There is something in such a footwork which strikes hard at the journalistic antennae beyond the headlines. The footwork is the recent outing of the Mt St Michael’s, Aliade Old Boys Association in not only opting for a consensus candidacy but also deciding, ab initio, on a particular candidate for the position of the National President of the association. But, what is the calculus in opting for consensus at a time Nigeria itself finds it difficult to operationalise it; how did Comrade John Odah, former chief technocrat of the Nigeria Labour Congress, fit the consensus bill and what are the expectations from his tenure?
Faces of the new helmsmen!
Intervention pursued answers to some of these questions through a more critical form of engaging such a development, adopting the self-interpretation of selected actors as the entry point, albeit with some contextualisation of same. It meant capturing the totality of ‘the boys of yesterday’ through representative voices of the harvest from the school now manifesting on a national scale. What better voices than the classmate who nicknamed the National President ‘John trouble’ before the school principal at the time, Mr Athanasius Angereke, formally pronounced the name in the school assembly. The second is the schoolmate who signed Odah’s nomination for the office. He is Ambassador Chive Kaave, one time Nigerian ambassador to Argentina with concurrent accreditation to three other Latin American countries of Chile, Peru and Uruguay. But, that is not all. The two voices were escorted into the arena by two other symbolic actors.
Prof Tunji Arokoyo is one of them. The retired academic who is in his 80s now has been in that domain and a consultant to, amongst others, the World Bank. The American educated agriculturalist started as a high flier when, along with Cardinal Onaiyekan and one other student, they had the best result in Northern Nigeria, all three from Aliade. He went from Aliade to King’s College, Lagos for his Higher School Certificate. In a rather terse but deep text to Intervention, the ‘old boy’ lists four key expectations the Odah presidency should fulfil. And they are keeping the core traditions of Mt St Michael’s; a high stress on, first and foremost, fearing God and in cultivating the Catholic faith in the youths and students rather than the gen-Z; then core values of respect, integrity, inclusiveness, accountability and outreach for the school. Implicitly, he thinks Cde Odah embodies these values or the capacity to fight for them and their primacy in the run of things. Intervention did not press him further.
Amb Kaave
Mister Michael Iorchor left Aliade in 1970, meaning that he did not meet Cde Odah at Aliade. But he is the immediate past Chairperson of the Makurdi Branch of the association. Notwithstanding the gap between the two, he had no reservations about John as a consensus candidate, given where the recommendation came from. Mister Iorchor told Intervention that the recommender (or the one who spoke to him) “spoke glowingly of John. …Coming from him, our branch had no doubts at all. Even those who did not know him did not need to know him further.”
On the issue of calculus, the former branch chairperson points at a spirit of revivalism sweeping through the members of the association. Revivalism here references both the association and the school. And this, he says, is what everyone shares. He, therefore, has high hopes although he is conscious that there is another layer of authority when talking about reviving the school. He is referring to the Catholic Church which owns the school. Implied in that is the imperative of consultation beyond the association in unfolding the agenda of making Aliade great again, to stray strangely into a Trumpian language game.
Notwithstanding the angle of emphasis, none of the two contradicted the other. Yet, they were responding to a same set of questions from different places, time and mode of communication. It is probably part of the Aliade mystique, similar to what used to be said about homogeneity of their orientation. That is, an interviewer was likely to get the same kind of answers to a particular question from any two Barewa College, Zaria old boys, though they were interviewed at different times and in different places. That is Barewa College of old.
There is no debate about it that Mt St Michael’s has its own mystique. No school which produced and parades the big names as Mt St Michael’s Secondary School, Aliade in today’s Benue State of Nigeria does can be without its own mystique. A few names would suffice if ever proofs were needed for the masculine presence of its products across the realms: John Cardinal Onaiyekan, Justice Katsina Alu, Prof Tunji Arokoyo, Chief Stephen Lawani, Gen Chris Garba, Amb Chive, Comrade John Odah, too many federal permanent secretaries and directors. What this means is that they are at the pinnacle wherever one finds them, be it in the Christian clergy, especially in Catholicism, Nigerian politics, global business, Judiciary, diplomacy, academia, activism, the military and technocracy.
Old Boys all at the Sept 29th, 2026 convention where new executive was emplaced
Reviving that primacy is the agenda, said both Mister Eigege Ikwuntole and Amb Kaave. They are all alarmed by the level of decay in infrastructural terms as well as in the quality of education today. Ikwuntole recalls how it was in their time: “we never knew external supervisors coming to watch over students writing examinations. You just go inside the hall, may be with just one tutor hovering around. You write and write and aim at coming out in flying colors”. Both the quality and the facilities have gone down, he says, declaring how bad he felt in his last visit to the school. He mentions St Luke’s Hostel as exemplifier of dilapidation, so bad it has not been usable for almost a decade. He is sure that John is the agency to lead the process of revivalism. He has the energy, time and capacity to relate with the incumbent principal, juniors, seniors and other levels of authority on what’s to be done. For this reason, he congratulates members of the Old Boys for their sense of unity, unity being what he considers the ultimate requirement for the mission.
