By Joy Onu
In many public schools across the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), where broken toilets, erratic water supply and years of neglect once defined the learning environment, a quiet but deliberate intervention has been unfolding, one that is steadily reshaping not only sanitation infrastructure, but the dignity of the school experience itself.
At the centre of this unfolding change is the Chief Executive Officer and National Coordinator of the Child and Youth Protection Foundation (CYPF), Mr. Kolawole Olatosimi, whose organisation has, over the past months, moved through public schools in the FCT with a focused mission: to restore hygiene, protect the girl-child, and rebuild confidence in the public education system.
It is a mission that has translated into renovated toilets, installed incinerators, pad banks, and structured menstrual hygiene education across schools such as Junior Secondary School Piwoye, Aleita, Gosa, and Government Secondary School, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport among others.
For Olatosimi, however, the intervention is not merely about infrastructure, but about what poor sanitation quietly takes away when it is absent — dignity, attendance, and equal access to learning.
“The girl child has been neglected for too long,” he has consistently noted, positioning CYPF’s work as a response to a deeper systemic gap where inadequate sanitation contributes to absenteeism and school dropout among adolescent girls.
In his view, education systems that do not adequately address menstrual hygiene risk creating silent barriers to full participation in learning.
This philosophy has shaped CYPF’s model, which combines WASH facility renovation with menstrual hygiene management, pad banks, and a sustainability approach that places responsibility on schools through trained student ambassadors and teachers.
Across beneficiary schools, principals have described the intervention as both timely and transformative. At GSS Gosa, Ahmed Hussaini spoke of long-standing challenges around water supply and unusable toilets that once forced students into unsafe alternatives outside the school environment.
At Government Secondary School, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, teachers recalled a more personal struggle, girls missing school or managing menstruation without adequate support, and staff often stepping in with personal resources before structured intervention arrived.
Programme managers, including Jedidaya Osoba and Gladys Oche, describe CYPF’s approach as both practical and educational, one that seeks not just to provide facilities, but to sustain behaviour change through training, monitoring, and peer-led ambassador programmes. They emphasize that sustainability remains central, with schools encouraged to take ownership of pad banks and facility maintenance.
Support from partners such as Mundi Cooperante has enabled the expansion of the programme across multiple schools in the FCT, turning isolated interventions into a growing network of improved sanitation and menstrual health support systems.
Yet, beyond the visible infrastructure, the more enduring shift is behavioural, students returning to usable toilets with confidence, girls staying in school during menstruation, and teachers operating within a more structured support system for hygiene management.
Still, Olatosimi is careful not to frame the intervention as complete. Rather, he presents it as an evolving responsibility shared between the organisation, schools, and communities.
And so, as this phase of the programme came to a close with the commissioning of the remaining two WASH facilities on Tuesday, the intervention by the Child and Youth Protection Foundation (CYPF) in the FCT moves into a new chapter, a move that shifts from renovation to consolidation. This phase is defined not just by the renovation of facilities and the creation of pad banks, but by the challenge of sustaining them, strengthening school responsibility, and ensuring that dignity, hygiene, and access to learning become a normal part of every child’s school experience, especially for the girl-child.
