Between December 2010 and May 2015, the Goodluck Jonathan administration embarked on the Almajiri Education Programme which saw to the construction and equipment of 157 Tsangaya (Almajiri) Model Schools across Nigeria. ABDUSSALAM AMOO visited some of the sites of the schools in North Western Nigeria recently and reports about the deterioration of facilities and abandonment of the programme. Apart from the Almajiri Model School, Dutsin-Ma, in Katsina State, which was left to rot away after completion, some of the facilities in other Almajiri Model Schools in the North-West states of Sokoto, Kaduna, Katsina and Kano are decaying fast, our investigation has revealed. Visits to a cross-section of the schools showed that the facilities are in various degrees of decay. Some functional facilities have also been abandoned to rot away. Behind the pupils’ hostel block at the Almajiri Model Boarding School, Gagi, in Sokoto State, is an uncompleted staff quarter. A teacher told that the building had remained abandoned since the opening of the school. Another one like it currently accommodates three members of staff and their families. Had it been completed, more members of staff would have been resident in the school compound as planned by the federal government. The “Integrated Science Laboratory” at the Tsangaya Model Boarding Girls Primary School, Tsakuwa, in Kano State, has remained without facilities other than laboratory tables dumped there since inception. As a result, practical science classes are yet to start holding there. Abandoned at the entrance of the administrative block are an uninstalled Techno Diesel Engine generator and a Frajend motorcycle. Both items have the Education Trust Fund (ETF) Special Project 2010 labels on them. They have apparently been left unused for eight years! Headmistress, Hadiza Hassan, said the motorcycle had to be abandoned because there was no need for it while the school uses another generator donated by the Sarkin of Dawakin Kudu, Alhaji Ismail Tsantali. A visitor to the Almajiri Integrated Model School, Tambuwal, located on Kebbe Road in Sokoto State would notice only a front fence with a gate. Contractors who handled the project left the three other sides of the fencing undone. The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), however, handed over the school to the Sokoto State government in that state. Beyond the one-quarter-fenced gate is an uncompleted gatehouse. Its builders failed to roof or ceil the building. Close to the gatehouse is an electric transformer with two electric poles abandoned and yet to generate any power since it was delivered to the school. A security guard had earlier hinted that the cables to connect it had long been stolen, a claim the school’s headmaster, Abubakar Aliyu, corroborated. “We don’t have electricity here. So, we make use of torchlight. The transformer was never connected to power by those who put them there. We have a generator we are using for the pumping of water alone,” Mr Aliyu said. Toilets in the school are also without connecting channels to the sewer, forcing students to engage in open defecation there. Some toilets at Almajiri Model Boarding School, Gagi, were also uncompleted. Its surroundings were littered with faeces when this reporter visited. Also, despite the claim by UBEC that laboratories were part of the facilities provided in Model I schools, most of those visited had none. At the Tsangaya Model Primary School, Harbau, in Kano, laboratory equipment for another model school was simply dumped there, according to the headmaster of the school, Shuaibu Harisu. In schools where libraries are available, they are not being put to use. Furniture and books there were dusty. At the Almajiri Integrated Primary School, Tureta, there were no reading tables that could have even made pupils use the library conveniently. An initial report in this series described the abandoned and dilapidated nature of facilities at the Almajiri Model School, Dutsin-Ma, in Katsina State. Over a hundred kilometres away from Dutsin-Ma is Madrasatul Hadikatul Qur’anil Kareem, Funtua. It was completed in 2012 but the state of facilities there would give it away as one constructed several decades ago. When visited the school in September 2018, the neglect of the facilities was apparent. This is apart from it being restricted to the traditional Almajiri education rather than the integration of Quranic and Western education as conceived. From the entrance, a visitor could see open ceilings apparently giving way to pressure from continuous rainfall, and a rusty water tank. A teacher at the school, Kamal Hassan, who conducted our correspondent around the facility revealed that the water tank did not work beyond two months after it was constructed.