For Amb Chive too, revival of both AOBA and the school constitute the twin agenda. His own sense of revivalism has a radical, ideological tinge to it. For him, St Michael’s Aliade has to be revived to be better than any of Bristol, Katsina Ala, Loyola or King’s College, Lagos whose privatisation or sell to Old Boys he condemns because if Mt St Michaels were a school for the rich, he would not have been able to benefit, being the son of peasants and never saw the four walls of a classroom. So, he is against reviving of King’s College, for example, and sale of same to Old Boys whom, he said, have made money and wants to commandeer the school exclusively for their class. No way, Aliade would not go to that kind of capitalism, he says.
He, therefore, had no reservations in nominating John for the position, explaining it is time to redeploy John, from ‘John trouble’ to ‘John Solutions’. He is happy that nobody contested against John for the position of the National President of the association, declaring that John is not only a bundle of opportunities but also a great material. “He is not very kind but generous”, he says, sending his interviewer and himself to great laughter over the distinction. He explains: Now, John is in a position to provide the answers by mobilising resources, goodwill and questioning things.”
It was his own way of drifting to where Intervention was also heading which is the association of John with being a troublesome student at school as to be so named. Amb Kaave who John’s senior at Aliade declared how John has always been a trouble maker. “He started his trouble making career very early. Those of us who thought his trouble making would end in the secondary school saw him on a greater scale in the university and on the national scale (an obvious reference to John at the NLC).
Mister Ikwuntole who confessed naming John as ‘John trouble’ gave more details. “I was the one who gave him that name. John was always in trouble. But John was always in trouble not for his own sake but in defense of others. In that wider or radical social justice sense, he compares John to the position of the philosopher who said that anyone who felt pain was alive but anyone who felt other people’s pain is a human being. To that extent, he is not surprised John emerged as a consensus candidate. “He has endeared himself to his seniors as well as those who came after him. He carries people along, doesn’t know whether you are Tiv, Idoma Hausa, Yoruba or whatever”, said the former director in the Nigerian Immigration Service.
Strangely, Mr Ikwuntole told a story that suggests that John Odah was not the only trouble maker in the school. In Ikwuntole’s case, his name changed forever. He had Daniel in his name until one clash with power and authority at Aliade. The story goes like this. One of the tutors was Rev Fr Blight. Somehow, the students nicknamed him Fr Ibrahim. That was what they called him at his back until one day when Ikwuntole made himself a ‘radio without wire’ by announcing to the class the approach of Fr Ibrahim to teach a class. Fortunately and unfortunately for him, Fr Ibrahim heard the announcement and took up the matter in the class. In the course of denouncing the nickname, Fr Ibrahim made explicitly racist remarks. In a racial ‘fire for fire’ response, Ikwuntole got up in the class and denounced being called Daniel, an English name. The tutor reported the matter to the Principal, Mr. Athanasius Angereke, a disciplinarian’s disciplinarian.
Of course, he was promptly summoned but only for Mr Angereke to tell Fr Ibrahim to return to teaching his class, assuring that Ikwuntole was heading for the caning of his life. However, as soon as Fr Ibrahim left, the principal vigorously shook the student’s hands in obvious approval for standing up to racism. Instead of the caning of his life, the student was told to return to class pretending he has gone through a hell of caning. It wasn’t long before Fr Ibrahim was posted to another school and before he was detected by security agents to be a spy. He reportedly got deported. That is how Eigege Ikwuntole is the name today on his certificate from Aliade rather than Daniel Ikwuntole. It was the result of express approval for the change by the principal, Mr Angereke who studied abroad.
Two faces of the Board of Trustees of the Caretaker Committee, Dr Pius Ochefu (holding the microphone) and Mister Patrick Adikwu
Interestingly, Amb Kaave whose interview preceded Ikwuntole’s also told a similar story through a quip: “we do not all have to be conformists”. He recalls when even he was described as cheeky when he appeared to be interrogating normativity. But he argues how it was St Michael’s which taught him the attribute of questioning because that is the school which would declare a chosen day as a day of silence, absolute silence from morning to night and during which only the school bell is heard. In other words, the school taught students to learn to re-imagine and become accustomed to alternative realities.
The totality of Mr Angereke, Kaave, Ikwuntole and John Odah suggests that Aliade was a training ground for ‘trouble makers’ understood in a more radical sense. Ikwuntole, for example, has no objection to that inference, pointing out how Mr Angereke was an embodiment of education as something beyond certificate and conformity. There was no stopping him from illustrating this point with John, saying “he had no fear of anybody” and thus someone he could vouch for. He extends the argument further: “We loved John from Day One especially those of us his classmates”. He is sure John’s seniors have also taken note ever since. Like Amb Kaave, Mr Ikwuntole is also sure that AOBA would get things back to old glory akin to St Francis College, Otukpo where he has friends and knows how they have organised or even Barewa College, Zaria.
Even Amb Kaave who believes like the late Mallam Aminu Kano that Nigeria can overwhelm anyone and everything still believes that John would have to struggle very hard to fail, another language game that sent both interviewer and interviewee into prolonged laughter.
What is clear is that AOBA has danced into the arena. They have elders, radicals, conservatives and middle roaders to make the school great again. If they do and do it spectacularly, it would surely have a contagion effect especially in Benue State where education had been the industry until recently. It is a waiting game!
