Most schools in Nigeria have long been neglected that their present conditions have gone from bad to worse and do not even fit to be used as animal houses. A school around Akute Bus Stop, the border town between Ogun State and Ojodu in Lagos State known as Akute Community High School is in such indubitable wreck.
Students of Akute Community High School are always seen clustering under a makeshift corrugated iron sheet-roofed space that serves as classrooms, attached to the compound of another school (Z. I Primary School 2, Akute, Ifo LGA where they have become undignified squatters for well over three years. Hundreds of students are closely packed together, creating an extremely unsightly scene.
It was learnt that in this Akute Community High School The limited space occupied is without demarcation for the classes except for the positioning of makeshift blackboards facing rows of desks and chairs arranged in no particular order, with hardly space between them. During free periods, chaos reigns, with the students seizing the moment to become practically uncontrollable.
Barely protected from the scorching sun, and finding themselves in an unrestricted learning environment courtesy of the open space, they jump on desks, turning the place into a playground rather than a place of learning. Cane wielding teachers sweat, while school prefects also go around, under a continuous strain of attempting to restore order throughout the hours that knowledge should have been impacted.
Passing vehicles blare their horns along the dusty road, right by the school’s polythene covered edges. The overcrowding, coupled with suffocating dust and unsightly refuse dump nearby are enough reasons to disqualify the school as a proper place to learn.
But the students attending the school are nothing near being privileged enough to seek transfer to a more conducive place of learning. Most of them are from less than average income earning homes. One of them, a prefect in SS2 who spoke to P.M.NEWS Metro in jittery tones said that for those in his class that started their secondary school education in Akute Community High School five years ago, the present site is the third one.
From the first location where the school was affiliated with an obscure Akute school, they were transferred to another, then a new site in a valley along the Ishashi-pipeline axis about four years ago. But the well constructed school became waterlogged, with the release of water from the Ogun-Osun River Basin Authority dam over three years ago.
The movement of the students to the present location was supposed to be a temporary arrangement till the water dried up. But three sessions after, nothing indicates a possible return to the abandoned school. For now, the students at their present makeshift school remain exposed to the risk of getting killed by vehicles due to the location of the ‘classrooms’, apart from health risks associated with overcrowding and dust inhalation.
Akute Community is sincerely hoping and seeking for government assistance in developing this school in their community. Nevertheless there are numerous schools like Akute Communty school in this country that also need urgent attention, and rebuilding these schools will add more value to the educational standard in the country.
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