₦airaland Forum

plaindealer: Very sad to watch. Looks like comedians spewing bad and meaningless jokes.

And these are leaders? How sad.

ba7man: So the main of this whole gathering is to talk about Rotimi Amaechi??

I thought it was about an upcoming policy to provide a skill trainning or work tools for the grassroot to win over the people to their side.

I'm getting irritated with this politics of emotions played by Nigerian Politicians.

Petty small minded Politics.

kel4soft: Amaechi is the only Governor making noise on east-west road, PH Airport, refund FG roads constructed with state money like PH-Owerrin road, Ada George, East West Flyover, Eleme Junction, Old Aba Road. The FG is really absent in South-South and nobody dare speak against him or else you are term disloyal. Thank God, my state is no longer a PDP state.

FreeGlobe: Ngige is the people's choice. I'm just waiting for the court to annul the sham election when the fraud called Peter obi leaves office so APGA will be be totally disgraced out and buried in Anambra.

gratiaeo: The World Bank as the largest external financier of education in the developed world found a reason to partner with the Lagos State Government to develop education to the tune of $90m, an initiative called the Lagos Eko Project.

The body seems to recognise the fact that as the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria –the most populous black nation in the world – education in the state needs all the attention it can get.

But if the state of the furniture in public secondary schools in the state is anything to go by, this needed attention is lacking.

Investigation has revealed that the issue of bad furniture in the schools might be more common than expected in the state.

Public secondary schools visited in different parts of the Lagos mainland on Tuesday and Wednesday revealed that much.

When this correspondent visited Ewutuntun Grammar School in Mafoluku area of Oshodi, pupils were seen sitting on the bare floor in some classes while lessons were going on.

In one of the classes in the junior section of the school, a female teacher was speaking animatedly as she delivered her lesson, while the pupils, who sat in various fashion, listened with rapt attention. Some sat on their desks writing on books balanced on their hands.

But what was unusual about the classroom was the fact that some of the pupils who could not find chairs to sit on, sat on the bare floor in front of the class as they strained their necks upwards to gaze at the teacher.

In another junior class in the school, a couple of pupils sat at the back of the classroom, on the bare floor with their backs resting on the wall while they laid their books on their laps to write.

Perhaps, tired by her long sitting on the cold hard ground, one of the pupils on the floor simply lay down beside her friends and dozed off. No teacher was in the classroom at the time.

One of the pupils sitting on the floor said he found it more “comfortable” sitting on the floor than on the bad planks.

“The broken desks tear our uniforms when we try to manage them. Sometimes we put planks from the desks on the floor and sit on them but those who cannot find planks sit on the ground,” the pupil said.

It turned out that the problem of furniture is not peculiar to only the junior class as is the case in Ikeja Grammar School.

In one of the classrooms used by the senior section of Ewutuntun Grammar School, some of the pupils could be seen sitting on planks of broken desks as a lesson went on.

The pupils were about 40 in the class and most of them had a place to sit. But it did not seem likely that many of them were actually comfortable on what they were sitting on.

A couple of the pupils stood at the door looking in as a few stood beside the window inside as they looked on at the teacher in front of the classroom.

Senior class two was a mess of scattered chairs that were in poor state but which the pupils still had to make do with. The desks and wooden contraptions that make up their chairs, seemed impossible to be arranged in orderly rows. The class looked like jumble of broken chairs and desks.

At Iloro Grammar School in Agege area of Lagos, the story was the same.

A long perimeter fence, big compound and relatively good buildings of the school are facades that masquerade the dire condition of some of the classrooms in the lower classes.

The junior secondary school has just three classes – JSS 1A-1C but in each of these classes made up of about 45 pupils, the front row is dedicated to pupils who have to make do with sitting on the floor.

In one of the JSS1 classes, one pupil sat on her own legs folded under her, another used her school bag as seat on the bare floor while another simply stooped as a teacher laboured to explain a point before the class.

This correspondent moved to another class, Room 9, where no lecture was holding at the time and spoke with one of the pupils sitting on the floor.

When our correspondent asked a pupil how he felt sitting on the floor, the reply of the boy showed the pupils no longer see it as strange to sit on the floor in a pre-university institution.

“Those who don’t have chairs are the ones who sit on the ground. I sit on the ground too. Sometimes, when there is space with someone on a bench, I manage with the person. But when I don’t find it easy writing when three of us are sitting on a broken bench,  most times I sit on the floor,” the boy said.

