Kaduna politicians encroach on school land

It is the responsibility of the state government to ensure the speedy development of all public schools and provide enabling environment for the private schools to flourish; basically to uplift the standard of education. However, most structures including classes are decaying due to government’s neglect of educational standards in schools.The extra-legal allocation of school lands and […]

It is the responsibility of the state government to ensure the speedy development of all public schools and provide enabling environment for the private schools to flourish; basically to uplift the standard of education.
 However, most structures including classes are decaying due to government’s neglect of educational standards in schools.
The extra-legal allocation of school lands and lands reserved for public purposes to private individuals and government officials by government functionaries themselves is in vogue in Kaduna State.
Rimi College located on Tafawa Balewa Road, Kaduna is one of the public schools whose lands are being allocated to individuals, mostly elected representatives to erect personal buildings.
The college is one of the oldest existing secondary schools in northern Nigeria founded during the colonial period. The college was established in 1949 by the Christian missionaries as St. John’s College and handed over to Kaduna State government in 1972.
Very few blocks of classrooms were built to add to the existing structure with no adequate maintenance since the handover.
One of the teachers who would not want to be named said the school authority was neither aware nor consulted before the government decided to allocate lands belonging to the school to individuals.
 “They (Ministry of Education) just brought a letter notifying us of the land allocation. Most of the houses you see here (pointing at a property) under construction belong to politicians: which are clear indications that instead of providing more infrastructure, they are rather destroying the existing ones.
“We are afraid now because the new mansions are built very close to the staff quarters. And the staff quarters cannot compete with these new houses. They may likely eject the teachers, allocate the houses to themselves and modify them.”
He said the school buildings are dilapidated, adding that it is no secret that the school needs repairs, “but the situation is way worse than you could have imagined because the authorities have turned a blind eye on the safety of teachers and student.”
Another teacher in the school said the trouble started long ago when part of the school land was carved out and given to the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to build its state office.
“Apart from JAMB, the college is housing five different agencies including the Teacher’s Service Board, NECO and the Mathematical Centre.”
He said there were other schools in the state that were partitioned and shared to individuals, “including Government College where I served as a teacher long ago. The college’s land was turned into a private housing estate.”
Dr. Mohammed Umaru graduated from the college in 1970 and is a member of the old students association. He said he got to know about the issuance of the school land to politicians recently and had already informed the leadership of the association.
He said the association will mount pressure on the government to review its decision.
“We shall take up the matter with the government and know why and when the school land was partitioned and given to individuals. It is not right. We don’t have the power to reclaim the land or change the decision but we want to let government know that the decision was wrong.
“Government is not serious about education. The college used to be a boarding school and the boarding houses were cancelled. We want to restore the boarding houses now and put in place more structures.”
A man living close to the school who pleaded for anonymity said: “I live around Rimi College and I wasn’t aware of what is currently going on in the college until when I went round the area. I saw new houses being built in the premises while many others were at roofing stage. I can even see some of them from my house. I thought the college was expanding, but when I got there I was surprised and shocked to hear from people there that plots were allocated to so-called ‘big men’ and I am not happy about it. In the first place we are supposed to encourage education in this part of the country where we are very far behind. We are not encouraging education but killing the existing schools.
“The negative impact to education is obvious because if you kill the schools, where do you expect people to go and learn especially here where we have a culture of giving birth to 10 to 20 children. How do you expect the schools to expand if their premises are being carved out and given to individuals? Eventually, the schools will have to close.”
When contacted, the Commissioner for Education in the state Mohammed Usman said the lands were awarded during previous administrations and that henceforth nobody will be given school land to build personal houses.
He said the public must come to the aid of the government in safeguarding public property.
“On the issue of encroachment on Rimi College, it was the previous government that gave approval for award of certain plots in the school premises but I know that Governor Mukhtar Ramalan Yero has called me personally to caution that we should not allow anybody to build any illegal structure on any of our schools and that we should try as much as possible to secure them and that is why we are also appealing to members of the community, members of Parent Teachers Association (PTA) and school based management committees to partner with the government in securing these schools.
“I have always said that education is not the responsibility of the government alone but the responsibility of everyone. In every school, there is supposed to be the PTA and it is the responsibility of the PTA to secure the school but sometimes the parents will be among those encroaching on government property,” he said.