Barewa

Barewa: Remains Of A Great School

Suraj Oyewale

To the older generations, the generations of our fathers and grand fathers, and even our much older brothers, Barewa College is as known to them as their first name. To us current generation, the facebook generation, few people have ever heard the name Barewa. When sometime ago the school came up for discussion on Nairaland.com, Nigeria’s largest online forum where many Nigerians and few non-Nigerians, most of whom are in their twenties and early thirties, discuss various issues, not a few forum members had never heard of Barewa College. Of course, this is not to say it is a sin not to know about Barewa College, just as knowing much about the school, and other educational monuments around the country, is no measure of smartness.

My first contact with Barewa College dated over twelve years ago, when as a Junior Secondary School student, I was reading an old book on ‘Who’s who’ in Nigeria. I saw the name Barewa college constantly recurring in the biographies of many of the personalities profiled in that book, but I made no more than mental note of it. After that time I had come across the school’s name in many other biographies I read from time to time in newspapers, but it was not until I read Nasir El-Rufai’s famous diatribe on President Umaru Musa Yar’adua, last year, that I was prompted to know about the school. El-Rufai, obviously irked by the treatment Yar’adua administration was meting him, had written an explosive piece on President’s Yar’adua’s life and history, where he made reference to their time at Barewa College. That, of course, is not the subject of this write-up.

I was alarmed at the result of my wiki search on Barewa College. A single secondary school produced five of Nigeria’s past Heads of Governments (Tafawa Balewa, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Muhammadu Buhari and Umaru Yar’adua). This is not to include Ahmadu Bello, who many people regarded as the de facto leader of the country in the first republic. Other than these men, the school parades on its alumni list the likes of ex-Chief Justices Mohammed Bello and Idris Kutigi; Justice Mamman Nasir; ex-IG Ibrahim Coomassie; ex-CBN governors Ahmed AbdulKadri and Adamu Ciroma; and revered academics and intellectuals like Bala Usman, Jubril Aminu, Ango Abdullahi, and Iya Abubakar. Before anyone says these are old men, many of whom have little relevance in the country again, let me quickly add that the youthful Nasir el-Rufai and Nuhu Ribadu, arguably two of the finest northerners of the current generation are also products of Barewa College. So are many other governors, ministers and senators, past and present.

In our Nairaland discussion about the school, one contributor asked one very pertinent question, which I guess readers of this article would have also wanted to know from the foregoing: so what is the state of this school now?

Primarily prompted by the need to have a physical knowledge of the school I had heard much about and secondarily to find an answer to the above question, I paid a visit to Barewa College on my recent visit to Zaria, and I can’t help wondering if these so-called eminent alumni know the state of their school.

Entering through the main gate and strolling through the school, from the administrative building to the Magwamatse hostel to the class rooms, the premises typify the state of the public schools in the country - dilapidated, unkempt, and begging for renovation. I went round Magwamatse hostel, spoke with the students and took some pictures. The hostel appeared no better than a manger, with broken ceilings, extremely dirty and partly cracked rooms and toilets. I was informed General Yakubu Gowon stayed in that hostel. I was also shown hostels occupied by Nasir el-Rufai and late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua. One hostel just got razed down by fire few days to my visit, due, according to the students, to faulty electrical connections. Mixed with the joy of having the opportunity to visit this historic school was the sadness that the famous alumni of these school did not deem it fit to give this school a befitting outlook.

I have been to a few other schools that pride themselves as alma maters of many important personalities in Nigeria and the case of Barewa College is just disappointing. I have been to Christ’s School, Ado Ekiti, King’s College and Methodist Boys High School, both in Lagos, and the physical conditions look far better than what I saw in Barewa. I am myself a product of one of those old schools, even if a later generation, and I must say that the efforts of the alumni of my alma mater are clearly visible in the school. With the likes of Oba Oladele Olasore; Generals Alani Akinrinade and David Jemibewon; Chief E. O Adesoye; Professor M.O Oyawoye; Justice M.B Belgore; Emir Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari of Ilorin and many others being its eminent alumni, the school has benefitted immensely from the impressive giving-back mentality of these men. Through the efforts of these alumni, many classrooms were renovated, the library and Principal’s office were given the deserved facelift, some old students established a computer centre for the school, General Akinrinade built an impressive toilet building for the school, and many other gestures that have made the school still conducive for effective learning. I had expected same for Barewa, but the state of the school doesn’t suggest so. Perhaps this explains why the school’s best student in Mathematics, as was introduced to me, could not answer my ‘what is log 10 base 10?’ question. After all, conducive learning environment has been proved to be a vital factor in students’ success.

This is not to mean that I expected these men to pump all the government resources into their alma mater at the expense of other public schools. No, I expected them to give back to their school, preferably but not necessarily from their private pockets. And there is even nothing wrong in a state governor, for example, who decides to renovate his alma mater from public funds. After all, the school is also government property, not his private enterprise.

The case of Barewa reminds us once again of the neglect public schools wallow in in Nigeria. Our leaders do not appear to care a hoot about learning conditions in government schools. A visit to many public schools will reveal the same pitiable conditions – leaking roofs, cracked classrooms, poor sitting facilities, inhabitable hostels, etc. Add poor teaching facilities and inept teachers to that, and you will have the part reason why 98% of students fail NECO, the other part being the shoddiness and unprofessionalism of NECO themselves.

Barewa College deserves better deal.