Have you been to Bekwarra Local Government of Cross River State recently? Did you pass through the Alomeye community? Did you also pass through the community primary school during that visit?
If you go there during non-school hours, you may be tempted to believe that the structure there is a goat pen, or a poultry farm. But it is not, even though the Primary School School, Alomeye in the Bekwarra Local Government looks more like these.
Pupils who attend this school have come to accept their fate, while the state governor, Senator Bassey Edet Otu, an apostle who claims to be running what he calls the people first government, lives large, acquiring property in and outside Nigeria, not giving a hoot about what is going on there.
Ironically, the Alomeye school is just one of many of such schools in the state. There are many other schools in such state of anomie even in the state capital.
Penultimate month, his commissioner for education, Prof Steve Odey, took media men round some parts of the state to show how the government has spent billions of public funds on education. But he did not take them to schools like Alomeye.
Despite glaring evidence of the government’s insensitivity to the decay in public schools, Odey has continued to defend the Otu’s government, insisting that the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, has done well in deploying funds for the development of the schools.
Otu, who is aspiring to be re-elected as governor in the face of alleged defrauding of the state, has faced sharp criticism in recent times, for what the citizens call brazen corruption by his government.
