● Pupils walk bare footed to school
Photo: Geoffrey Buta

 As children in the capital city, well dressed beau­tifully their well ironed uniforms and sandals join oth­er countries to commemorate this year’s World Children’s Day hundreds of their coun­terparts who live over 600 kilometres away in the Natigu and Maana District Assemblies in the Karaga District of the Northern Region in tattered or no uniforms and bare-footed struggle to study the same syllabus which their counter­parts in the cities study in a comfortable classroom.

A few of them were fortunate to wear uniforms and worn-out sandals as seen in the photograph but these were given to them through benevolence support.

Speaking to Mr. Haruna Sumaila, Headmaster of Na­tigu District Assembly Primary School said, wearing a uni­form is a badge of pride which creates an identity for a school he and it is an import­ant part of being a student.

He said, “uniforms give students a sense of belonging to a particular school and cre­ate an identity for the school in the community.”

“Though government try to ensure the realisation of quality education, there is still a lot of work to be done for equality and inclusion of quality of education for every child in the country,” he added.

If this done it will support this year’s world Children’s Day on the theme “ creating a safe and protective environ­ment for children inclusion for every child.”

He further stated that, some of the children were rid­iculed by their fellow pupils for not having “nice clothes or shoes”.

He said, lack of basic facilities for these children to access quality education are very poor and deplorable.

“Lack of school building, facilities, human resources to fill the minimum criteria of the school, long-distance between homes and school, lack of educational materials, library facilities and comput­er laboratory”, are some of the challenges of the children of many school going age face here in the rural commu­nities”, he noted.

Mr. Sumaila narrated how classes from kindergarten to classes two, three, five and six are combined into one classroom due to lack of class­room spaces and inadequate teachers.

The only three classrooms and a teachers’ houses serving the over 100 children was constructed by the commu­nity.

Mr. Mosah Kuyo, the chief of Natigu pleaded with the government and organisations to come to the aid of the children to provide quality education for them to be responsible citizens in the future.

From Geoffrey Buta, Natigu