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By Olakunle Olafioye
From Ogunpa Lunloye, a rustic and obscure community in Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State came the winner of the 2021 Award for Outstanding Leadership of Teach for Nigeria Fellowship.
Situated along the bank of the popular Ogun River, accessing Ogunpa community is a huge challenge. Besides having to contend with the vast body of the Ogun River using the canoe, the poor state of the roads connecting this community to the rest of the state remains a nightmare.
Yet, life in this community comes even with more daunting challenges. But for Mr Badru Akeem, a teacher at the only primary school in this community, the determination to succeed in the face of these overwhelming odds, has not only inspired hope in the lives of both pupils of this school and their parents, it has equally brought a transformation that many believe will remain a reference point in the community for a very long time.
Challenges and disincentives
The difficulty in accessing this community has been one of the major repellents to most of the teachers that had been posted to the only primary school in the community, St Michael R.C.M School. But this challenge pales into insignificance in the reckoning of Mr Badru compared to the desire to inspire hope in the disadvantaged pupils of this school. But in spite of the daunting and mounting challenges on his way, Mr Badru said the determination to positively impact his pupils has kept him going since he joined the school in 2017.
According to him, “At first I was discouraged to work in Ogupa when I got posted there in 2017. The community is an underserved riverine community without electricity, no access to clean potable water supply; the Ogun River remains the major source of water to inhabitants of the village; the poor state of the road connecting the community to other parts of the state and non-availability of telecom and Internet services among others. Accessing this community and the school, during the rainy season requires that one waddles through stagnant water and swampy terrain before joining a canoe (without the provision of life jacket) that will convey one across Ogun River to Ogunpa Village. All these factors combined to discourage me from taking up the challenge,” Badru began.
Empathy as source of motivation
Predictably, the school has a history of teachers not willing to stay beyond a term before seeking redeployment due to the lack of minimum social amenities and conducive environment for teaching and learning. Like those who had been posted to teach in this community in the past, Badru said he had the option of joining the list of this set of teachers who capitulated in the face of these daunting challenges. He, however, chose not to join the bandwagon of deserters, as according to him, he was moved by compassion to help the pupils he met in the school after his first interaction with them.
“Upon my resumption at the school in September, 2017, I met a group of learners with low self-confidence, pupils without self-aspiration and ambition and who would only come to school to while away time, and were only looking forward to growing old enough to either inherit the crude farming tools of their parents (who are poor peasant farmers) or looking forward to the day they would be taken to the city to work as domestic servants. These were children none of whom could write the first 12 letters of the English alphabet correctly and numbers 1 – 10 unaided; learners who were always frightened whenever they had encounters with teachers. The majority of them could not repeat words spoken to them in English Language except they were broken into syllables and pronounced one after the other severally until they got used to the pronunciation; learners with poor communication confidence and who perhaps had given in to the limiting factors in their environment. These were pupils many of whom likened the sight of a teacher to the appearance of a fiendish monster that sends shivers down their spine,” Mr Badru recalled.
But while many would see an additional challenge in all of these, Mr Badru said he was rather moved by empathy and the need to bequeath hope of better future on these children. Determined to be an agent of change, Mr Badru said he deployed his empathy for the children as a tool and source of motivation in going about this arduous task.
“As a teacher and change maker who is determined to have a permanent positive impact in the lives of the children in Ogunpa community, I considered empathy as a viable tool to achieve the desired changes in the lives of my pupils. I decided to prioritize service to humanity over transient comfort and leisure by choosing to reside in the village with my pupils,”
Criticisms from family and friends
Mr Badru’s decision did not go down well with his family and many of his friends who condemned his decision to take up the challenge.
“My family and many of my friends did not and still do not understand why I chose to take up such a challenge when I had other favourable options. They were concerned by the fact that my decision meant that I had to abandon the care and upbringing of my four children to my wife until I return home at the weekends or during holiday periods.
“Truthfully speaking, it was not an enjoyable experience at first, but I have grown to adapt to it. My stay in the village was not without challenges. Till today, the frightening memories of how I stepped on live snakes on two occasions still give me a scary feeling especially during the rainy season when all the paths to the school are usually overgrown by weeds. Our typical classroom experience is characterized by unsolicited visit by snakes and rodents due to the bushy nature of the school environment. I have had reasons to personally fumigate the school surrounding severally to ward off dangerous reptiles from harming the pupils.
In addition, the pupils and staff’s method of reliving their bowel is either through open defecation, or digging of shallow instant spots and cover them after use or by defecating in polythene bags and throw them into the bush.
Getting down to work
The decision to relocate to Ogunpa village, according to Badru, afforded him the opportunity to have proper understanding of his pupils and to develop the appropriate strategies in assisting them. In addition, living in the same environment with his pupils and having regular contacts and interactions with them in the village, helped in dispelling the phobia the pupils had for teachers. This feat, Badru noted, paved the way for easy teaching and learning.
“Apart from teaching and learning at school, I also spared my time to give them extra home lessons when they return from farms with their parents in the evening. I equally introduced and engaged the pupils in craft and paper model making to promote their psychomotor skills; ignite their curiosity and promote the discovery of their hidden creative potential which of course is a vital tool to developing local technological contents and to promote domestication of technology in this country.
Additional impetus and reward
In less than a year at St Michael R.C.M School, Mr Badru had succeeded in turning around and raising the standard of teaching and learning in the community to the admiration of both the pupils and their parents. Yet he still nursed the urge for more improvement on what he had been able to achieve.
“In 2019, Mrs Odedeji, a colleague of mine, who was a Fellow of Teach For Nigeria at the time, introduced me to the Fellowship programme. I had heard so much about her and the impact she was making since she joined the fellowship, so I made the decision to visit her class. I was impressed by the innovations I saw in her classroom and the teaching methodologies she applied when I visited.
“Moved by this experience, I immediately took the decision to be part of the movement. I applied for the programme, went through the application and interview process and got inducted into the Fellowship. The fellowship experience came in handy as it further equipped me to see myself as a leader—someone who converts every challenge within and outside the classroom into an asset to achieve tremendous success. I also learnt that every child has the capacity to learn and grow at his or her own pace.
“I was able to leverage the vast network opportunity provided by the Fellowship to acquire and sew school of uniforms for all the pupils in my school, thereby ending the era of pupils coming to school in tattered uniforms. Similarly, the mandatory “Be the Change’’ Project of the fellowship allowed me to test-run my age-long philosophy of deliberately using psychomotor activities to promote curiosity and develop the critical thinking skills of children. As a result of the impact we recorded, other teachers and heads of schools have adopted this model in facilitating learning in their schools,” he stated.
Mr. Badru was awarded as winner of the 2021 Outstanding Leadership Award of Teach for Nigeria in recognition of his impact and contribution to education in Nigeria. The award was sponsored by the family of the Board Chairman, Teach For Nigeria, Mr Gbenga and Aisha Oyebode.
