Going by some of Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign rhetoric from the 2011 election, the students in the schools in Igbo-Etiti and Udenu council areas of Enugu State should all have a crack at the Presidency. After all, they also do not have any shoes (see images below).
No shoes are the least of their troubles, however. The schools also do not have some of the basic infrastructure, or even chalk and a chalkboard. The only person with a seat is the teacher and the students are facing extreme levels of educational deprivation. A clear sign that Nigeria is lagging far behind in the Millennium Development Goals on education.
Dailypost, a leading Nigerian newspaper spoke to one of the teachers, Ohebe Dim, a teacher who spoke under a false name for fear of victimization explained that the school has been forgotten by both the state and the local government.
His words: “In fact, this school has been forgotten by the government. There is no help whatsoever coming from the government. During rainy season, teachers and pupils are always in trouble because the roof of this building is leaking. Also in the dry season, heat is always too much here.
“Many pupils don’t attend school during rainy season for fear of the building collapsing. Painfully, this school is supposed to be the center for the Common Entrance Examination this year. But, we were denied this because we don’t have seats talk more of other facilities for the comfort of both the candidates and examiners”, he lamented.
“We have made several appeals to the government but nothing is coming our way. The parents have done the best they can all these years. So right now, we are surviving by the mercy of God, but my concern is for the pupils, because I wonder how they would compete with their counterparts in other parts of the country”, he added.
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