Dilapidated school where Pupils sit on the floor & run from collapsing roofs in Abuja

Pupils in Rafin Daji community, under Gawu Ward in Abaji Area Council of Abuja, are facing hardship due to the dilapidated school structures and lack of furniture for their wards to sit on. 


The headmaster, Mr. Sabastine Adinya, told Daily Trust that the school had been facing a lot of challenges since he assumed office as headmaster over seven years ago.

He said the entire school and classroom structures were in a state of dilapidation, with absence of basic teaching tools such as desks and chairs, adding that an uncompleted block of three classrooms and an office was abandoned over eight years ago.

He complained that one of the dilapidated classrooms where the ECC pupils sit had been posed a threat to the lives of the pupils, adding that part of the classroom had already collapsed.

“And because of this, whenever it is about to rain, especially in August, we sometimes have to take them to the senior classes or keep them under the tree because their classroom may collapse,” he said.

He said the school had only nine teachers, including himself, against a total of 250 pupils. He gave the breakdown as follows; ECC 43, primary 1, 42 pupils primary 2, 51 pupils, primary 3, 50 pupils, primary 3, 50 pupils, primary 4, 31 pupils, primary 5, 33 pupils and primary 6, 37 pupils. (the reporter made the calculations for the break down and it does not add up)

He attributed most of the challenges to the distance from Abaji town, saying the school was isolated. He said the school is closer to Niger State than FCT, adding that none of his teachers had ever been invited to participate in most of the training workshops organised by the education department of the FCT.

“Since I assumed office as headmaster of this school over seven years ago, none of my teachers have ever been invited to attend a training or any workshop, except a training workshop which I had to follow up to enable one of my teachers attend at Gawu during second term,” he said.

He said all the classrooms in the school had only 39 functional desks/chairs, He said teachers also had no single chair to sit on in their classrooms. He added that since the pre-primary section was established in 2015, the education board provided no teaching/instructional materials.

“And apart from my trip to the LEA office in Abaji to lodge a complaint, I have also written severally and attached pictures of the dilapidated state of our classrooms in this school but nothing has been done up till this moment,” he said.

He explained that members of the Parent/Teacher Association (PTA) of the school had tried their best to intervene over some of the challenges facing the school. “So it is like the school is isolated and we are also isolated. I have called on the PTA to intervene and they have tried their best. At least, one of the rooms was built by them,” he said. 

The headmaster, therefore, appealed to the authorities under the leadership of Alhaji Abdulrahman Ajiya, to liaise with the management of the FCT Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB) to, as a matter of urgency and concern, intervene to rehabilitate the dilapidated classrooms and provide desks/chairs, as well as instructional materials for the school.