Kano Girls' School Staircase Collapses, All Safe

According to Alfijir News, the staircase leading to two classrooms upstairs gave way at around 1:00 p.m. while roughly 300 senior students were in the middle of lessons, temporarily trapping them until teachers could organize a safe evacuation.

Principal Hajiya Jamila Mustafa Mai Nasara said staff acted the moment they heard students calling for help.

"We heard shouting from the one-storey building where about 300 students were taking lessons in two upstairs classrooms. We rushed to the area and discovered that the staircase had collapsed," she said.

With the main exit gone, teachers moved quickly to find another way out.

"Members of staff immediately brought a ladder, which was used to safely evacuate all the trapped students. Thankfully, no lives were lost, and no student sustained any injury during the incident," Mai Nasara said.

The school reported the incident immediately to the Kano State Secondary Schools Management Board and submitted a full account of the damage.

For GGSS Janbulo, the timing could hardly be worse. The affected classrooms house a significant share of the school's science students, and losing access to them has made an existing space crisis even harder to manage.

"It is very sad. We solely depend on these upstairs classrooms because they accommodate almost 30 percent of our science students," the principal said.

The numbers paint a stark picture of overcrowding:

• More than 120 students were housed in each of the now unusable classrooms
• The school has only eight classrooms and one laboratory in total
• Just four classrooms remain available for teaching
• Some remaining classrooms now hold more than 130 students, well above the recommended class size of 40

Mai Nasara said the affected block was built about 16 years ago and had shown clear signs of wear well before Thursday's collapse.

"The roof of the two upstairs classrooms had been leaking for the past four years before it was recently repaired, but the entire block still requires total renovation," she said.

With the school year about to break for the third-term vacation, the principal is racing against the clock. Classes are expected to resume in September, and without repairs, the overcrowding could force impossible choices.

"Thankfully, schools are about to close for the third-term vacation and are expected to resume in September. We hope the government will repair the staircase before resumption. Otherwise, we may have no option but to ask some students to remain at home because we do not have enough classrooms to accommodate them," she said.

As of this report, the Kano State Ministry of Education has not issued a public statement on the incident.