By Magnus Eze and Obi Okwe
Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) Minister, Muhammad Musa Bello is not happy with the sanitary conditions of public schools within the territory.
As the schools reopened for the new academic session recently, the minister sounded it loud and clear to the schools and education authorities that his administration would not condone the dirty standards of the schools, especially a situation where many of their fences had been converted to dumpsites.
Regardless of the minister’s tall order, Daily Sun investigations showed that the environmental situation in many of the schools visited in Abuja Municipal Area Council and Bwari Area Council were nothing to write home about, agitating the question, whether the school authorities had grown beyond the control of the minister.
At the public school along the popular Lagos Street in Garki Village, the situation was quite appalling as a visitor to the school would be welcomed by huge waste dump by the school fence.
It was not any different at Government Secondary School, Kabusa after Dakwo village; a suburb of the FCT which is the only secondary school in the area.
Heaps of wastes litter the school from the entrance to the playground, down to the fence on the right. Maize shells, yam pills, water sachets and empty plastic cans were common filths there while heavy urine stench was a permanent feature at the main gate.
In addition, the school boasts of porous security as its fence had collapsed in various parts; providing avenue for students to play truancy.
To worsen the matter, the school is surrounded by the ever busy Kabusa market; where sellers contribute to the ever-filthy environment with smoke emanating from food sellers billowing into the classrooms. In fact, the kitchens of the food kiosks were attached to the school’s fence.
As if that was not enough, those selling traditional medicines, Compact Disks (CDs), flash drives, phones, cables and others struggle for attention as they increase the volume of their music to disturbing levels which waft into the classrooms. The blaring horns of motorcycles, vehicles, and shouts of sellers all combine to make the place unsuitable for teaching and learning.
Speaking to Daily Sun, a parent, Blessing Musa said parents had complained to the principal of the school to speak to the FCTA to either relocate the school or the market to restore sanity.
Musa said: “I am not the only who have complained about the situation. Even the students are not enjoying the situation. I don’t blame the principal; he is an employee of the government. He is only doing his job.”
An SS2 student of the school, who would not want her name in print appealed to the minister to come to their aid. “We find it uncomfortable to learn anything here because of the noise and smell which have taken over our school. We wish that one day the FCT minister will visit our school and see things for himself,” she stated.
The sanitary condition of the Local Education Authority (LEA) Primary School, Dutse-Sagbagyi in Bwari Area Council was very pathetic as the school lacked functional toilets. In LEA Dutse-Alhaji, the pit toilets in the school seemed abandoned for ages, while the only modern toilet was out of bounds for the pupils.
In many other public pri-mary and secondary schools in Bwari Area Council, the story was the same, as ugly images of waste, filth and pungent smell often ooze out from bushes close to the schools while in some cases heaps of feaces were spotted around the schools.
Daily Sun gathered that the problem was compounded by the attitude of some resi-dents who were in the habit of messing up areas around the school, especially early morning and late evening, even as many parents had raised concerns that the problem may pose drastic health implications to the children.
Earlier in the year, the Chairman, Senate Committee on FCT, Senator Dino Melaye had summoned the FCT Minister and the then acting Education Secretary to appear before the committee over dilapidated public schools in the capital city.
The committee which also summoned the Permanent Secretary of FCT had vowed to investigate what led to the deplorable state of the schools.
Speaking during an oversight visit to LEA Primary School at Wuse Zone 1, Melaye said it was unacceptable for such condition of public schools in the nation’s capital.
“We are worried about the hygienic condition of the students that are in this school, this is an epidemic breakout from very unhygienic condition that am seeing here.
“We are going to summon the minister, the Permanent Secretary and the Secretary of Education. We want to know what is happening to the allocation of the education sector of the FCT.
“This has become a hide out for criminals. We are not even sure of those living in all these batcher (make-shift structures) that are scattered everywhere here. One is just surprised that, if a school within the metropolis, in the heart of Abuja can be this dilapidated, that it becomes a hideout for criminals, and hoodlums; one will be wondering what is happening to schools that are in the satellite towns and suburbs of Abuja because this is the heart of the city that is supposed to be the capital city, the school within the metropolis is this exposed to crime and criminality”, the senator stated.
When Daily Sun visited the school in the course of our investigation, the environment was still filthy, with bushy grasses, while work seemed to have stopped on the fencing project.
This was not the first time the minister would lament about the dirty situation in public schools within the territory.
He had last year during the donation of learning materials to indigent students by the Nigerian Turkish International Colleges Foundation, publicly tongue-lashed the Chairman of Kuje Area, Shaban Ishaku Tete, over the poor environmental state of Kayada Junior Secondary School Kuje.
Prior to this period, it took a report by Daily Sun on the sprawling refuse dumps that ran through the perimeter fences of Government Secondary School and LEA Primary School, Jiwa, in the Gwagwa axis of AMAC for the authorities to clear the mountainous debris.