Inside Katsina’s Forgotten School: Over 1,000 Students Learn on Bare Ground as Billion-Naira Education Budgets Fail Maidabino
In a nation where governments at all levels routinely announce multi-billion-naira education budgets and celebrate the commissioning of new projects, there exists a secondary school in Katsina State that tells a completely different story, one that exposes the painful gulf between official promises and the everyday reality of ordinary Nigerians.
At Government Day Secondary School (GDSS) Maidabino in Dan Musa Local Government Area of Katsina State, the promise of education has been reduced to a daily struggle for survival. The school is not merely a neglected school. It is a monument to state failure.
A visit by a team of Defence Correspondents to the school revealed conditions so appalling that one struggles to understand how an institution bearing the name “Government Day Secondary School” has been allowed to deteriorate to such an inhumane state.Nothing prepares a visitor for the sight.
Children, dressed in their uniforms and clutching exercise books, sit on stones, broken blocks and the bare earth because there are no desks or chairs. The few classrooms that remain standing have no roofs. When the afternoon sun becomes unbearable, there is nowhere to hide.
When the rains begin, learning simply ends.
The students are told to go home. Not because school has closed. But because the government has failed to provide something as basic as a roof. It is difficult to reconcile this reality with the repeated declarations by successive governments about prioritising education.
Year after year, billions of naira are budgeted for the education sector. What makes the situation in Maidabino even more troubling is that it exists despite the enormous sums allocated to education by the Katsina State Government.
Governor Dikko Umaru Radda’s administration has consistently announced education as one of its top priorities. In the 2025 fiscal year, the Katsina State Government allocated ₦95.9 billion to the education sector representing about 14 per cent of the state’s ₦682.2 billion budget.
At the time, the Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Bello Kagara, described the allocation as part of the government’s commitment to “reinvigorate the education sector” under a budget themed “Building Your Future II.” The following year, the government increased the allocation even further.
In the 2026 budget, education received ₦97.5 billion, again accounting for roughly 14 per cent of the state budget. Out of this amount, ₦76.74 billion was specifically earmarked for basic education, a figure intended to improve access to quality education and rehabilitate schools across the state. On paper, these allocations appear impressive. In reality, however, schools like GDSS Maidabino expose the painful disconnect between budget announcements and conditions on the ground.
The figures raise uncomfortable but necessary questions. How can a government allocate nearly ₦200 billion to education in two consecutive years, yet allow the only government secondary school in an entire community to remain roofless?
Public officials speak passionately about improving literacy, empowering the next generation and securing the future of Nigeria through education. Yet in Maidabino, those lofty speeches have produced nothing but abandoned buildings, broken walls and shattered dreams.
The school is a heartbreaking illustration of what happens when public expenditure fails to translate into public service. Of the several classroom blocks originally constructed, only four remain standing. Even these four cannot properly be described as classrooms.
Their roofs are gone, windows are missing, the walls are cracked, there are no doors, no ceilings, no furniture and no learning materials.
Zagazola Makama ( X)
