Ramadan

Ogun State Governor and his obsession with Comprehensive High School, Aiyetoro

Michael O. Folorunso

Getting together to give back to your High School is good and noble. This is a phenomena whose time has come, at least for those of us who were privileged to have attended CHS, Aiyetoro, this is what we want to do. The ex-students of Comprehensive High School, Aiyetoro have been working out a model by which they can collectively rebuild and transform the old school to meet with the challenges of the 21st century. The Alumni is actually working together to give back to the school where most of us had our early adult developments.

In those days, students as young as ten years of age and sometimes as old as thirteen years were admitted to begin their secondary education. Most students usually graduated at ages between fifteen and eighteen years old. This is also the age  when we sat for the West African School Certificate Examination popularly known as WAEC. Upon successful completion of the WAEC, most proceeded for further education in the form of Higher Secondary Certification, some went on to the Polytechnics\Colleges of Technology or to Colleges of Education. Many more went on to the various Universities all across Nigeria through what was then referred to as Prelim. Those who successfully completed the HSC will in most cases were absorbed into the various Nigerian Universities where they began the remaining of their lives after Compro.

I, my self spent a great deal of time in Aiyetoro. I attended the last two years of my primary school in Aiyetoro, before I got enrolled at the school in January of 1968 amongst the class of  1972. I also did HSC which really meant that I was in that school longer than most students were. These I must say, were my formative years. This was the period in which I mostly thought and did stuffs for my self. It was infact a learning period of my life. It was the place where early in life I was determined to be resilient, to be self assured and be self confident.

It is important to note that several years after we all left Aiyetoro, those little but very ambitious young students are now very well accomplished men and women in their own rights both within Nigeria and in the Diaspora. The first time I learnt about theAlumni Association for CHSA was in 2001. I was in the DC area for a conference, Muyiwa came to see me at the Marriott Hotel where I was staying. He gave me a brief overview of the intents and goals of the Alumni Organization in the United States.

Muyiwa Konigbagbe, was a 1973 graduate of Comprehensive High School, and he was the first President of the Alumni Association in the United States. After talking to Muyiwa on this particular day in 2001, I was convinced the Association was a vehicle by which we can begin to give back to the school which had shaped our young adult worldview. Right there, I welcomed Muyiwa’s idea of Alumni Association, and gave him a check for my dues as a sign of support for the Association. The dues then was a paltry $50 per year, it has since been improved to $100 per year.

For me I remember the colorful exercise books, the Crimson House T-Shirts of course the Blue and Green House T-Shirts too. I remember the sports activities at Aiyetoro when many school would gather at the premises of Aiyetoro to get a taste of the comfort and special student life style which was at that time was unique to Aiyetoro. Aiyetoro was where many wanted to be for sporting events, but we were the ones who were there and actually experienced it, while others simply dreamed about being there. The food was excellent. The buildings were handsome and well laid out, the fields were expansive lush and green. I also remember the risk of taking double and the shame you experienced when you got caught. Most everyone participated in this rather harmless risk, going in the line for a second set of food. It is being caught that could be traumatic. If you did not get caught, you were celebrated among your peers.

Aiyetoro was a place where people actually studied Basic Electronics and Applied Electricity. Aiyetoro was the first school where students sat for these examinations at the West African School Certificate level. I was in the first ever group of student who sat for Basic Electronics and Applied Electricity at the West African School Certificate level. The year was 1972.

Many years have since passed. We are now fully grown men and women of varied interests and are in countless professional pursuits. There are countless Teachers, Engineers, Medical Practitioners which include Doctors and Nurses, Career Diplomats. There are Successful and Accomplished Business men and women, and there are perhaps some too who have not faired very well. Still, we are all Compronians, we are unique, we are different we are proud in a humble manner and the world was ours to take.

