CoE Hong, Where Students Build, Live In Mud Hostels

Nigeria is a nation of wild ironies and cruel contradictions. While governments and individuals of many nations provide basic requirements of a modern school, the College of Education, Hong, Adamawa State, has a different story, as students build, live in, rent out and sell their own accommodation on the campus, thereby becoming landlords and landladies as the case may be. PEMBI STEPHEN-DAVID writes.
The uncompleted gate, with no walls or any sort of fence, speaks volume of years of abandonment of infrastructure on the campus. While the dilapidated female hostel is an eyesore, the unroofed and un-plastered male hostel cries for attention.
A walk inside the male hostel reveals an unfinished floor. The make-shift doors and windows are sign-posts of neglect. Yet, inhabitants of these hostels seem oblivious of their environment; it appears to be the least of their problems. Although the scorching heat of the sun in Adamawa State bears through the building’s “doors and windows”, the students continued with their routines of reading, cooking and laundry.
For the students of this higher institution of learning, established in 1981, but started proper NCE admission in 1983, their experience is a far cry to what they anticipated. “After gaining admission to study Maths/Physics, I never knew I would have to contain with a hostel like this,” one of them quips. “This is not what I bargained for, but I am now used to it, as I have spent two years here already,” he adds.
From the issue of hostel to lack of electricity, the lot of the CoE Hong students is not any easier with the distance they have to trek daily and the danger they face at night. Unable to secure government accommodation, some students in this institution end up as landlords and landladies, or tenants as the case may be, on campus. The reason is not because these students are very rich to afford building accommodation for themselves, but because the land is allocated to them by the school authority at a token of N100.
“The criteria for building these mud houses is for the students to obtain a form from the Students’ Affairs Office at the cost of N100 only, and space will be allocated to them,” says Mr. Ayuba (not real name), a staff in the Students’ Affairs Office. He adds that: “This form of arrangement started as a result of inadequate accommodation. Breastfeeding mothers are not allowed to stay in the hostel, so they get accommodation from farmers who were given plots of land by the school authority to live in. That was a long time ago. But today, the community has grown to become a place to be, as men and even the unmarried ladies, who want freedom reside here. Dulbuni is a different world.”
Ayuba said there is “an estimated number of 8,000 students in the institution, and about 600 of them who are female students, stay in the government-built female hostel. But there are no official figures for the number of male students in the government-built hostel, as the hostel was not allocated to any of the students by the school authority, due to the state of the hostel.” He revealed that the distance between the student-built hostels to the government-built ones “is about one and a half kilometres.”
According to findings by LEADERSHIP Sunday, majority of the students are adults and most of them have children, who are either pupils or students in other schools. Yet, they have channelled their energy and resources into building hostels for themselves, which are later sold after graduation. Some even build extra mud hotels and rent them out to other students.
“When I saw the situation on ground, I told myself that I cannot stand living in the government-built hostels. So, I went and got the form and a space was allocated to me. And today, I have this building and two others over there,” one of the students said, referring to the two newly-built mud hostels among a set of eight that were about 50 metres away from his mud hostel. “Some women are renting each for N5,000  only every year. What I do is, during holidays, I stay around and build these huts. I plan to sell the three huts after my graduation and go back to my village in Madagali,” he disclosed.
A competent source in the Student Affairs Department, who does not want his name in print, said: “I can confirm to you that the mud hostels are approximately 3,000, because students mould them on daily basis, and the forms are there to show. These mud hostels have no electric power supply, so the students use lantern at night.”
The setting in Dulbuni actually betrays the thought by anyone that this school village would have proper planning –the huts are built indiscriminately and the environment has no clearly defined streets. These huts, as should be expected, are not numbered and the streets are not named. Hong Local Government, the host local government, has provided two boreholes and two wells for the students at Dulbuni (as the area is fondly called).
On who maintains these houses after the students graduate, he said: “The students either rent or sell the mud hostels to new students. The rent fee is between N4,000 and N5,000 per annum, while they are sold between N15,000 and N16,000 only, depending on the quality of the hut.”
Maxwell (not real name), a Bio-Geography student, said building these hostels is a novel idea. “To me, as somebody who likes to read at intervals in the night, it is a wonderful idea to stay here instead of staying in government-built hostels where you have to compete for limited space, and you cannot put on the light at night whenever you want to, because someone may complain,” he explains. “Since I came over here, I have had better grades and cooler atmosphere. Though it is a distance from the lecture halls, but I am happy here. It is a good environment and it is worth all the troubles.”
Kwatri (not real name) is a primary school teacher, a farmer and father of three. He said he felt much at home in his Dulbuni mud hostel, as he is in Zah, his native home in Michika Local Government Area of the state. In his room, he displays pictures of his wife and children next to his village football team picture. “I am more at home here than when I was in the government-built hostel. I am someone who likes reading. When I was in my first year, things were a bit tough for me because I was staying with other students and could not read at night, because each time I put on the light, some of the students will complain. But now, I read whenever I want to, because I am on my own,” he revealed.
At about 4pm, on Sunday, March 31, 2013, a middle-aged woman walked to one of the boreholes in the area to fetch water. With her was a girl of about eight-year-old, holding a two-year-old baby; and this is what she has to say: “I cannot afford to live in town, because it is very far from here. The best I can get is this place (referring to the mud hut she built with her husband). We are students of this school. My husband went home to see our other kids, but I decided to stay, because my baby is not feeling fine. The older child is my daughter. She came to help me with the baby. We have lived here for three years. In Dulbuni, we are like one big family.”
Speaking to LEADERSHIP Sunday, Adamawa State Commissioner for Higher Education, Hon. Drambi Nggida, said he visited the institution and was sad with the development. “What I saw in CoE Hong is sad. But the government of Murtala Nyako has taken it upon itself to make things work. We cannot change the school overnight. We are putting a lot of efforts to make a difference.
“We are planning to have a model, where private individuals will build the hostels, operate them and transfer same to the school. It may surprise you to know that in 2001, contract for building these hostels was awarded, but the contractor is nowhere to be found. Our plan is to identify the contractor and look at the documents to verify if the level of work that has been carried out commiserates with the amount paid to the company and know why the contractor left the site.
“It is so sad, because indigenes of Adamawa State build structures for schools in other states, because they are given one doctorate degree or the other, but they leave this state’s schools to rot. Government cannot do this alone. But, we are doing our best to ensure that we rescue the situation.”