Many primary and secondary school students are still standing or sitting on the floor to take their lessons, despite the release of the special seats promised to them by Governor Rochas Okorocha as part of his Free Education largesse.

The Leader’s Investigation revealed that although the long-awaited Rescue Mission seats have been available in some schools since last year, students cannot use them because they are in bits and pieces, awaiting coupling into proper – “lockers and chairs.”

The Rochas’ seats consist of a table with a small hold underneath for books and a matching chair for each student to sit on.

Nobody knows whose responsibility it is to fix the seats and in some communities the seats are lying in the open, amidst rain and sunshine in the schools or in the compound of a Community Liaison Officer (CLO).

Reliable reports said principals received an invitation to a meeting with their local government chairmen, late last year. On getting there, they were shown the boxed Rescue Mission seats delivered by the State Government. The seats were then handed over to the Community Liaison Officers (CGC officers) for onward delivery to the schools.

In one instance, a school principal said the CLO man borrowed money from her to transport the seats to his home, since the school could not secure them.

“Uptil now the man still owes me N2000 and we do not know what plans they have to couple the seats and sent them to us,” the female principal said in frustration.

A letter written by another concerned principal of an Owerri-based secondary school and made available to The Leader stated that 400 out of 533 seats allocated to his school were still lying idle in the home of a CLO. The principal appealed to the traditional ruler of the community for help.

“We humbly appeal to you to use your good offices to help us couple the seats so as to alleviate the sufferings of our students who have been sitting on bare floor and whom we have already told of the seats given to them by the state government,” according to the letter dated January 29.

The leader also gathered that in some schools, the teachers had bought  coupling machines with their own funds and hired technicians  to teach their students how to couple the seats.

Efforts made by The Leader to talk to some Local Government Chairmen were not successful.

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