To empower Original Inhabitants in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the government must fulfil its responsibility in the area of providing quality and inclusive basic education. The call was made by the Executive Director of the HipCity Innovation Centre Mr. Bassey Bassey, who stressed the need for school renovations across rural communities in the territory. For this to be achieved, Bassey charged education administrators in the FCT to immediately begin implementation of the “100 Schools in 100 Days project”. The project, is targeted at revamping basic education for the children of the FCT Original Inhabitants.
HipCity Innovation Centre Director said it was perplexed by the deplorable state of education in the FCT, while noting that as the bedrock of development of every society, education remains the weapon to combat poverty and underdevelopment. The civil society leader quoted the UNICEF report of October 2022, which noted that “the number of Nigeria’s out-of-school children stood at a staggering 20 million. These number continues to rise and more than ever, the data is scary and calls for urgent action in arresting the situation if the country is to avert any future crisis of mismanagement of its human resource.”
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The emerging civic group noted that globally, an estimated 47% of indigenous people in employment have no form of education as compared to 17% of their non-indigenous counterpart. Bassey said these disparities were responsible for the alarmingly high rate of the poverty level being experienced by indigenous people. According to him, in the FCT alone, 38.7% of the population live in extreme poverty and research shows that over 40% of the illiteracy rate in the FCT are largely in far rural communities, which predominantly occupied by the indigenous people”.
His words: “As at today, thousands of Original Inhabitant children scattered across the over 800 communities that make up of Abuja are out of school, not because of their unwillingness to seek education but because of the unfavourable and uncomfortable learning environments.” Bassey further highlighted the numerous challenges faced by the schools in the FCT to include, inadequate number of classrooms, with some primary and junior secondary schools being forced to shift in lecture times. There are situations where primary schools operate in the morning and vacate by afternoon to make way for the junior secondary students to receive lectures. In some schools in Abaji, Zuba, Gwagwalada, pupils sit on bare floors and their classrooms have no roof; the environment for learning is poor and generally not conducive for the children.
The group also pointed out the challenge posed by unavailability of teachers, as most teachers are volunteers who are not registered as professional teachers. The group further lamented that the Original Inhabitant pupils have complained of the high cost of levies and charges they are made to pay by school administrators either in the guise of “registration or PTA”. This situation the group noted was antithetical to the laws on free basic education policy enacted by the government.
“In several schools across the FCT, water, sanitation hygiene (WASH) facilities are either unavailable, malfunctioning or inadequate. Students who should be WASH ambassadors in their communities sensitizing people on safe hygiene practices, dangers of open defecation are now the perpetrators for lack of option or alternative. Also, in the area of security, there is the palpable fear among parents who each day they send their children because of the issue of kidnapping, especially as most schools lack security personnel or perimeter fence.”
In order to address these issues, HipCity Innovation Centre urged the relevant agencies in the FCT to take action to arrest the infrastructural decay affecting the education system in indigenous communities. According to the group, one way the government can do this is to immediately kick off the implementation of the 100 Schools in 100 Days initiative. HipCity Innovation Centre similarly called on the FCT Administration to conduct a needs assessment of schools and construct new classroom blocks. To address the anomaly of school children sitting on the floors, the group called on the authorities to provide desks and chairs and other furniture in schools for children to learn comfortably.
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