At the borderland between Nigeria and Benin Republic in Ogun State where brutal attacks on farmers by marauding herdsmen have caused tragedies....
travels to the borderland between Nigeria and Benin Republic in Ogun State where brutal attacks on farmers by marauding herdsmen have caused untold tragedies. He reports on how COVID-19 realities are worsening a situation already too painful to describe, but which is creating a new army of out of school children and young people.At Agbon village, Abidemi Ilo is laid on a mat at the veranda. He is being encouraged to ingest a little more of pap-cake and vegetables.
As he spoke, Bidemi’s children were standing behind the door that leads from the inner house to the veranda. They looked on watching as their father sobbed emotionally. This sort of tragedy and the consequences on the education of the children of direct victims illustrate the vulnerability of children and young people on this Yoruba borderline between Nigeria and Benin Republic.
Apart from the continuum of community despair about safety and its telling effect on school enrolment, there is also the issue of lack of schools and the parlous state of most of those available in those communities. This includes toilet facilities for the students or water for drinking. The environment is overgrown with elephant grass\weeds and severely neglected such that the building now looks the picture of a derelict storehouse.
While children are subjected to learn under the perils of reptiles, the school is peculiar for yet another reason: it has two structures but neither of them meets UNICEF’s standard of the primary school of providing a significant personal and social environment in the lives of the pupils and the environment being physically safe, emotionally secure and psychologically enabling.If it ever rains, it only means the children will be learning in swamps owing to the deplorable farmyard area.
According to him: “communities here are abandoned, maybe because they are on the border and far from the attention of the government but the consequences are now evident. That’s why there’re increased rates of child labor for the girls and smuggling for the boys because they lack education.”The killing of children, hacked to death in ambushes, in some of those clashes aggravated the fear of parents about the safety of their children on their way to or return from school.
Joel claims that ‘nothing is wrong with the block of classrooms considered for renovation by the government.’What baffles the trio is that the structure considered for renovation by the Ogun state ministry of education is the newest in the school while the terrible senior secondary classes are left untouched.
The students in the two departments are 120 plus. The class was originally expected to accommodate about 35 students. If the school is fenced, the concern about the flock of sheep and cows polluting the classrooms will be gone. But social distancing in the time of COVID-19 is still a headache. At the behest of the community which was struggling at financing the school, the Ibikunle Amosun administration decided to transfer ownership of the school to the State two years ago.
This explains why the Principal, Oghenechukwu Elvis, was first excited when that call came from the ministry of education. According to Lawal, ‘COVID-19 has shown that Nigeria is very poor and under-developed. Many of the communities at the conflict-bed of the country lack portable water and other basic amenities.The schools are also dilapidated, overcrowded and some of the children have to sit on the floor to learn.’
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