GSS Birnin Kebbi: 100 years after

Located at the western end of Birnin Kebbi, the school was absolutely isolated from the town. But this is no longer so as settlements have now surrounded the school.GSS, Birnin Kebbi, in those days, was notorious for corporal punishment. This was handed down by both the school authorities and the senior students. Still when we […]

Located at the western end of Birnin Kebbi, the school was absolutely isolated from the town. But this is no longer so as settlements have now surrounded the school.
GSS, Birnin Kebbi, in those days, was notorious for corporal punishment. This was handed down by both the school authorities and the senior students. Still when we were in the junior classes from 1976 to 1978, we were called names, even donkeys. The seniors claimed that we didn’t know our left from our right, that we were not properly oriented. At the end of every school day, we approached the dormitories with trepidation. The seniors would lurk somewhere and shout “boys” and God saved you if you arrived at the feet of the caller late; it was automatic punishment. There were some senior students who cultivated the habit of handing in their clothes to us to wash in the middle of harmattan nights. In addition to the cold atmosphere, you had had to brave dipping your hands in cold water to wash your masters’ clothes. Either you did it or you ran away from the school. Other times, and on flimsy grounds, the seniors punished us by asking us to uproot plants (garmani) using our bare hands. On some occasions, they gave us what was known as “digging”. This meant that you would dig a carefully measured square or rectangle hole in the ground, enough to swallow your height, and thereafter you replace the scooped earth. Yet we were told that we didn’t see anything, that we didn’t witness corporal punishment at all, and that it had been done with before our arrival. However, we were intrigued by tales of a Head Boy (we didn’t meet him in the school) who was said to have been feared by his own classmates. He was both brilliant and stern. He could lash his mates into submission or give them some form of severe punishment without challenge. But the more illustrious part of his person was that on the prize and speech giving day, he carted away almost all the laurels available.
One still recalls what happened one cold harmattan night when the seniors claimed to have spotted a wizard in the bush behind the school. Apparently, a wood cutter had decided to practice his trade in the night and he had with him a flash light to aid sightseeing. But our seniors said the flash light they saw from our dormitories was nothing but sparks of witchcraft. Thus, they woke all of us up and led us to the bush and the “wizard” was arrested. He was handed over to the school authorities for proper punishment. In the morning, the school authorities silently released the wretched man.
It was also around this time that the government of General Olusegun Obasanjo sent soldiers, serving and retired, to curb what they called indiscipline in secondary schools. They moved about with batons and horse whips to enforce rules and regulations in both classes and dormitories. These soldiers constituted a terror on and off the premises and nearly bridged the gap between seniors and juniors in terms of meting out severe punishment. The soldiers could lash or punish just anybody, irrespective of his class.
Facilities at GSS Birnin Kebbi have shamefully deteriorated. The large school compound hasn’t a single tarred road. The dusty roads leading to the classes, hostels and staff quarters are flooded during the rainy season. There are no flowers whether in the classes or hostels. In the classes, there is no adequate furniture. In the hostels, there aren’t enough beds and some children actually sleep on the bare floor. The windows either in the classes or hostels have no glass and children use cardboard or old newspaper sheets to block the empty spaces in the frames. There is no running water in the school and so the toilets are not functional; children go to the nearby bush to ease themselves. God! I can’t imagine the danger faced by these school children who go to the bush to defecate. This flagship secondary school of Kebbi State is now a shadow of itself.
I had thought that members of the newly elected executive committee of the Nagari Old Boys Association would call the attention of the government of Kebbi State whose primary responsibility it is to rebuild the school. The EXCO has also failed to mobilise the old boys, many of whom are highly-placed, to give their donation, in cash or in kind, to recreate the school. Instead of barka da sallah messages, the EXCO should be inviting us to the commissioning of new hostels or classes built by old boys or meet students who have excelled or better still the institutionalisation of prizes for brilliant teachers and students.
The story of GSS Birnin Kebbi is the story of neglected education in Kebbi State. Behind the beautiful walls of schools in the state are non-existent or ill-equipped laboratories, crumbling dormitories, inhabitable classes, wretched students and ill-motivated teachers. This is absolutely painful if you realise that 99% of state officials from the governor down to the councillor wouldn’t have got the education they did if there had been no public schools.
It is now up to the next administration to squarely address the disgraceful state of education in Kebbi State, among other social problems, because our current superintendents have rather squandered billions with nothing to show for it.