By YVONNE ISHOLA
In Nigeria, our secondary education has been made unattractive to students due to man-made issues peculiar to Nigeria. To many students, especially boarding school students, education is synonymous to hunger. This is because school food is either badly cooked, rationed in small potions to go round in very small amounts or served with weevils or anything that finds itself into it.
One has heard of cases where dry frog was found in students’ food. The commonest find is cock- roaches, flies and in some cases, rats. What usually obtains is that it is only the student who finds the bonus inside his/her food that will forfeit his /her food. Others would sympathies, forgetting that the food all came from the same pot. This scenario is a common sight in public schools where the population of students is usually over one thousand. Students would either quietly remove the contaminant and eat the food. Or announce and display the contaminant, in which case, one would be forced to go hungry, a condition so many can’t afford.
During our secondary school days, it was okay to come along with delicacies that served as snacks in between food. We used to refer to them as provisions. Even with that arrangement, we were not immune to hunger. Anytime our provisions were finished, hunger used to become the order of the day. I used to detest school at such times and concentrating in class used to become a herculean task. It was usually at such times that students used to engage in the worse kind of vices if only to lay their hands on anything edible.
What does this then tell one? One of the major issues mitigating against education in Nigeria is hunger. If this is taken care of, more students will begin to love school environment and even enjoy it. A situation where schools either monetise provisions or ask students to come along with specific provisions which are collected and kept by the school who decide when to serve the students either cornflakes or garri, is not popular with students.
“ You should see the Cornflakes they serve us, the milk is usually too little and so is the sugar, “ lamented a student in a boarding school in Kwang. “ I would prefer they gave me my provisions to enjoy. This is only benefiting the school and those saddled with the responsibility to distribute to students” another student opined. They both said the weight gained by those in charge of distribution of any provision gives credence to their claims.
Unfortunately, in spite of having their provisions kept and distributed by the school at will, students are still at the mercy of hunger. A parent said she thought the school keeping students provisions and being responsible for the distribution was a good idea until she saw her children on Visiting Day. They were looking so bad that she didn’t recognise them. One was very sick due to poor nutrition and their grades were not good. They blamed everything on hunger and bad food. Considering the exorbitant fees they were paying, the parent said, she immediately changed their school.
The new school was cheaper and students were allowed to keep their provisions. On top of it, the school food was delicious. Students were also allowed to buy snacks and drinks from the school shop. It was a very comfortable arrangement and her children graduated with flying colours.
Another parent told the story of her daughter who was always ill when she was in a school that refused to understand that there are people whose stomachs don’t agree with some foods. She was forced to eat food that she was allergic to, which almost cost her her life. She said she needed no one to tell her that her daughter needed to be alive to go to school. So, she changed environment for her to a private school in Nasarawa State. This school makes it mandatory for every student to pay a certain amount in the tuck shop. This means anytime a student needs as snack or drink outside their provisions, they can easily go and purchase and the amount would be deducted from what they have paid.
Today, her daughter is happy in school and the mother is at peace. The issue of allergic food or hunger has become history.
Come to think of it, what has hunger achieved but to bring out the worst in students? Some have resorted to stealing from school kitchen or staff, sneaking from school to satisfy their hunger. A worse case scenario is ‘giving what they have to get what they want’. Is it not better to be a little flexible by opening the school tuck shop and or allowing students to keep their provisions? It behoves on all boarding schools to feed their students very well to make sure this challenge becomes history.
Students have been known to eat raw mangoes, help themselves to their staff chickens (we did that) which is roasted on charcoal iron or given to a day’s student to prepare at home and come along with the next day. Security guards who see the conditions of the students, usually become sympathetic and become their errant boys, leaving their duty post which is dangerous. That was how we survived and ours was an all girls school.
A story is told of 3 friends who were driven by hunger to do the unthinkable. One of them was a typical village boy and he suggested to them to go snake hunting in the bush surrounding their school. He had told them that snake meat was a special delicacy which tasted like fish.
The local boy had told his 2 friends that he would stick his hand into a hole that houses a big snake to grab one. Their own part was to put an end to the tuck of war that was sure to ensue by slaughtering the snake. And true to his word, immediately he put his hand in a hole, he pulled out a gigantic snake which was fighting for its life by tightening the local boy’s hand.
Urgently, he called out to his friends to use the knife to injure the snake so as to loosen its grip. But anytime local boy took a step, his 2 friends took 2 away from him. Local boy began to sweat because the snake was tightening its grip, fighting for its life but fear would not allow his friends to do their part to safe him. What they didn’t know was that his life depended on it.
Seeing no way out, local boy began to run after them promising to kill them himself if he survived the battle with the giant snake which grip by this time, was miserably too tight.
Starring death in the face, local boy was crying as he ran after his friends because the snake was almost winning. It was the timely intervention of a farmer that saved his life and afterwards, the lives of his friends from the force of vengeance.
All of this happened as a result of hunger. Imagine the tragedy that it would have resulted to. Nigeria has never lacked food. One wonders why our secondary schools have become training grounds for thieves in the bid to survive. Government has to revisit the issue of feeding in secondary schools to check the mischief that students engage in to survive.
