A video obtained by SaharaReporters showed the moment the students seated inside a wooden shed with no walls, windows or doors struggled to protect their books from the rain.
Some students of Senior Secondary School, Oke Apomu in the Ilorin West Local Government Area of Kwara State were drenched following a heavy rain on Thursday morning.
This is due to a lack of classrooms.
A video obtained by SaharaReporters showed the moment the students seated inside a wooden shed with no walls, windows or doors struggled to protect their books from the rain.
The video shows the teachers seated in an open corridor with raindrops splashing on their tables.
SaharaReporters gathered that this has been the situation in the school for years and all efforts to get the attention of the state government to rescue the situation had failed to yield any positive result.
“Anytime there is rain, there is no class for the students because everybody will be running from the rain and unfortunately for the students and the teachers, there is nowhere to go.
“This is their school. They will have to stay even if they are wet. The situation is the same when it is sunny,” a source told SaharaReporters.
In May 2022, SaharaReporters reported that the classrooms of LGEA School, Eyenkorin in Kwara State were old, dilapidated and overcrowded despite the state government receiving a N7.15 billion (N7,151,142,190) grant from the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).
According to the government, the N7.15 billion was an accumulation of UBEC grants not accessed between 2014 and 2019.
“The money was not accessed because the former administration failed to pay its own counterpart funds.
“The development represents a historic feat for Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, who has spent the last one year working to reposition basic education in the state.
“This began with the payment of N450 million diverted funds, which had brought Kwara State under the hammer of the UBEC,” the Commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development, Fatimah Ahmed, said in the statement.
It was also added that the UBEC grants were meant for the rehabilitation of dilapidated basic schools, construction of new ones, equipping of schools with ICT tools, teacher training and project evaluation, among other purposes contained in the UBEC work plan.
“This money would be spent in phases over the next two years to fix up to 600 elementary schools out of the over 1,400 decrepit basic education facilities across the state,” a statement from the government said.