LGEA Faki Road: A Kaduna Primary School in dire need of help

Our quest for education for all makes it difficult for us to shy away from those little things that matter when it comes to catalysts for qualitative and quantitative education especially now that Kaduna State Government is a subscriber of the world’s accountability platform called Open Government Partnership (OGP) at the sub-national level.

LGEA Primary School, Faki Road, Sabon Gari, Tudun Wada is located in Kaduna South Local Government Area of Kaduna State. It was previously run by Baptist Missionary but at some point, the government took over all the missionary schools but was later returned back to the initial managers. This particular primary school was not returned to the missionary by the government for reasons unknown. The school is among 4,264 pre-primary and primary schools spread across the 23 local government areas of Kaduna, according to the 2017 annual school census carried out by the Kaduna State Bureau of Statistics. The school is dilapidating at the expense of about 1,044 children that currently attend the school for their elementary education.

On Wednesday, December 18, 2019, Gobroadsheet.com an online news platform for developmental stories majorly around Northern Nigeria sighted the school on citizen’s feedback app called Eyes and Ears developed to help Kaduna citizens to identify and monitor public projects around them. That led to the intervention which began on Thursday, January 16, 2020, and after visiting the school for the on-the-spot assessment, the team immediately reached out to stakeholders including the Chairman, School Based Management Committee (SBMC), Abubakar Abdulkadir, LGEA Faki road, a community mobilizer, Musa Auta and some teachers in the school who spoke in confidence.

Our intervention and advocacy are yielding results as both government agencies and private establishments are beginning to show interest. News of our visit got to UBEC/SUBEB who came from Abuja to inspect the school and promised to do something about it. We saw that as a development that the school would soon be remembered for good.

Other than physical meeting with stakeholders we took our observations online to raise more awareness. The Permanent Member, Physical and Project Monitoring, Kaduna SUBEB, Mohammed Mubarak Mohammed, saw our tweet and replied to say “we are well aware and very concerned about the state of LGEA, Faki Road. It’s being included in our 2019 intervention. Please bear with us”. At the private level, after seeing disheartening pictures of some of the classrooms on social media shortly after the intervention, some members of Stanbic IBTC bank visited the school and promised to pick a block of four classrooms for renovation.

In his testimonial message sent to Gobroadsheet.com, a social mobilizer in the area, Musa Auta wrote, “yesterday being March 10, 2020, some members of the governing council of Stanbic IBTC from Lagos paid an evaluation visit to LGEA primary school, Faki Road where you and your team have shown interest. On behalf of Kaduna South LG, Ward 10 SBMC, I want to use this opportunity to appreciate your efforts and good intentions by paying attention to the school”, Auta added.

When contacted through a phone call, one of the members of the Stanbic IBTC bank that visited the school, Mr Nicholas Kyat confirmed their presence in the school for possible intervention. He mentioned that they usually move around the country to see which project they can improve. The particular school was visited after we saw the pictures on social media.

Open contracting has played a huge role in the success of this intervention. With data gotten from Gobroadsheet we were able to monitor the project effectively and start an advocacy which brought both private and public interventions. While we wait for the government and members of Stanbic IBTC to fulfill their interventions at separate levels, the team will continue to beam its searchlight on the school until the expected changes are seen to have taken place.

Written by: Sola Ojo, a Kaduna-based Solution and Data Journalist and Managing Editor, Gobroadsheet.com (This Blog was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundation)