Abubakar Sani-Bello, Niger State Governor, has explained why schools in the state are in deplorable condition.
It had been observed that the Government Science College in Kagara, where 27 students were abducted by suspected bandits had no windows or fence.
While interacting with newsmen on Friday, Governor Bello faulted the previous administrations for neglecting schools in the state.
According to him, he has renovated 9 schools since he became Governor and he is working on renovating more schools in the state.
“We have 60 boarding schools and only 9 you can call a proper school, and we renovated them. I think the problem is that most previous administration did not pay attention to these schools, instead, they paid more attention to investing in new schools.
“When I came in 2015, I said our maintenance culture is very bad. If we don’t maintain what previous administrations have done, we will find ourselves in a difficult situation and that is what is happening.
“These schools were built 30-40 years ago and some of them have not seen paints in 40 years. No paint, no fence. 40 years ago, we didn’t have these security challenges, so it was okay, but now our schools must be fenced.
“When we came in 2015, we started the whole school approach and we started rebuilding schools and each school cost close to N350 million to do. They were so bad that they did not have toilets, fence or roof. Staff were living in bad condition, so we decided that instead of doing temporary measures, we should rebuild those schools.”
