Kano State government has described the free education policy of immediate past administration of Abdullahi Ganduje as monumental failure. Ganduje’s administration declared free and compulsory education in basic and secondary education in the state, as part of measures to reduce out-of-school children.
However, the new Commissioner for Education, Umar Doguwa, insisted that the mere fact that many primary and secondary schools under the previous government lacked basic amenities, including furniture, Ganduje’s free education system was defective.
Doguwa, who spoke at Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS), Tumfafi, Dawakin Tofa Local Council, was worried that Ganduje’s administration left public schools in a shambles.
The commissioner said: “In GGSS, students packed in the classes were sitting on bare floor. Nine of the 16 classes had no furniture at all, while the rest had only a few chairs and desks.
“The school has 1,808 students with 21 teachers. A block of classrooms, initiated in the school by Tumfafi community, was abandoned, a project which the former commissioner promised to complete. That would have helped in decongesting some classes.”
At Government Technical College, Dambatta, Doguwa, who interacted freely with the students, expressed dissatisfaction that for nearly five years, the past administration failed to renovate the college’s four destroyed hostels, thereby forcing the 530 students to reside in two stuffy hostels, while begging for reconstruction of their damaged facilities.
The commissioner, therefore, requested the intervention of IDEAS, a World Bank funded project to improve infrastructure in Science and Technical schools in the state, to focus on renovating the hostels.
