…As Executive Director, from US, vows to take school to greater heights
Great people are sometimes scared. Bold people are sometimes shy and confident people are not always courageous. This was the submission of Mr. Adeneye Shina, a Lagos-based youth development expert, when he delivered a lecture entitled “Be Bold and Confident” at the second joint graduation and prize-giving ceremony of the Loral International Schools, Festac, Lagos and Igbesa, Ogun State, held recently at their Festac campus.
Explicating the topic, he charged the students to be always bold and confident, You must always be yourself, he said. Don’t walk in other people’s shadows or footsteps. Always know that university life is quite different from the secondary school life because on the campus you are on your own, you are your own master, he further admonished. To be bold and confident, he opined, is to realise that the ability to be who you want to be is in you.
In his opening remarks, the chairman of the occasion, Mr. Adewunmi Tajudeen Ogunkanmi, Deputy Comptroller of Immigration, Abeokuta, Ogun State, urged the graduating students to be good ambassadors of the school (Loral) that has prepared them for the challenges ahead. Life is like riding a bicycle, he said, quoting a Chinese proverb; you will fall if you stop pedaling.
In her address, Mrs. E. M. Osime, Senior Principal, Loral International Boarding Secondary School, Igbesa, Ogun State, observed that the graduating students have passed through the crucible of rigorous training in character and learning that will prepare them for the next stage of life. “Education is the key to unlocking the doors of freedom,” she said. “So be a trailblazer. Nelson Mandela said education is the most powerful weapon with which you can change the world.”
Earlier in the ceremony which kicked off with a solemn thanksgiving service conducted by Rev. Emmanuel Okwuchi, of St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Oluti, Lagos, he urged the students, both the graduating and the non-graduating ones, to be of good behaviour and to exhibit excellent character that would show them as good ambassadors not only of the school but also of the nation anywhere they go.
The ceremony was made groovy by various music and drama presentations by the students. They include a scintillating ballet dance by secondary school arm of the Festac campus and Loral College Steel Band that struck up soulful tunes that showed them off as highly talented musicians that can hold their shoulders high in any part of the world.
You ain’t seen nothing yet, the Managing Director, Chief Crawford Ndukwe, told the audience. “This is the best place to make an investment for your child,” he said. We have plans to take Loral to greater heights, Mrs. Oby Imo, the daughter of Chief Mrs. Lauretta Nwanneka Nwosu, the school proprietress and one of the Executive Directors, said (she attended the ceremony all the way from the United States, where she currently resides with her family, she revealed). “The best is yet to come,” she said.