The concept of establishing unity schools was Gowon’s idea of uniting a war torn country. Needless to say, the establishment of these schools came at the right time, and served its purpose. I am careful to say “served” because an issue in issue is actually whether these schools are still serving its purpose. In trying to understand the purpose of the unity schools, we have to understand Gowon’s post war three Rs, namely; Reconciliation, Restoration and Renovation. This therefore was the aim of these schools, in addition to the motto of these schools “Pro Unitate”, which stands for – ‘In Unity.’ The first set of unity schools were sited in the four geo-political zones, while the design of the hostels of the schools was done by Dr Alex Ekwueme.
The underlying reason for the establishment of these schools was to bring together young Nigerians from all parts of the country to study together in one environment, to learn more about other ethnic groups, and to forge a country where class or tribe did not matter. The accommodation afforded was great, and the staffing was legendary. Here, boys from farming settlements competed gallantly with their counterparts from Government Reserved Areas. Children of professors were constantly competing healthily with the children of traders. Here, it did not matter where you came from, and as expected, a roll call of the classes showed an even distribution in the admission from the different geopolitical zones.
In recent times, there has been a lot of outcry against the management of these schools. I have come to join the parade, this time from a different point of view. I am attacking the status of some of these schools as UNITY schools. I happened to attend one of these schools; FGC Okigwe, where the attendance was 90% Igbo or south easterners. The staffing however was “Nigerian” in nature as a result of which the principal was Hausa. This angered many of the igbo staff and students who kept saying, “this is our land, an hausa man cannot come here and rule us” Growing up in that hostile environment taught me the virtue in headiness…even my Igbo friends can attest to that. It was useless to point out to these people, that the territory was not Umunaga Secondary School, because to then, it was their land and their school.
I took a journey one day to my then housemaster’s office where I saw the house register used in the eighties. Needless to say, the names there not only showed the who is who in the country, it also showed a well distributed studentship in terms of states of origin. I asked myself, how did we get to this point? Some years after that register, a principal had arose that was both an ethnic man, he happened to be an easterner, and a good squanderer of resources. Sadly, he could not even discipline the boys. So the parents made a wise move, and withdrew their children, leaving the Igbos who could stay to stay. You do not send a child from Kaduna to a school you cannot attest to. So things fell apart, and like many other unity schools in the nation, they became local schools bearing the insignia of the lost glory of Pro Unitate.
As seen above, the problem of our nation also became my alma mater’s problem. Corruption nearly killed the system. The ‘foreigner’ principal tried his best, but we were already undone. We who did not know came in, and found out we were strangers in our own country. Sadly, this post is one which offers no solution to the problem, because we had often ignored the solution. The story of FGC Okigwe is representative of the many federal schools that has lost its federal character. If we are to get our Unity back, we have to retrace our steps to where we fell, else all we will be asking till we die will be, “when shall return the glory of our prime?”
