One teacher, 600 pupils, zero classrooms: The reality in Dokan Rago

By Aliyu Baba Mohammed

For seven years, Children in Dokan Rago village, Kubau Local Government Area of Kaduna State, have been forced to attend classes in borrowed spaces and under trees after their school buildings completely collapsed.Mrs Sarah Barnabas, headmistress of UBE Primary School, Dokan Rago in Mah Ward, says the three classrooms and one office that made up the school have all caved in, leaving more than 600 pupils from the host community and neighbouring villages with nowhere to study.

Mrs Sarah Barnabas, headmistress of UBE Primary School, Dokan Rago in Mah Ward, says the three classrooms and one office that made up the school have all caved in, leaving more than 600 pupils from the host community and neighbouring villages with nowhere to study.

The school has very vast land, but there is not a single block standing on it. And all efforts to get a new structure have not worked – Mrs Barnabas

The situation has forced the school to rely on the goodwill of a local Islamic school owner who allows the pupils to use his structure whenever Islamic classes are not in session. However, the borrowed Islamiyya building is a dilapidated mud structure that poses serious safety risks to both pupils and only one teacher handling the over 600 children of the school. It doesn’t even have a chalk board or board marker, the teacher writes on the bare walls. During the rainy season, lessons are nearly impossible as pupils and students in basic 7 and 8 wait for hours just to get space, and many days pass without any teaching at all.

Mrs Barnabas, who serves as the only teacher and administrator at the school, said the poor conditions have driven other teachers away. She recently had no choice but to transfer some upper basic classes 7 and 8 (popularly known as JSS 1 and 2) students to Government Secondary School (GSS) in Ikara so they could receive proper lessons for quality education.

I am headmistress, teacher and everything for this school. Many teachers have refused to stay because of the collapsed classes and the remote location of the village – she said

The village head, Malam Yahuza Magaji Dokan Rago, and youth leader Nafiu Ahmed have appealed to the government to urgently intervene in this critical situation that has persisted for years. Located on the border between Kubau and Ikara local governments, Dokan Rago has been left behind despite school construction projects across Kaduna State in recent years.

Attempts to reach the Chairman of Kubau Local Government, Musa Sale Banki and the education Secretary for comment were both unsuccessful, as neither answered phone calls.

Without proper classrooms, many pupils in the community now prefer going to the farm or engaging in other activities rather than attending a school that barely feels like one. The lack of basic infrastructure threatens to deny an entire generation of children in Dokan Rago access to quality education.

Conclusion

The Kaduna State government and Kubau Local Government Education authorities should prioritize the reconstruction of UBE Primary School, Dokan Rago as an emergency education project. Deploying additional teachers and providing temporary learning structures while permanent classrooms are built would prevent these children from dropping out entirely. Education is a right, not a privilege, and no child should have to learn under a tree or wait for hours just to sit in a borrowed classroom that seems dangerous to the lives of the teacher and learners.