By Sunday Ani
As early as 9am on September 15, the entire vicinity of Kuramo College, Victoria Island, Lagos, was already boisterous with jubilant students and teachers who had gathered to mark the 42nd anniversary of the college, alongside members of the college’s alumni associations.
The national president of the alumni, Dr. Adeniyi Adewole, said the association took a decision to assist the school, which was established in 1980, when it noticed that the performance of students in external examinations like the West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), as well as the one conducted by the National Examinations Council (NECO), was going down.
“We wanted to know the reason behind the poor performance and we were made to understand that they lacked teachers. Teachers hardly stay in the school when they are posted there because its location in Victoria Island makes it very expensive for teachers to find allocation; so they don’t stay beyond a term because they are not well paid. We employed volunteer teachers and we have seen that their performance has improved from 5 per cent, where we met, to about 85 per cent as of last year in WAEC,” he said.
To solve the teachers’ accommodation problems, he said the association has purchased a parcel of land near the school, where it intends to build teachers’ quarters so that teachers posted to the school will have a place to stay. This, he said, would end the culture of teachers not staying beyond a term when posted to the school. “There will also be free vehicles to convey them to school from the quarters,” he added.
Adewole said the project would require a huge amount of money to prosecute and, to ensure that it is achieved, the association has launched an endowment fund of N100 million, where companies around the school are expected to buy in as a way of carrying out their corporate social responsibility.
“We are not asking the companies to give us money but for them to be part of the staff quarters building. It is going to be about eight blocks and they can decide to build four or five blocks for us. They should make it part of their corporate social responsibility,” he said.
On the numerical strength of members, he said they had over 2,000 members on social media but over 300 are active members. “The over 300 active members are the ones that contributed to what we are doing here today,” he added.
He said the association also did some landscaping in the school, repainted the buildings, as well as provided a fish pond for students interested in fish farming in the school.
He advised other secondary school alumni associations in the country to go back to their alma mater and see what they can do for them, saying, “We all look at Cambridge, Harvard, Unilag, LASU and other great institutions and envy them. What made those schools great were alumni associations. So, I advise other alumni associations to go back to their alma mater and see what they can do. They can donate structures, pay teachers’ salaries, if need be, to ensure that the children are properly groomed for a better tomorrow.”
A member of the association’s board of trustees (BoT) and class of 1988, Dr. Jonathan Imogu, who represented the BoT chairman, said the whole idea behind the celebration was to relive the memories of the past and encourage the students by the presence of the former students: “Our presence will also challenge them to know that we went through, what they are going through and that our situation was worse than theirs because the school is now good to look at; it wasn’t so in our own time. Nevertheless, in the midst of those obscurities and setbacks, we were able to do well and, today, when you count successful people in our society, you can also count us. Some of us are military generals, general overseers in churches, businessmen, top government workers and all that.
“So, our physical presence here is to interact with them and let them know that there is hope, regardless of what profession they choose. We are a living testimony that Kuramites are great and that is why we are here”.
Expressing gratitude to the old students, the principal, Abdulwahab Babatunde Lawal, said, since he became the principal, the association had brought tremendous improvements and development to the school.
He said the 1989 set donated the submersible water pumping machine that serves the entire school, as well as books to the school library: “Then the 1988 set gave us a 10KVA solar energy that can power everything that we have in the school, including all the computers, all the laboratory machines and in the offices.”