Illiteracy: Kaduna Community Constructs Classrooms Through Self Help

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By: Joy Odor/Kaduna

A community in Kaduna State, Unguwan-Sarki-Baba, situated in Rigachikun Igabi Local Government, North-West, Nigeria has single handedly constructed a 5 classrooms block to tackled illiteracy amongst its teeming youth.

Unguwan-Sarki-Baba community is over 400 settlers and has been in existence for over 200 years which are predominantly Gwagi by tribe and depend on farming, during rain and dry seasons.

When reportcirlce went to investigate why the community should build classrooms when money has been map out by the State government to renovate school blocks, gathered that lack of social amenities has been the greatest challenges they faced such as socio-economics and political among others.

Speaking to one of the resident of the community, Mr Danladi Baba, age 63 who is the younger brother of the village head in the area told journalists during the tour of the community that lack of school in the community force them to construct 5 classroom with local sand to help their children fight against illiteracy.

According to him, the community unquestionable team-up and build the school for the brighter feature of their ward as a result of serious set-back in education compared to other children and communities around them.

Mr. Baba complained that bad road, water and electricity are is one of the greatest challenges most of the habitant have and the distance between the villages to town is almost 20 kilometer, saying the means of transportation are motor-cycle, heavy truck, bicycle, animals even wheel barrow for transporting food stuff and other items in the environment.

Mr. Danladi explained that the village head gathered all the residents in the village and task each and every parents in the community to donate his own contribution in cash or in kind to build the structure “everyone contributed money and effort in building this school, because we are tired of seeing our children always at home without going to school”.

“We want them to be educated like the children living in the cities, so that they too can be educated and be good feature leaders of tomorrow”.

“Immediately after we finished constructing the building, we then wrote a letter to the District Head of Rigachikum on the need to provide teachers for the newly constructed school, and since then, we never lack school teachers in the school.

“This is only schools in the villages that accommodate large number of students include other children from the neighboring communities, but lack of secondary school in the area is another great problem that is disturbing the entire residents in the community.

“Because of the effort we did in building the school, government painted it for us, and we are very happy for that, but we still need more classes for children and there is need to build toilet, library and build a pence for the school”.

“We still need football pitch, first-aid-box, and other learning materials to assist our children” he said.

Mr. Baba added that illiteracy is really a disease that is they we team-up with every member of the community to fight it in the village and called on the government to construct toilet and library for school student.

The women leader, Mrs. Lady Dauda appealed to state government on the need to construct borehole for the villagers to reduce the danger of drinking bad water which is really harmful, pointed out that due to drinking of bad water, their children has been facing series of different  sickness.

She concluded by calling on state government to find mean of reducing the high rate of maternal maternity in the village through the creation of more primary health care.

“Wealthy individual, development partners, corporate organization, non-governmental organization, civil society’s organization and team of medical doctors and volunteers should visit the rural areas to see the kind of live villagers are experiencing” she added.

The 5 room classes  was constructed with local blocks made-up of sand, grass, storms  and other local constructing materials to make it look strong, so that it can last for Hundreds of years.

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