Asked whether they had been advised to bring chairs from home, he said no.

When this correspondent went undercover to investigate the state of furniture at Fagba Junior Grammar School, Iju Road, Lagos, the situation turned out to be as dire as it is in other schools visited.

This correspondent observed for more than 10 minutes a group of boys armed with stones and hammer as they worked in the front of JSS 1E/F class.

The centre of their interest was a couple of planks that had previously broken off from desks and chairs. The pupils hammered these planks together to make contraptions that could serve as seats for a couple of days.

These young ‘carpenters’ worked on the planks with enthusiasm as attendance of pupils inside the class was being taken by a teacher.

Fagba Junior Grammar School has three blocks. Each of these blocks has about six classrooms each. But each of these classrooms was very congested because of the number of pupils crammed in them.

The situation inside class 1E/1F looked scary. The congested classroom had about 60 pupils cramped into every space available in the room, safe for a small space left for the teacher to stand in the front of the blackboard.

One of the pupils doing carpentry work in the front of the class said the nail-ridden planks they were working on had broken many times, necessitating constant work to put them together so they could sit on them.

When our correspondent asked a group of pupils whether they thought they would do better in their subjects if they had better chairs to sit on, one of them answered, “I think so.”

Saturday PUNCH has not named the pupils spoken with in this report to prevent any attempt to identify them in the school as was the case in Ikeja Grammar School, published last Saturday.

In most of the schools visited, there were signs showing that they were part of the Lagos Eko Project, which was meant to improve education in the 639 public secondary schools in the state.

The website of the project indicated that there are 620,120 pupils in public secondary schools in the state as at April 2013.

The findings about the state of furniture in public schools in the state, have elicited more reactions from parents. Some of them said there was no excuse for the decay in infrastructure in these schools while others took the positive angle of saying the population in the state made it impossible to totally improve the schools.

One of such parents, a man who has a child in a secondary school in Oshodi, Mr. Aliu Ogundijo, said, “What happened to the billions of naira internally generated by Lagos State that we hear about everyday? If this kind of situation still exists in schools, my opinion is that it is hypocritical to undertake multi-billion-dollar projects such as the cable bridge and light rail because education should supersede all these things.”

John Kudere, whose child attends a public secondary school in Ikeja, said there were adequate chairs in the school his son attended but added that the findings showed that a lot of pupils were at a disadvantage in the state’s educational system.

He said, “What this means is that sending your child to a public school because you cannot afford a private school is like condemning such child to a low educational system that may have a negative impact on his life in future.

“Public schools are supposed to be as important to the government as any other issue in the state. They are not supposed to be given a fringe focus by the government.”

Mr. Lloyd Ebenezer, who also spoke with Saturday PUNCH however, opined that the rising population of the state makes it impossible to perfectly manage public schools in the state.

“I am not saying this is an excuse for government not to improve these schools. I believe a lot should be done but I think the high enrolment in schools contribute to the decay in facilities,” he said.

Several calls made to the Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Olayinka Oladunjoye, on Thursday, were not answered, but she later replied a text message seeking to know when the public should expect intervention in the schools.

“You may wish to liaise with the public relations officer of the ministry as I am presently not in. We work with the budget please,” she said.
http://www.punchng.com/news/more-lagos-schools-where-pupils-sit-on-bare-floors-unearthed/

GenBuhari: Wait and see.

Nigeria is going to be in a big crisis within the next 2 years, whenever the US decides to allow oil prices to crash to its true value.Oil could easily fall as low as $50 per Barrell.

What happen to Nigeria?

Mass civil unrest?

Military take over?

Disintegration?

terj: New PDP merge jare

wirinet: You are so ignorant of the dynamics of politics in Nigeria that i feel pity for you. You are behaving like an illiterate village igboman, arrogant in his ignorance. If you have ever gone anywhere near the south south, you will know that hardly any two neighbouring tribes agree with each other. There is always acrimony between itsekiris and ijaws, itsekiris and urhobo, ijaws and all other reverine tribes in the Nigerdelta, even ogonis and its neighbouring andonis are always fighting. What is keeping everybody in check is big brother Nigeria. Remove big brother and you will see chaos. So expecting a united Nigerdelta republic comprising og the Benis, ijaw, urhobos, itsekiris, ogonis, andonis, kalabaris, isokos is going to be pure chaos.

