King’s College used to be in the news for the right thing when we were young. It was not always the best school in the country. Just like Harvard in the United States, it was the metonym of college royalty. Some other elite schools like Government College Ughelli of which I am an alumnus, Government College Ibadan, Edo College, Federal Government College Warri, Igbobi College, Methodist Boys High School, St. Gregrory’s College, Comprehensive High School Aiyetoro, to name a few, at various times could be the best judging by the metrics of the day. Even at that, the first name on the lips was King’s College.
Today, it is like the carcass of its prime. Hence it is in the news for the wrong reason. It is in the news because it is not anywhere near the best. Its infrastructure has fallen into ruin. Its students have lost their swagger because no one remembers them among the best in year-end exams in West Africa and Nigeria. Where is the first-rate equipment? Where are their fabled teachers, their sports heroes, their debaters, the potential titans of science? Rather it is the private schools that crest the ratings and only the rich can walk through their portals.
Hence, this essayist welcomes the controversy over the concession of the school to the old boys. The old boys are not trying to kill KC. They are trying to save it. The Parents/Teachers Association is up in arms because it fears progress. It wants to sit by a carcass in a necrophilic surrender. They are happy to let it rot and stink. This cadaverous tolerance is like the tale of a prophet’s carcass in the book of Kings in the Bible. A lion and an ass stand beside the divine dead. The lion neither roars nor devours. The ass waits to convey it to its grave. That is what the PTA is doing. The old boys who are throwing their money into it do not crave profit. They are driven by nostalgia. They want to salvage a broken memory. A memory of boyhood in class when their school was the class act, when they nurtured a seed that has budded into success in their lives, as high-end professionals, statesmen, businessmen, technocrats, cultural mavens. It is the integrity of that heritage they seek to protect and renew.
The PTA is embracing a fleeting thing. The current teachers want their jobs. The parents want the low standard that enabled their kids’ admissions. They believe they are in King’s College. They are labouring under an illusion of authenticity. They are presiding over a name but not the substance. “You have a name that you are alive but you are dead.” That is the book of Revelations.
Kings College, like other such high-profile schools of old, have run out of funding. Education minister Tunji Alausa said it would cost several trillions to restore the unity schools across the country. This is because, by instalments for decades, the schools were allowed to die. He was only being realistic. Again, governments are trying to catch up with bigger populations. So, they have kept building more schools to meet demand. Just as we have seen decay in other aspects of our lives like the teaching hospitals, road infrastructure, the electricity grid, even our dear old National Stadium in Surulere, so we are seeing in the hallowed centre of learning. King’s College cannot access its old funding. There were fewer schools then to nourish.
It is in this light that old boys have stepped in. In my own school, the story is not different. Less than a decade ago an old boy visited the GCU with his sons. As they drove around the vast campus that is one mile square, perhaps the largest in the country and more than most universities, the sons asked, “dad, was there a war here?” Ughelli at one time became a day school. This was a school that tenanted students from across the country in eight hostels, each of which could pass for a secondary school. In fact, a prominent old boy has single-handedly pulled down a hostel and has spent about half a billion naira to rebuild it with solar facility. Under the leadership of the late Gamaliel Onosode, a decision was made to save it. Today, with about six billion naira sunk in, the roads have been rehabilitated, the buildings remodelled, the classrooms saved and furnished, the labs modernised again. The hardware of a school cannot account for its quality if the software is in decay. Hence, the old boys also are seeking concession with the state government.
The old boys of Government Colleges in Umuahia and Ibadan have already secured concession. And it is working. In Ibadan, they faced resistance just like K.C. The Old boys set up a board and included some PTA members. They did not fire any teachers from the Oyo State government. They just recruited tested ones and paid them handsomely. They also appointed a principal whose pay beats anyone in the civil service. They did not increase school fees, although in the past year they topped it only marginally. They preside over student admission, and have sponged out corrupt practices in admission like purchase of admission forms, uniforms, etc. They buy forms freely online. Students are also enjoying scholarships, some a 100%, some 75%, 50% and 25%. They have rebuilt its infrastructure, equipped it with state-of-the-art ones with their bells and whistles. Some of the old teachers have shown resentment. The ministry has seen the progress and has redeployed the old teachers who cannot stand the new regime.
The PTA is watching a carcass. It is like in the Nobel Prize-wining novel The Melancholy of Resistance by Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai in which a huge whale carcass materialises in a town in the dead of winter. The people watch with what philosophers now call the Kantian sublime. The sheer spectacle overwhelms them but they have not developed the will and reason to overcome the awe. The PTA is too awed by the old image of KC to come to terms with its looming putrefaction.
Pity that some are seeing the fight as a struggle against elitism. This essayist understands the worry. But it is misplaced. Some have argued against what a U.S. critic calls the “the toxic economy of esteem.” We cannot have education without competition, and standards cannot thrive without hierarchy. With the best, we create models. The top battles to remain there when the bottom ones strive to overthrow them. It is healthy rivalry. We have it today, only among high-priced schools beyond the poor.
In those days, the poor abided with the rich on the same hostel bunk. The common entrance exam longlisted me for Ughelli but my father Moses had no money to take me from Ibadan to do the exams. A family friend, brother Oluku, came to our rescue. But I became a student with the children of some well-known names in the country.
That is what GCI is doing today. We cannot have the same acumen. Brains are afire also among the poor. Thomas Jefferson had made an argument for the “natural aristocracy of men,” although it is open to abuse as Professor Michael J. Sandel in his book, The Tyranny of Merit. Yet, we need quality. We need exceptional schools. We need models to inspire a generation. The other paradox is that the PTA is appealing to populism in its frenetic quest for elitism. They want to exploit the sentiment of the poor to be like the rich.
The old boys want to revive a carcass. PTA should not seize its oxygen tank.