The Alumni Association is making it possible to connect with people with whom you shared your teenage years. Every year since 2001 the Alumni Association has organized a reunion. I have attended only two. I attended the one that was hosted in Dallas, Texas in 2004. I also had the good will to invite those who were in the ‘70 – ‘75 sets to our home where my wife and I entertained them. Later on that year, on one of my projects with Cingular Wireless in Atlanta, GA, I myself was treated to a much sumptuous dinner by a 1971 Alumni, Dr. Dayo Falase. These gatherings provided for reminiscence of what we all used to be or look like. So many funny jokes complete with name callings.

The second reunion that I would attend took place in Atlanta, GA on September 1st, 2007. It was by every indication a very successful one. The success of the 2007 reunion is something that is worthy of mention and must be replicated in future reunions. The Alumni gather together for one purpose only. The purpose was to see how we could make life better for the students who are there now and the students who will be there in the future. The truth is, many of us who were at the reunion will never send our children to Aiyetoro. All we wanted to do was to say thank you to those dreamers who made Aiyetoro possible. We also wanted to give something back to help make things nicer for those student who are there now. On the night of September 1, 2007, a total of $32,000 dollars was raised. This was our first ever fund raising and it went rather well. It can only be made better from now on.

In the midst of all the renewed energy to stand up and be counted, and provide needed help to make Comprehensive High School a better place for the current and future students. Then we keep hearing about what the Governor of Ogun State, Mr. Gbenga Daniel has embarked upon. The governor wants to turn the entire High School into a University and the alumni in Nigeria are playing dead and are allowing this rogue governor to walk all over them. What is worst is that the people of Yewa have found a way to convince themselves that anyone who is opposed to the governor’s irreverent act is against them. The Yewa people have without a doubt bought into the cheap propaganda of this destructive governor.

What is wrong with the Yewa people having both the school and also the University? Why must one give way for the other? This of course is coming from a governor who will not even send his own children to attend Comprehensive High School in its present form, while he is fashioning it good enough for a University for the Yewa people. C’mon now people!, think for yourselves. Is there nobody in the entire Yewa country who is capable of thinking out of the box? One who is capable of seeing through the shenanigans of this visionless governor. I would like to remind the people of Yewa that we are also part of them.

We spent a good portion of our lives in the area. It is wrong for us to allow Governor Daniel to erase our history. Comprehensive High School has in various ways contributed to the advancement of the Yewa people. We must come together and oppose this governor. We must stand on the side of what is right and not allow cheap promises and exigency of time to cloud our vision of demanding excellence from our public office holders. If the NNDP government of 1963 can fund such a school for a High School, this was at a time when the entire Nigeria budget was much less than one year of the Ogun State budget. It then becomes much clearer that Ogun State government can do better than to steal from the sweat and hard work of other people in an effort that is calculated to appease the people of Yewa.

It makes me wonder how Africans think. It seems they are a people who run down the value of properties. The Americans built the school even though with good portion of the funds coming from the the late Chief S.L. Akintola’s government and the rest coming from the CIA (aka USAID) and the Ford Foundations. If the CIA can envisage something good for rural African children back in 1963. The least we the Africans who were the beneficiaries can do is to keep the standard where it is and not degrade it.

The governor recently made his net worth public. He boasted of being worth 4 billion dollars, and no one in the entire Ogun State let alone Nigeria challenged him to explain exactly what he did to acquire such an enormous wealth within four or five years of becoming the Ogun State Governor. Four billion dollars in his pocket and an inferior University for the people of Yewa.

Are the people of Ogun State so gullible that, they are afraid of asking tough questions? This is the state that can boast of so many enviable achievers to name just a few, Ogun State is the home State of the late Chief Awolowo, the late Simeon Adebo, the late Bisi Onabanjo (aka Aiyekoto), Prof. Soyinka,  and countless of others.

Why will an African State Governor in 2007, in a modern African Country, Nigeria not know how to improve upon what the CIA plus the Ford Foundations have done?  This man is perhaps one of the most “bozo” looking human being I have seen. Everything about him fits well with the typical Idi Amin like image of an African statesman. This Governor is clearly lacking in originality. Of course the people around him, though may well be far more sophisticated than Gbenga Daniel, they have little courage in helping him think out of the box. The man who sees himself as a performing governor is in fact to me an emperor with no clothes on.

