The persistent efforts by the Zamfara State government to redeem the standard of primary education system in the state are now taking positive shape. For the past one year since assumption of office, Governor Abubakar Yari has repeatedly expressed worries over the unfortunate grading of his state as almost the most educationally disadvantaged state in the country.
On this premise, his administration decided to squarely face the enormous challenge of strategising carefully planned projects to address the issue from the roots, by committing huge human and financial resources to ensure that primary education system is fully rehabilitated and saved from imminent collapse.
The project initiative had earlier begun with the full payment of a sum of N1.5 billion last year, as the state counter funding for the state Universal Basic Education programme.
To ensure that the project was accorded with comprehensive attention, initially to expose the actual picture of the problems responsible for the continual decay in the system of primary education in the state, the government last year constituted a powerful assessment committee comprising of professionals from various academic discipline, under the chairmanship of Professor Tukur Adamu of the Usman Dan Fodiyo University.
The committee was empowered to unconditionally look into every aspect of how the primary education is being administered, including the physical condition of classrooms, the quality of teaching staff, the financial management, instructional materials and any other issue indentified as part of the factors responsible for the bottlenecks in the successful running of primary education in the state.
The activities of the assessment committee reached climax last week, when an extra-ordinary stakeholders forum was held in the state capital Gusau, to listen and deliberate on the final findings of the Professor Adamu committee’s findings, with a view to taking a concerted resolve to end the challenges facing primary education in the state.
The forum was fairly attended by former and serving governors of the state, all former and serving ambassadors, former and serving senators as well as members of the House of Representatives, former and serving ministers, prominent federal civil servants, traditional rulers and scholars, trade unions and NGO’s, and all the members of the state executive council.
The scenario portrayed a conglomeration of intellectuals and experienced professionals putting heads together to fight a common threat posed by the continual decaying state of basic education in the state, which the government now takes as a top most priority project in the state.
The project, which will evidently consume huge sum of financial resource, insiders said, would probably mark the most historical achievement of Governor Yari. Experts also added that it might certainly bear a far reaching positive impact on the future socio-economic posture of the state, if the project is honestly and transparently pursued to conclusion.
Apparently, the daunting challenges that will be faced in the execution of the project are numerous and multi-dimensional, considering the enormity of the problems on the ground caused by several years of neglect from successive administrations.
During the forum, numbers of amazing but deeply heart touching revelations were made by the chairman of the assessment committee, Professor Adamu, bordering on the actual state of primary education in the state.
According to Adamu, out of the total number of 1371 primary schools currently on recorded list, his committee was able to locate 1318, while remaining 53 exist only in name as fictitious, with no evidence of any physical structure to indicate the existence of a school.
He said almost all the 1318 schools inspected were in apparent need for rehabilitation, bearing clear evidences of very poor construction, while many others exist either under trees or in thatched huts and temporary uncompleted mud huts that are very unsuitable for teaching and learning convenience.
Another major problem identified was the indiscriminate and unlawful encroachment into the premises of many schools by some people, who converted encroached areas into shops and residential houses, the attitude which deprived such schools of lands for extensions, play ground and for other recreational activities, and this has led to alarming congestion in classrooms, which in many instances, a classroom is over congested with pupils numbering three to four hundred, particularly in the urban centres.
The committee also noted a very poor school child enrolment in the state due years of bad funding and misplay by successive administrations, as there are number of schools indicating records of allocations of teachers, yet the school is recording zero enrolment, without a single pupil in the school.
The general enrolment rate of the state has turned out to be extremely below satisfactory, as according to findings, there is very alarming disparity between the actual expected enrolment figure and the existing recorded figure of enrolment of pupils.
Professor Adamu disclosed that by the year 2011, the expected gross enrolment rate in the state was supposed to be 666, 544, but the current gross enrolment rate is only 283, 055, representing only 42.7% as the total enrolment in the state, indicating that more than 57% of school age children do go to school in the state, adding that the gross enrolment for female child was only 28%, indicating that more than 70% of them do not go to school.
Governor Abubakar Yari is now faced with this big challenge in investing huge amount of financial resources to reinvigorate the moribund state of primary education system in the state as an imperative alternative towards achieving future developmental breakthrough.
