At Tawali-Gwada Primary School in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State, 181 pupils and their eight teachers compete for space in two blocks of four classrooms. Because of the apparent limited space, many of the pupils take lessons under the trees within the school premises.

The younger pupils sit on the bare floor of a dilapidated classroom, while the older ones perch on the carcasses of the desks provided for the school through the self-help initiative of the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) several years back.

Majority of those on the floor are in Primary One and have to be merged with their Primary Two colleagues any day the rain displaces them from under the neem tree where they usually take lessons. And the rain didn’t just threaten that Tuesday morning of July 17, it poured, displacing 4-year-old Hanita Enoch and 23 of her classmates.

Even the one block of two classrooms constructed in 1975, when the school held its first session, is hardly any better from the open-air class which serves the Primary One pupils. Through the leaking roof, the rain drops and floods part of the classroom, forming little ponds in front of the chalkboard.

Two out of the four steel windows have long given way, while the door hardly holds. The chill occasioned by the early morning rain and consequent wet environment leave many of the children without warm and protective garments shivering.

Hanita cuddles her school bag made of local sack to her chest while trying unsuccessfully to ward off the cold. She staggers up alongside her classmates when some visitors, including this reporter, entered their classroom. They all chorused the ‘good morning sirs’ in welcome and remained standing until they were asked to sit down.

Some minutes later, Hanita and the others were marched out to what has become their permanent classroom under the neem tree to write their promotional examination, under the supervision of Mrs. Janet Musa.

Like the Primary One pupils, the primaries Three and Five pupils face similar fate as they also take classes under the trees and also merge when nature threatens in form of rain.

The school is made up of two classroom blocks with each containing two rooms. The oldest which was constructed the same year the school was established in 1975, has never undergone any renovation. The other facility was put up by the state government under the Niger State Universal Basic Education Programme (NSUBEP) in 2011.

Daily Trust observed that the structures have no provision for staff room and even headmaster’s office, so all the eight teachers squat in the classrooms and share the class hours among themselves.

Aside the accommodation problem, the school has no toilet facilities, water and other essentials. Also, development has caught up with the school, with part of its land already encroached upon, including its only access road.

The topography of the school has been distorted, with terrible implications for pupils and their teachers. It is currently sandwiched between households with footpaths crisscrossing through what is left of its premises. Part of its remaining land is being used as refuse dump by adjoining compounds, thereby putting the pupils’ lives at risk.

Mr. Danjuma Saidu, the school’s PTA chairman, lamented that the authorities at both local and state levels have turned their backs on the only institution which is supposed to cater for the basic education needs of nine communities.

He said the PTA through self-help effort had to intervene by erecting some mud structures to complement what is on ground. But the effort hardly survived the season as they collapsed after torrents of rainfall.

According to him, the Association is reaching out to some old students of the school to find a way around the many challenges it faces. Daily Trust ran into a 1995 old boy of the school who is also an indigene of Gwada, Mr Adamu Kefas. He spoke with nostalgia of those times when the school was the envy of others.

“I was the school head boy in 1995 and even before I was enrolled there were stories of the school’s exploits in sports and quiz competitions within the local government area,” he explained.

He said several factors have conspired to confine such glorious tales to the dustbin of history. Like most public schools across the state, only the children of the lowly placed look the way of Tawali-Gwada Primary School for their basic education needs.

However, Tawali-Gwada is among the primary schools benefiting from the on-going Home-Grown School feeding programme and with the hope earlier raised by the Commissioner of Education, Hajiya Fatima Madugu, that with Whole-School Approach, all the schools would be able to receive some measure of infrastructural facelift and the Tawali-Gwada primary school may not have to wait too long.

Until that eventually happens, Hanita and other pupils may have to live with the many challenges their unfortunate background throws up.

https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/tawali-gwada-story-of-decay-collapse-of-a-primary-school-262990.html