Raising community voice for change (Kwara)

“I am happy they listened to us. Now we are confident as a community to ask for more things that will help to improve our schools.” - Alhaji Aliyu Amori (SBMC Chair, Panada LGEA Primary School).

Alhaji Aliyu Amori is an aged community leader with keen interest in the only public primary school in Panada, a small community in Ilorin East Local Government Area of Kwara State. As the school’s SBMC Chair, like many others in the community, he was very happy to know ESSPIN’s plans to provide a borehole to the school.

“There are about 200 pupils here yet there is no source of water for them. They walk several kilometres everyday to Agbeyangi to get drinking water. They waste time searching for water instead of learning”, bemoaned Amori. “It is a big relief that ESSPIN is giving us a borehole”.

However, his joy and other community members’ was short-lived when the decision to provide the borehole was rescinded on the ground that the school already has a borehole provided by the government. It is a condition for intervention by ESSPIN and partners that boreholes are provided only in schools without ones. “Yes there is a borehole but it has never worked”, explained Alhaji Amori.

According to him and Prince Bolakale Adebayo, the school Head Master, the borehole was provided by a philanthropist but shoddily completed, without producing the needed water.

With the community now sensitised through ESSPIN’s support to ‘own’ schools and demand for ways to improve them, Alhaji Amori and other SBMC members would not let the new opportunity go by. They mobilised and appealed to decision makers and influencers.

Despite initial refusals, the community persisted in their demand and after several letters, visits and telephone calls the borehole was approved for the school. “We have reaped the fruits of voicing out as a community. Soon water will begin to flow for our children to use in the school”, Alhaji Amori said happily.