By Boniface Tyotsuwe Wada
It was Easter time and I had to travel together with my classmate, late John Agum to Korinya, my parish to obtain some vital documents. We set out early morning from Adikpo and arrived Korinya late in the evening. This journey was the beginning of my first encounter with Mount Saint Michael’s Secondary School at its cradle home, Korinya.
During the Easter Sunday Mass I saw a group of young people clad in immaculate white uniform sitting at the far corner of the church close to the Altar. I was later told they were students of Mount Saint Michael’s Secondary School. My first impression was that of young angels come down from above.
Some Aliade students in 2022
After Mass, they filed out and marched in a single line to a destination I did not know. A few years later when I was in standard five at Saint Anne’s Adikpo, our headmaster, Mr Iwu walked into our classroom and requested three of us to come with him to the school assembly hall. He instructed us to come along with our fountain pens and ink. When we entered the hall, we saw other children sitting far from one another. We were allocated our seats and handed papers faced down, and when we opened, it read Entrance Examination to Mount Saint Michael’s Secondary School Aliade!
My mind raced to Korinya and I could see those young adorable students marching to Aliade, their new home. There was very little time to waste; the herculean task before me was to face the questions inside those papers. Examination over, the feverish wait for the results followed. One day, Mr Iwu once again walked into our classroom holding a sealed envelope. I could see the smile on his face as he handed the envelope to our class teacher, Mr Sisi.
The envelope contained the result of the entrance examination and I was the only one that passed from my class. What followed from that moment cannot be expressed in a few words. In 1958, I arrived in Aliade and I was now mingling with those same angel-like young men I first met at Korinya. It now dawned on me that they were after all humans.
This will be my home for the next six years, which was later reduced to five for those students that came a year after us. The head boy, late Dr Christopher Momoh initiated us into the school by teaching us the school Anthem, Gaudeamus Igitur (So let us rejoice).
But what has this rather lengthy introduction to do with Cde John Odah taking up the mantle of leadership of AOBA? one would ask. A lot, if only you can cast your mind back to your years in that historic school as described by the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, the Premier of Northern Region when I read the welcome address during his visit to the school in 1963 then you can appreciate how important that institution was to the government and people of Nigeria. You must have read the near ‘miracle’ of His Eminence, Cardinal John Onaiyekan with his straight 8A1s at WASC a year earlier.
Why would anybody allow such a famous school to go into oblivion? Every time I have had the opportunity to visit the school, first during the Silver Jubilee, when we proudly went into our various dormitories and slept in the same positions while in school, the memory is indescribable. Sadly, subsequent visits revealed steady decline of both the infrastructure, and academic performance.
It is not all hopeless!
Pictures coming out of our dear Alma Mater no longer bear resemblance to what we were used to. Some of the old boys started becoming ashamed of what was one of the best schools in the entire country. They now preferred to send their children and grandchildren to other schools including Mount Saint Gabriel, Makurdi, established by our former famous Principal, Rt Rev Fr Roman of blessed memory.
The name Mount Saint Michael’s Secondary School is now remembered once a year, on September 29th, the feast day of our Patron Saint, Great Michael the Archangel. Sporadic efforts made by successive leadership of the Alumni Association to help restore the school to its past glory proved ineffective.
It was at this stage that a search was mounted to find someone with sterling qualities and dedication to guide AOBA into its next chapter and the lot fell on Cmr John Odah. His years of experience in the service of the Nigerian Labour Congress nationally and internationally came to the fore. The overwhelming support shown at the recently concluded Special National Convention that brought him and his strong team into the new Executive of the Association is the absolute confidence AOBA has in his ability to tackle the myriads of problems facing the school.
I must here sound a word of caution and advice, that John Odah alone cannot bail the cat. He does not possess the magic wand and as the saying goes, a tree does not make a forest. The new EXCO needs our collective support if they are to succeed where others have failed.
John is highly result-oriented and he has demonstrated that God-endowed gift throughout his working career and in retirement. He took over the running of the AOBA Abuja branch in acting capacity as chairman and turned it into a vibrant branch, we are all proud of. He is a team player and a wonderful facilitator; he knows how to inspire his team to achieve set goals, and above all he is a man of tremendous humility.
The daunting task before the new EXCO is where to start? My suggestion is for them to first put the AOBA house in order by collapsing all sorts of platforms currently in existence into one central WhatsApp platform in order to instill unity. This should be followed by creating awareness among many old boys who might never have heard of the existence of Alumni or those who are simply not interested for one reason or the other.
As for the problems facing the school, the Principal did an excellent job by listing the most challenging issues needing urgent attention. The Association should not make the mistake of thinking that it is going to solve all the problems in the school; we are just one out of the stakeholders. As an important stakeholder we should be seeing to be playing a coordinating role, by working seamlessly with the owners of the school, the school authority and perhaps the Parents Teachers Association (PTA).
Proper planning will identify the low-hanging fruits that the Association can pluck. No matter how articulate a plan may be if there are no marching resources to go hand in hand with implementation, the obvious result is failure.
AOBA through the initiative of the EXCO should devise effective ways of raising funds to carry out identified projects. Special attention should be paid to AOBA branches throughout the country as well as Class groups that have proved to be very effective over the years. Ultimately, the EXCO could consider setting up a TRUST FUND for the continued maintenance of the school infrastructure and new projects.
One can continue churning out ideas, but the important thing is for the new EXCO to make an impressive start in order to arouse interest among the old boys as someone said, new broom sweeps clean.
Congratulations Cde John Odah and your cabinet. Wishing you all success. Long live Mount Saint Michael’s Aliade, Long live AOBA and Catholic Education in Nigeria!
The author was Head boy of Mt St Michael’s in 1963
Cardinal John Onaiyekan, Sir Ahmadu Bello, PTA, Cde John Odah, AOBA,