Tell me when has the igbo throughout history formed any kind of alliance with anybody? The arrogance among your people makes you feel so superior that you feel you cannot concede to anybody else in the spirit of give and take. The ijaws you people are aligning with today were your so called traitors during the civil war, because they did not support you.

So please tell me your allies - both nationally and internationally. Are you people waiting the chaos to commence before you start forming alliances?

Look at even your neighbours - the idomas, the ikas, the ishans, etc, and even the Cameroonians, which ones can you build alliances with?

Present day Nigeria is like ancient Greece, if it breaks into pieces, you can only survive by building alliances.

PhenomenonVFX: @wirinet
LOL. Now u are showing ur true color. Stop hiding.
By the way I am not Igbo. I am Olukumi. Ur stupidity is blinding u. U better open ur eyes.
The same ignorance u accuse me of is what makes u think the North will remain one solid entity if they dont have the south to contend with. U are dreaming. That is when u will know the difference between the Nupe and the Kanuri and the Hausas and others.
Just do the Itsekiris a favour and stop claiming u are part of them. That is all I ask. Be the Igbo-hater u are deep inside. I have no problem with that. The Igbos can come and answer u anytime.
Just stop telling us in the SS how to live.
I am not saying the country will break up. I dont care. But anyone who comes here saying the SS and SE will be worse off is a village clown.
The Efiks and Ibibios will be allies with the Igbos. The Aniomas of which my people are a minority among them will also be alies with Igbos. The Anioma and the Andonis are brothers. The Andonis claim they are Anioma. There are Igalas in Anioma too. By the time all is said and done, new stronger alliances would have been formed.
Even the Istekiri, Urhobo and Ijaw can learn to live together and share resources for mutual development. They will realise they need one another more for defence and human capital. A lot of possibilities. They will form alliances with the Edo and others. There are many descendants of Edos in Anioma too with ties that are yet to be forgotten. Some of the chiefs in my hometown used to help in the coronation of the Oba of Benin back in the day.
Until this country actually breaks, we cant say who will do better among the resulting parts.

LMAO wirinet the Istekiri. Freaking clown. We both know where u are from.

payless: You are more clueless than I thought. You should be seeing clearly by March 2014. Jonathan is done politically. Any wrong move by him will result in an impeachment. They aren't looking at impeaching him but any wrong move automatically activates that.

payless: Reality is about to hit you in your face. By the time reality sinks in, I expect Jonathan and the rest of Jonathanians to go back to the creek and start blowing up oil pipelines again.

payless: Jonathan is about to be consumed by his lack of political width and charisma. He is being led by sycophants who don't really mean well for him except for their pockets. I expect Tambuwal and other Northern legislators to declare for APC by February. This should confirm why I said many times that PDP is a Northern party that is supported by some southern slaves mostly based in South-east and South-south. The Nigerian Constitution favours the North more than any other region because, the North dominates the National Assembly; in terms of number. There are more than 68% of PDP legislators in the House of Representatives and Senate. I expect these Northern PDP legislators to desert PDP and move to APC. Jonathan will be left with Akpabio, Orji, Obi, Mimiko, Elechi, Chime and the governor of Cross-River State, Bamanga Tukur, Anenih, Okupe, Gulak, Abati and few others.........

One thing that I know is that, you don't fight the North politically. It is never advisable to let the North have a common enemy. When you fight the North, they tend to come together and fight their opponents regardless of their party affiliations. All the Northern Governors who claim to be in support of Jonathan are currently under pressure to dump Jonathan. Governor of Bauchi and Katsina will be put under a lot of pressure by Emirs and Sultan to dump Jonathan by end of next year. These governors will definitely dump him. Normally, the Northern elites do not favor Buhari but they are ready to support Buhari to get there and deprive Jonathan the second term he so much crave. The North has been threatened by Jonathan utterances of "Igbos are my back bone" "the votes I got from the North only came from Igbos". Those utterances were wrong by the President of Nigeria. As a a matter of fact, it was Sultan of Sokoto and some Emirs who declared support for Jonathan in the North when IBB, Atiku, Adamu Ciroma and others were giving Jonathan tough time. This was at the time of tension in the North in 2011.

The goal of the North is to get anyone from their region elected as President. It doesn't matter who that person eventually is.

Jonathan and his political rookies have woken up a sleeping giant.