In a nation where governments at all levels routinely announce multi-billion-naira education budgets and celebrate the commissioning of new projects, there exists a secondary school in Katsina State that tells a completely different story, one that exposes the painful gulf between official promises and the everyday reality of ordinary Nigerians.
At Government Day Secondary School (GDSS) Maidabino in Dan Musa Local Government Area of Katsina State, the promise of education has been reduced to a daily struggle for survival. The school is not merely a neglected school. It is a monument to state failure.
A visit by a team of Defence Correspondents to the school revealed conditions so appalling that one struggles to understand how an institution bearing the name “Government Day Secondary School” has been allowed to deteriorate to such an inhumane state.Nothing prepares a visitor for the sight.
Children, dressed in their uniforms and clutching exercise books, sit on stones, broken blocks and the bare earth because there are no desks or chairs. The few classrooms that remain standing have no roofs. When the afternoon sun becomes unbearable, there is nowhere to hide.
When the rains begin, learning simply ends.
The students are told to go home. Not because school has closed. But because the government has failed to provide something as basic as a roof. It is difficult to reconcile this reality with the repeated declarations by successive governments about prioritising education.
Year after year, billions of naira are budgeted for the education sector. What makes the situation in Maidabino even more troubling is that it exists despite the enormous sums allocated to education by the Katsina State Government.
Governor Dikko Umaru Radda’s administration has consistently announced education as one of its top priorities. In the 20
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