, even as he recalled that the school library destroyed over 10 year ago, has remained in the state of disrepair. According to him, the five blocks of classrooms are no longer fit for human habitation, but the students and teachers have no alternative than to risk their lives staying in the school.
New Telegraph also learnt that members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) deployed to the school for the compulsory one-year national service, usually take the advantage of the situation of the school as excuse abscond or at best change their posting to other schools. This, Shaibu noted has continued to deny the students quality learning, saying: “The school has since its inception till date faced neglect, resulting to its current level of dilapidation and rot.
The library that was destroyed about 10 years ago had not been repaired. Right now the school does not have a library for students to read.” Some community leaders, apparently afraid on the government action, declined comments on the situation of the school, but appealed to state government, and especially the old students to come to their rescue and save the community from an inevitable bleak future.
Credit: New Telegraph
