THE FORGOTTEN CLASSROOMS: How Akwa Ibom State is Failing Its Children

I visited a secondary school in Ikot Ekpene last week, and I still can’t shake the image: a classroom of 87 students squeezed onto broken benches, three to a desk meant for two, while rainwater poured through the gaping holes in the roof onto their heads. The teacher, a tired woman in her fifties, was writing on a blackboard that had long ago surrendered most of its paint. Exercise books? Less than half the children had one. Textbooks? The school had received exactly 42 for the entire JSS1–3 population since 2019. That is not education. That is criminal neglect dressed up as policy. We are not a poor state. Akwa Ibom is the highest oil-revenue accruing state in Nigeria month after month, yet our children study under trees and leaking roofs while billions are reportedly spent on flyovers, streetlights that work only during gubernatorial visits, and an airport terminal that has swallowed more money than the entire education budget of some northern states combined. Let us speak plainly. The free education policy that governors love to chant about during campaigns is a cruel joke when there are no desks, no chalk, no toilets, and teachers go six to ten months without salaries. Primary school teachers in Ukanafun, Eastern Obolo, and Mkpat Enin have been protesting for months over non-payment of arrears dating as far back as 2018. Some have died waiting. Others have abandoned the profession entirely. Who will teach our children when the teachers themselves are treated like beggars?

Go to Government Technical College, Ewet, or Comprehensive Secondary School, Four Towns – schools built with so much fanfare in the Akpabio years – and see what has become of them. Science laboratories stripped bare, workshops turned into poultry pens by squatters, libraries converted to staff quarters. The equipment that once made us proud now rusts in the rain because successive administrations simply stopped caring once the commissioning cameras left.

And please don’t insult us with the excuse of “federal allocation delays.” Akwa Ibom gets more money than most countries in West Africa. In 2023 alone, the state received over ₦380 billion in federation allocation and IGR, yet the 2024 education budget is a shameful 7.6% of total expenditure. Seven point six. Even Rwanda, coming out of genocide, gives education over 20%. We cannot blame Abuja when our own priorities are stadiums and private jets for traditional rulers. I spoke with a JSS3 girl in Onna who told me she had never used a computer in her life. “Uncle, we only see computer during WAEC when they bring us to town.” That is the future we are building – a generation that knows how to sing the praises of politicians but cannot type their own names. This is not about party or person. This is about moral failure. From Akpabio to Udom to the present administration, every governor has stood on platforms and sworn that education is the priority, yet each has left the sector worse than they met it. The rot has become bipartisan.

Our children deserve better than propaganda schools with shiny gates and empty classrooms. They deserve governments that fear God enough to know that stealing from education is stealing from eternity. Until the day we march to the streets with our children’s torn exercise books and broken desks and lay them at the gates of Wellington Bassey Way, nothing will change. Until parents, teachers, and students say “enough” with one voice, the neglect will continue. Akwa Ibom people are peaceful to a fault. But even the most patient people reach a breaking point when their children’s future is traded for political ego and contractor kickbacks. That breaking point is now. Save our schools before we have no children left worth saving. #SaveAkwaIbomEducation