11news Downpours driving Kano students home in droves
Last Friday’s rainfall in Kano was a big relief to the heat experienced in the town and also a sign of the commencement of the 2018 rainy season. However, the first heavy downpour rendered some public schools inaccessible, as students were asked to go back home until the rainwater is drained.
In Giginyu Girls Secondary School, students were told to go back home because most of the classes and part of the school premises were submerged. A visit revealed that the authorities have started draining the water. According to a member of the school’s Parents Teachers Association (PTA), Malam Basheer Bashir, “This is the first time the school is experiencing such an incident,” and he attributed it to the residential structures being erected around recently, which he claimed were constructed on waterways.
“This is the beginning of the rainy season, so what do you expect when the rainy season commences fully? The school authority, PTA and members of the community should do something in consonance with what the state government will do to address the situation.”
The situation seems to be worse in recent years at Hotoron Arewa Primary School because whenever it rains, no learning activity will take place there for about three days. This, according to community sources, has made parents and guardians, as well as students, to dread the season.
A visit to the school revealed that there were no good drainages, as water passages in the area are blocked, with buildings erected on some of them. Similarly, some residents blame community leaders who allowed people to erect structures on waterways.
A primary three pupil of the school, Usman Bako Tinshama, told our reporter that pupils dread the rainy season because whenever it rains, it means no school for them for days.
Alhaji Balarabe Wudil is the chairman School-Based Management Committee (SBMC) of Hotoron Arewa Primary School. He told Daily Trust that they have made several attempts to see that the 44-year-old school regains its lost glory. “We have written on several occasions and have sent reminders to the state ministry of education on the school’s issue and yet annually we kept experiencing the same thing,” said Wudil.
The case at Kano Capital School seems a little different as the school’s situation was identified long ago. Only students of the primary section are sent home whenever it rains because the school premises usually get flooded.
It was gathered that the PTA has gotten approval to construct drainage to save the school from recurrent cases.
However, the PTA’s move, according to the school’s PTA Public Relation Officer Malam Sunusi Abdullahi, is being frustrated by the school’s coordinator’s refusal to release funds. “We hope and pray that the coordinator will see reason, and allow for the approved work to commence as the situation is getting worse this year,” he said.
The school’s coordinator, Hajiya Ramatu Yunusa, said she was not given any request from the PTA, adding that the Old Boys Association, who had pledged to construct the drainage, initiated the construction of drainages in the school. According to her, it was when the PTA was brought into the issue that things started to change direction leading to the delay in the execution of the repairs.
Attempts to get authorities of the Kano State Universal Education Board (SUBEB) to comment on the issue were not fruitful.