A Special Education Centre meant for physically challenged children located in the heart of Gombe, Gombe State capital, has continued to decay due to lack of proper care and maintenance.
Daily Trust reported three years ago the condition of the centre, which was deteriorating and a revisit to the centre recently by our correspondent, showed that the deplorable condition has worsened, exposing the students to hardship and danger.
The Special Education Centre was established 28 years ago, shortly after the creation of the state in 1996, to cater for children born with disabilities and need special forms of education.
Initially, the school was meant to cater for 16 categories of special needs, but it presently attends to only the visual and hearing-impaired children and those with multiple disabilities.
Located near the Community Education Resource Centre in Tashan Dukku area of Gombe metropolis, the centre which is a boarding school, has a population of over 600 students enrolled for both the primary and secondary schools, respectively.
The students are accommodated in six blocks of classrooms, one administration block and four hostels, divided into two each for boys and girls respectively.
The school receives students and pupils from across the 11 local government areas of the state, and from the other five states of the North East geo-political zone.
Despite the significance of the centre and the critical role it is supposed to play for these categories of people who need special education, the facility is facing a myriad of challenges which are threatening its relevance and existence.
Investigation revealed that the school is grossly understaffed with less than 30 teachers attending to its over 600 student population.
There are also few security personnel securing the vast area occupied by the school, which is partially fenced, with some portions destroyed after a heavy rainfall.
It was learnt that not all the security guards are employed by the government as permanent staff, some of them are volunteers receiving stipends from the school authority.
Located within the vicinity of a slum, London Mai Dorawa area, it is said that youth, mostly from the neighbouring areas, usually go into the school to play football, which causes problems for the special needs' students, and in some cases, some of the female students are allegedly molested.
A boarding school with some 30 teachers and a handful of other supporting staff, the only three staff quarters of two bedrooms served as staff quarters for the school.
Daily Trust gathered that these problems have combined to make the effective management of the school difficult, as among others, the quarters cannot accommodate the required staff to adequately attend to the students' needs, especially in the event of an emergency, a source from the school who craves anonymity said.
He said more hostels are needed to separate the deaf and the blind students, explaining that "it is becoming an issue because the students are always at loggerheads with each other and we are always trying to make peace among them."
He added that in the area of staffing, more teachers are needed to meet the international standard, in addition to other specialists to teach the students vocational skills, in order to make them self-reliant at the end of their schooling.
"We lack instructional materials and other vocational tools that will aid their rehabilitation and to train them in trades like tailoring, knitting, welding and catering," he said.
The source also expressed fear over the fate of the students after completion of their studies.
"The problem we are facing is, at the end of their studies they will still be idle in the society, without much skills but mere certificates, and having come from poor backgrounds not all of them can go beyond secondary even with good SSCE results," he said.
He further said the special education aims to educate and rehabilitate as well as empower the physically challenged to be self-reliant after finishing school.
A female visually-impaired student told Daily Trust that most of the classes are in deplorable condition, with leaking roofs, broken windows and doors.
According to her, the classes were not designed to cater for people with special needs.
"Instead of four blind students per classroom, our classes are not built with such consideration. As such, they were partitioned and it is not conducive, as there is constant interruption of the teachers and the students from adjacent classes," she complained.
It was gathered that the school had no source of water, that the only borehole in the school is not functioning, hence sometimes the student had to go in search of water as late as 2am.
In the area of feeding, the students complained of poor state of the food prepared in the school, no thanks to their large number and inadequate ingredients supplied to the school.
The student also listed ecological problems as another challenge bedevilling the school.
"Because of the erosion which is encroaching onto most parts of the school, the visually impaired students hardly go out after school hours. We remain indoors and it is affecting us negatively: we have to totally rely on our colleagues when going to fetch water at night," she complained.
Daily Trust observed that erosion has created a huge valley in the central area and other parts of the school making movement extremely difficult, especially for the visually-impaired students.
However, it was observed that the state office of the defunct Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP) and the Gombe Goes Green (3Gs) have planted trees in the school premises, aimed at curtailing the erosion.
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In an interview, a former chairman of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPWD), Comrade Umar Ali Goro, said the school needs huge intervention in the area of infrastructure, instructional and vocational materials as well as adequate number of qualified teachers.
Goro said the government needs to quickly intervene to rescue the school from total collapse and bring hope to this category of vulnerable members of the population who need special attention.
"Most of the problems are those of neglecting the school for years by successive administrations in the state. As such, we are appealing to the state government to come to the aid of these helpless students and give them some sense of hope," he appealed.
The principal of the school couldn't be reached for comments. He told Daily Trust reporter that he needed clearance from the state Ministry of Education before he could speak.
However, it was learnt that the present administration of Governor Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya has constructed a new block of classrooms in the school, in addition to other interventions, though more needs to be done.
When contacted, the Commissioner for Education, Dr Aishatu Umar Maigari, did not answer several calls to her mobile phone by our correspondent and did not reply to a text message sent to her at the time of filing this report.