Gbenga Daniel should leave our school alone and be innovative. He can still build a University for the Yewa people with out destroying what other people have done. I hope that the Alumni of Comprehensive High School will not fold their arms while this evil governor is bent on a full scale assault on our collective heritage. We are Compronians, we must not play dead and have this governor blackmail us into stealing our heritage.

My biggest disappointment is with the ex-students of Aiyetoro who live in Nigeria and are in position to do something to stop this Governor and chose to do nothing. They are simply content in their comforts, and care little about the future of the school which gave them a start in life. They are to me cowards. They have done little or nothing to improve the school. The people who went to the school between 1964 and 1980 were the people who benefited from the school during its hay days. They must challenge themselves to do something and not just the regular “sidon and look”. Typical of Africans they are like beggars, just out there to take with no sense of giving back.

We must for all good purposes fight back. We should in fact begin some legal actions to restrain this visionless governor from perpetrating further damage on our alma matter. In the last WAEC results, the percentage of those students who passed was below 10%, I have never known the result to be this bad in all of the entire history of the school. At the same time, schools like Kings College and Queens College Lagos all still retain their competitive edge. This is the time to invest on the future of the students and not destroy their focus and confidence building. In the year that I attended the school the children of the very rich competed to be at Ayetoro. Ayetoro was simply the school to be. Today, even the governor will not send his own children there and yet he wants to make a University for the Yewa people.

The Alumni of the school in both the USA and the UK have actually done a great deal of renovations in the school between 2006 and 2007, we in the United States have painted the school to give it a decent look while the UK alumni fixed the toilets. The school have been left unattended and neglected by the various successive State governments since 1985. The USA Alumni was in fact responsible for providing the school with cricket sport material which in fact allowed them to compete in that game successfully last year and this year. Where is the State government in all these? No where I might add, except for the governor to conceive in his shallow mind to further pillage the school and replace the school with a 3rd rate infrastructures in his efforts to convert the school into his dubious University.

Let us collectively come together and stop this governor from destroying the school which made most of us what we are today. This is not to mean that the Yewa people should not get their University. Yes indeed, the people of Aiyetoro and it environments deserve a University, and they must demand for a first class University and not a High School for a University. What we the Alumni in the USA are saying is that the University for the Yewa people must in fact be bigger and better than a school which for all practical purpose was built as a High School in 1963. The Yewa people must not buy into the propaganda of this governor. That those of us who want Comprehensive High School to remain as is, are against them, it is preposterous to say it nicely. This is a cheap blackmail against the Alumni of Aiyetoro, and it is not true.

If the governor were thinking correctly, he should in fact be using some of his so called personal wealth to build the proposed University for the Aiyetoro people and remain immortalized for all time. Of course he would not, he is too typical of an African to think in such a noble way. Africans will rather steal the wealth of their nation and put it away in the Western European countries while offering inferior services to their impoverish people. No wonder the young people are risking their lives everyday to get out of the country.

In the period when people with vision were running the affairs of Nigeria, even during the civil war, which was a very dark period in the Nigeria history when Chief Awolowo was the Finance Minister and the Deputy Chairman of the then Supreme Military Council, young Nigerians didn’t run out of the country, they were simply proud to be Nigerians, and those who went overseas to study did not stay a day longer after their graduations, they came home, despite the war, they all came home. The leaders offered them hopes, hopes of a better Nigeria that was second to none.

Today Nigerians are forced to accept an inferior vision of Nigeria. People need to demand for higher standards in all things from their elected officials. These current leaders are offering poor leadership concepts of what Nigeria should be to the people, and we the people are accepting substandard level of living while people like Gbenga Daniel enrich themselves at our expense. If we continue to keep quiet and not fight back, we will have ourselves to blame.

In conclusion, we the Compronians must fight back. We must fight this uncircumcised Goliath to a stand still, and expose him for who he is. A lazy con man, who is not capable of original thinking.

Written by: Michael O. Folorunso/CHSA 1972.