In Kuchigoro, a shanty town tucked out of view on the highway between Abuja city and its airport, a building made of corrugated iron sheets stands in a clearing away from the homes of residents. Under a tree outside, a large pot mounted on a tripod simmers under the heat of the firewood.
Welcome to the School Without Walls, a project of Life Builders Initiative for Education and Societal Integration, better known as LBI, an Abuja-based non-governmental organization focused on providing basic education for out-of-school children, particularly those displaced by internal conflicts.
Nigeria, which is Africa’s most populous country with more than 200 million people, also has one of the world’s highest numbers of out-of-school children, estimated at between 10 million and 15 million by the United Nations Children’s Fund. It’s a situation that has been exacerbated by the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency that has swept Nigeria’s northeast since 2009, as schools and teachers became key targets of the insurgents.
Tens of thousands of internally displaced people have fled the conflict zones, some finding temporary accommodation in the bushes and shanties in and around Abuja.
Dr. Sanwo Olatunji-David, Picture Credit: PLAC
Dr. Sanwo Olatunji-David, who began the School Without Walls initiative in 2014, recalled in a recent interview what led to the project. A year before he was out on Christian evangelism with his wife when they ran into some families camping inside a bush.
“We engaged them and saw a lot of children playing around,” said Olatunji-David. “It was a Tuesday morning and we asked them how come there are so many children outside and not in school?”
The reply that they couldn’t afford to send the children to school left the Olatunji-Davids not just worried, but also got them thinking about a solution. That was how the idea of the School Without Walls was conceived.
“So my wife and I started going there to spend some time with them. There were 6 initially. Then from 6 they became 30, from 30 they went to 80, 90, 120,” Olatunji-David said. “And the number just kept expanding. We didn’t have much choice than to start the school in January of 2014.”
LBI’s School Without Walls admits pupils between the age of 5 and 18 for tuition-free education from nursery (or preschool) to the end of primary schooling. Operated between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. from Monday to Friday, every child who attends the school is assured of one meal a day, under its feeding programme. It also runs a flexible system that allows the pupils to attend classes as their life circumstances permit.
“Yes, just come in,” said Olatunji-David while explaining the school’s admission policy. “That’s why it is called School Without Walls. The school is so interesting that a nomad can come to the school, keep his cow outside and come inside class, and be part of the school. Then you won’t see him. After one week he comes back, sits down in the class and continues his school.”
In such circumstances when pupils have to go away for long periods, they’re given assignments to take home, according to Olatunji-David. And the trend observed over time is that most of them have cultivated the habit of reading at home and still follow the lessons when they return, he said.
Currently, the project is being funded largely through the contributions of the members of the board of trustees of the nonprofit. Other charitable organizations have also helped in providing facilities, paying the teachers or helping with feeding the average of 620 to 630 pupils that come to school daily. “About 1,620 students have passed through the school,” Olatunji-David said.
In the coming years, LBI hopes to see an expanded deployment of its education model in the effort to get more out-of-school children back into the classroom. Currently, there are two of them in Abuja, with the second one in the Area 1 district, but the ambition is to always go to a place where many children are out of school and try to provide them with some education.
“Every child there is a success story as far as I’m concerned,” said Olatunji-David. “For me, the joy is to see children who were hopeless and helpless finding fulfilment with their life.
To listen to the full interview with Dr. Olatunji-David, go to the Audio section of our homepage.
