Plastic-for-Tuition School In Lagos At Risk Of Closure
The Morit International School, a privately run institution in Ajegunle, Lagos, that allows parents to pay tuition with plastic waste, is facing the threat of closure due to financial and logistical difficulties. The school was founded by Patrick Mbamarah, a chemistry graduate, as a means to offer affordable education to children from underprivileged families while also addressing environmental pollution.
Mujanatu Musa, a mother and grandmother living in Ajegunle, Lagos, Nigeria, has been struggling financially due to her family’s lack of income. The family, which includes her three children, has been living on her irregular earnings from hairdressing work, which she says is about 2,000 naira ($1.30) a day. The family, who fit into the 63% of Nigeria’s population living in multidimensional poverty, relies on a privately run school in the community that charges low tuition and allows underprivileged parents to pay school fees with used plastic bottles.
Mbamarah launched the “plastic for tuition” initiative in response to mounting debts and unpaid fees from parents who couldn’t afford to pay in cash. Families like that of Mujanatu Musa, who supports her three children with her modest income from hairdressing, rely on this system to provide education for their children. The initiative has helped ease the financial burden on parents and contributed to reducing plastic waste in the community. However, challenges with recycling logistics, a lack of storage space for the collected plastic, and the high costs of transporting waste for recycling have put the school’s future at risk.
Mbamarah is struggling to keep the school afloat while paying rent and salaries and managing increasing enrolments. With limited staff and personal loans to cover operational costs, the situation is worsening, threatening to add to Nigeria’s already staggering number of out-of-school children, currently estimated at 10.5 million.
Despite promises of assistance from non-profits and government officials, the school has yet to receive any help. The school is in dire need of support to sustain its mission of providing education to children from low-income families while helping to clean up the environment. Mbamarah said that the primary school needs at least 11 teachers but only has five teachers, including his wife and him. The secondary school has seven teachers when it needs a minimum of 12. He is still considering downsizing to pay the staff. The distance between the two schools is about an 18-minute walk, and he shuttles both three times a day.
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Content Credit| Ajibola Emmnuel Adebayo
Picture Credit | https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/9/23/nigerian-school-funded-with-plastic-waste-proceeds-on-the-brink-of-collapse
