Football-playing youth in Kaduna constitute a major threat to the maintenance of school infrastructure, a permanent member in the state’s Teaching Service Board (TSB), Shehu Othman, has said.

Speaking, on Wednesday, in Kaduna, during a dialogue session with stakeholders on the challenges confronting girls’ education in the state, Mr Othman lamented that some school premises had almost turned to ‘football pitches’, with all the attendant consequences.

According to him, roofs, ceilings and windows of some school buildings have continued to get damaged due to hits from football.

He said the most worrisome aspect of the development was that damages were often done under the nose of community members who turned a blind eye.

He described as appalling the attitude of some communities towards the protection of facilities provided for their benefit, adding that unless there is a change in mentality, it will be impossible to always keep the facilities in good condition.

“We need to consider the protection of such infrastructures, a collective responsibility. These youths that play football are our children. Yet we do not intervene when they wreak havoc,” he lamented.

Speaking on a similar issue, a deputy director at the Monitoring and Evaluation, Kaduna State Ministry of Education, Munkaila Usman, lamented that most communities did not assume ownership of facilities in their area.

He cited an example of toilets built by the government, regretting that over 50 per cent of them had been vandalised.

Responding to observations made by the representative of the police, Sunday Itodo, on the security of schools, Mr Usman said plans were in the pipeline to fence all schools in the state, saying the project would be in phases.

Mr Itodo had, during his submission, observed that the lack of perimeter fence in most public schools had been making it difficult to ensure the safety of pupils and students.

He had also lamented that most of the schools had no security guards, saying the few hired “were often between the ages of 65 to 75, clearly ‘too old’ to discharge such responsibility creditably.”

Meanwhile, an Educationist in the state, Ahmed Muhammad, has called for the revival of the information ministry because of its significance in public enlightenment.

Mr Muhammad, who had served as a school principal and later, director in charge of the directorate unit, before retiring from service, said he remembered with nostalgia the sensitisation role played by the ministry in those days.

“This is an era of public enlightenment, and the Ministry of Information is very vital for success to be achieved,” he said, referring to the campaign to encourage the education of girls.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai scrapped the information ministry in 2015.

(NAN)