Dansarai: Inside Kano’s Roofless Primary School for Students by Day, Thugs by Night By Fatima Garba Bako
The first thing that hits you is the silence—an eerie, heavy silence where the laughter of children should echo.
In the distance, the dry wind rustles through broken zinc sheets and crumbling walls, swaying what remains of a roofless structure that once called itself a school.
This is Dansarai Primary School, nestled along Hadejia Road in Gezawa Local Government Area of Kano State—a haunting symbol of how far we have fallen.
A viral video recently thrust this forgotten institution into public consciousness.
It captured a reality too painful to ignore: classrooms without roofs, broken furniture, missing windows, and young pupils packed like sardines into dilapidated spaces.
But for the residents of Dansarai, this footage was not a revelation—it was their everyday truth, long endured and long ignored.
On visiting the school, the situation I was greeted with proves worse than imagined.
Most classrooms are exposed to the elements, stripped of shelter and dignity. With no roofs, children endure the scalding heat and open skies.
Doors and windows are long gone, making it impossible to keep out wind, rain—or people.
“Sometimes, we just sit under trees when the sun becomes unbearable,” says 11-year-old Musa, a primary five pupil who still clutches a worn-out schoolbag with pride.
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For him and his classmates, learning is a battle against the weather, distraction, and despair.
But perhaps more frightening is what the school becomes when the sun sets. At night, Dansarai is no longer a space for education—it transforms into a den for criminal gangs known as ‘Yan Daba.’
Residents say these miscreants have turned the unguarded premises into a hideout, engaging in drug peddling and other illicit activities.
“By day it is for our children, by night it is for criminals,” laments a local resident. “No fence, no guard, no protection. We live in fear.”
The absence of a perimeter fence is more than a security flaw—it is an open invitation to lawlessness. Even teachers tread carefully.
“Sometimes we find broken bottles, cigarette butts, and strange items in the classrooms in the morning,” a staff member shared under anonymity. “How can anyone concentrate in such a place?”
Basic amenities like clean water and functioning toilets are non-existent. Students fall ill frequently, and parents speak of rashes, infections, and stomach troubles.
The community believes their children are not just being failed—they are being endangered. “This is not education. It is survival,” says Mallam Abubakar, a parent whose son attends the school.
“We wanted a future for them. But now we are afraid that this place will take their future away.”
Years of appeals to the government have yielded nothing. Locals say they have written letters and pleaded with education officials. Still, the school continues to rot.
Dansarai’s story is not unique—but it is urgent. Across Nigeria, thousands of public schools echo its plight: underfunded, unsafe, and uninspiring.
While governments make lofty promises about investment in education, children like Musa sit in the dust, clinging to slates and hope.
“If the classroom is the cradle of the nation’s future,” a community elder warns, “then our country is cradling a crisis.”
The time for sympathy is over. What Dansarai and similar schools need now is action—urgent, deliberate, and sustainable. The children have waited long enough.
Fatima Garba Bako is a Mass Communication student at Maryam Abacha American University of Nigeria (MAAUN). She can be reached via: [email protected].
