The story of the Farm Settlement Primary School, first built in 1978, is intriguing. The authorities had conceived of a primary school to serve poor communities located in the outskirts of Ikorodu, the Lagos twin city which is now home to over two million people, many of whom live in slums and shanties. The school has over 1,000 pupils, showcasing the grimiest images of poverty, with several of the pupils going to school barefooted, many unable to afford lunch.

The past was significantly traumatic. Over 200 pupils clustered in one room meant for barely 40. Six pupils perched on a set of wobbly tables and chairs. Daily, the teachers scrambled to teach in the midst of the chaos.

•The newly built Farm Settlement Primary School

old Farm Settlement Primary School

In spite of the terrifying conditions poor children had no alternative. Enthusiasm to enroll in the school jumped into three digits all time high, no thanks to the displacement of families mostly from the North, due to Islamic insurgence and the crisis in the Maghreb region. Most see Lagos as the irresistible nectar.

For instance, one of the pupils told our correspondent that her parents were killed after a night ambush by Boko Haram in the North. She had to relocate to Lagos to meet her unemployed uncle. The best the uncle could do was to enroll her at the public school which is virtually free.

A flashback to the old ways of the school is a nightmare, an incubus dream that the pupils replay with anguish.  Imagine: On a Monday morning, after the school’s time keeper had slammed the bells, pupils rushed to the assembly to take instructions from cane-wielding teachers. But instead of marching to their classrooms, the pupils would first need to clear dunghills of human faeces left behind by street urchins and armed gangs who derived odd glee in converting the school into a red light district as soon as the pupils closed for the day.    At weekends the situation was shoddier. Gangsters virtually lived on the vulnerable vast land on which the school is sited. “Almost every morning, we had to pack human faeces. It was a shame. My friends laughed at me. They asked me why should they play with me when I used my hands to carry human faeces”, Mathew, a primary six pupil told our correspondent shortly before the Ford Foundation gave hope to a despairing community. There were other chilling accounts. One morning, Angela, a little girl of 7, discovered a pack of strange ‘tiny slippery nylons.’ She thought the items were nice or at best looked like some children goodies.

At first she was thrilled. She took them home to show her parents. They turned out to be used condoms, left behind by hoodlums who had either raped some girls or used the place as a sex hub the previous night.

Ford Foundation West Africa Rep, Mr Innocent Chukwuma, Mrs Yemisi Akinadeniyi and Lagos SSG, Mr Tunji Bello after cutting the tape to open the new classrooms

“I almost had heart attack when my child brought home some condoms with what looked like thick layers of semen,” the terrified mother said.

The school had no fence. On weekends, armed street gangs invaded the school. “They do so also on week days. They came in tens, armed with dangerous weapons”, the school’s Head teacher, Mr Adewale Olukoga told our correspondent. The classrooms were converted to parties or a sex-pool. That was not enough. Armed gangs and dare-devil robbers used the school as hideaway.

On one occasion, a pupil found AK 47 in the classroom, Mr Otunba Oduloye, the Local Government Education Secretary said. He said the parents and staff were spellbound by the terrifying discovery. “It was the first time I came close to a gun. I was told it can kill” one of the pupils who sighted the gun said. An official said at the time of the discovery, the gun was loaded. A curious child could have pulled the trigger.

Mr Tunji Bello, the Secretary to the Lagos State Government, who attended the launching of the new look Farm Settlement Primary School, said the state is committed to dealing with the upsurge in pupils’ enrolment, which shot up from 446,201 in 2008 to 479,256 in 2009, trend analysts believe to have continued, through provision of more schools and qualified teachers adding that Lagos remains the best in terms of primary education in a country of 170 million people out of which 20 million of them live in Lagos. Mr Innocent Chukwuma, the Ford Foundation Representative for West Africa, speaking at the event, said his group is interested in public schools conceived to bring children from all backgrounds together to share fears and aspirations. “If the children of the rich are kept in different schools and these same rich students end up ruling the country tomorrow, they won’t understand the challenges of the society. This accounts partly for the social upheavals facing the country today,” he said.

The situation seems to have propelled Ford Foundation’s kind gesture. It began with the visit of Mrs Yemisi Akin Adeniyi, a staff of Ford Foundation, who had earlier highlighted the school’s plight.

In the intervention, six classrooms of world standards were provided, backed with modern furniture, six toilets built with red, bullet-proof bricks and borehole.