At times, during all this grilling in Mathematics one felt like crying. Later, however, I had reason to be grateful to Mr. Chukwudebe. The quick thinking and precision that he bequeathed to us was very instrumental in my passing the examination for the African scholarship programme of American Universities (ASPAU). The questions were simple but quite numerous. You had to be fast and precise to answer all or most of them. Thanks to Mr. Chukwudebe, I had an advantage over my non-Ogssian competitions. Also I cannot forget his admonitions after a football match: “you dribble, you dribble, you dribble, who wins?” It was a poignant way of telling us not to lose sight of the objective and to always get out priorities right, on or off the football field.
Today, I am not surprised that products of Government Secondary School, Owerri, are not only hard working but also have respect for work. It comes from the heritage of the flag. During our tenure, whether or not you had seen a train before; you had to face the challenges of farm work, farm work was compulsory. Not only that, each person had a portion of land that he farmed. It was not an easy work clearing the land, especially uprooting the stumps. As an encouragement, the school provided the yams for planting and bought the harvest from us after subtracting the cost of the yams it provided. Some students made a lot of money. The distinction between those who came from the village and others from the towns was obvious in the amount of money taken way. As time went by, everyone had fun working in the farm and enjoying its side product, maize no one was willing to sell. As the fund increased the distinction between town and country leveled out, farming was no longer the dirty and backbreaking chore that villagers did. On the contrary it provided opportunities, creativity, innovativeness, sweat and fun. Above all, it had its rewards, the opportunity to nurture something from the cradle to maturity to one’s own benefit. It deserved respect and received it.
On the strength of the discussion so far one may get the feeling that the flag was the product of oil, sweat, challenges and harrowing experiences only. This is wrong. It was also the product of good heartedness, fun-loving incidents and good-natured humour. During our tenure there was the occasional excitement of going Uphill” (Girls Secondary School, Owerri) or hosting “Uphill” Elems UK (Girls Secondary schools, Elelenwa) and Queens College, Enugu. The flag recognizes that in the end boys must be boys. Such interactions inevitably generated interesting incidents for conversation and banter”. I maralambu” maralambu”. Nicknames reflected the lighter side of the mission of the flag. Laughter and jollity lightened the burden of socialization into the values of the flag and provided other values for integration into the morass to be handed over from generation to generation.
Otherwise, how does one understand such a nickname as “Bobby Loko”? How about “Bobby Lokoja? Mayor’s Boy” flourished. They did not have their roots in any concrete object, phenomenon or situation as did “Abdullahi”, Nakanga”. Kesus”, Embekey”. Yet they all shared the trait of refreshing the social atmosphere, providing a mood of jollity and minisizing the burden of student life. Even the slogans such as “Nwizu pour”, which featured as graffiti on walls of toilet buildings, served the same purpose, even though they were uttered in protest. Somehow, I was not able to understand what “Osa, had to do with having a cricket ball run through one’s legs. Wherever such incident took place the shout of “Osa” often seemed like a chorus from a mammoth choir.
How about the ominous silence that developed between the uttering of a subject and that of a predicate in a long winded sentence? More often than not there would be no agreement between the subject and predicate. But there was always agreement within the chorus that greeted such a grammatical mismatch. And we have only mentioned the tip of this iceberg of jollity, joviality, good natured humour and camaraderie that left a positive impact on the psyche of all those fortunate to keep the flag “flying”.
ALL HAIL TO THE FLAG
The above are some of the elements that constitute the tradition of Government Secondary School, Owerri. This tradition has shaped the behavior and performance of staff and students in the past, it is doing so now, and it is likely to continue to do so in the future. For example, it is widely rumoured that teachers in the school put in extra effort in their work because the Old Boys pay them extra remuneration. Of course, we do not pay them any extra money. And it is not because the “school is always blessed with very good principals” and the teachers are dedicated ones “who take the interest of their students at hearts”.
As one of the principals of the school stubbornly tried to explain “I have a wonderful bunch of members of staff that are always willing to go the extra mile, to give extra lessons, to do a little more than the average to ensure that the children perform. And it gives them great joy and consolation when the children perform this well. These are some of the things that make it possible for us to perform well. And then again there is the attitude of students. We have 80percent to 85 percent of our students who are very studious on their own. They are well oriented and well focused. They have their targets of getting first attempt admission into the various universities and they hardly waste time doing anything else” (Amazu in Owerri Star, 2001, p. 19). If these were the reasons for the excellent performance of the students, why did the principals and teachers not work similar wonders in their previous schools?
Similarly, “children and their parents tend to believe that high academic performance in this school is contagious, and all you need to do is come into GSSO and you make all the A’s and B’s. In their view this is “because of the discipline of the school, the well-laid down culture of the school, the performances of the school in academics and other extra-curricular activities”. A government official has noted “Government Secondary School, Owerri, is virtually the best in the state in terms of academic performance. It also ranks among the best in the federation. However, you will agree with me that to whom much is given much is expected. This is so because Government Secondary School, Owerri receives the first class students among products of the primary schools selected from common Entrance Examinations” (Agwatu Permanent Secretary Education in Owerri Star 2001, p. 13)
Another reason advanced for the excellent performance of the school is the nature of the tripod of government, staff and parents. The effective training of a child is pillared on a tripod. One leg of that tripod is the government, the other is the school system and the third leg is the parents and larger society. The Government of Imo State is one of the tripods on which our excellent performance is hinged. This is by way of regular payment of salaries of teachers which was not the case during the military era, supply of textbooks, pencils, charts, science equipment and then, most recently award of physical cash by the state government to students and staff who performed excellently specially in external exams and national competitions. These students of GSSO” (Amazu, op. cit.p.19).
The truth is that these reasons are not central to the widely acclaimed performance of the school in all fields of student endeavour. If bright students are sent to the school, how does one explain the excellence of the students in non-academic activities such as sports, drama and other extracurricular engagements? I recall the excitement of discovering the sources of the Otamiri River. It was not a python, which vomited water as the myth averred at the time but a series of interconnected surface water, which later coalesced into a stream that later expanded to become the river. How is that for a Geography lesson? The curiosity to explore found in most of the various extracurricular societies in the school was not and is not a factor of intellectual acumen. In sports the school has won the Phensic Cup for football, Wilson Parnaby Honours in athletics, glories in cricket, hockey and basketball. The school choir has also won laurels in singing competitions. How does one explain the fact that students admitted midstream create most of the problems experienced today in the school. “My experiences in the office (Vice Principal Academic) showed that the present prevalent problems in school emanated from midstream ascensions. Many of these students were known to have imported lots of hidden agenda and all types of indiscipline never experience in the school over the years: cultism, playing cards and gambling, extortion, bullying, exam malpractices with different faces, hanging, loitering and borrowing with interests etc. These vices are the major problems the school is articulating” (Vice-Principal Academics in Owerri Star Fifth Post War Edition, P.16). The Vice Principal under quote then goes on to make a revealing and even philosophical observation about these mid-stream students. “They failed to realize that joining the school at the mid-stream was like a person who never participated in learning a music but joined to sing in a competition”. In order words, the students had not fully embraced that flag. Or more appropriately the flag had not embraced them. But if they do not “fail” out it will only be a matter of time before the flag embraces them.
Inescapably, it is the tradition of the school, the flag of character, the flag that does not flutter, the flag that has been flying since 1935, that accounts for the glory of the school and its excellent performance in many fields of student life. It embraces all who come in contact with it, government officials, Parents Teachers Association, Old Boys Association, Staff and students. It sucks them into its vortex, moulds them according to its image, endows them with the instinct and ability to do what is right and proper at all times and impels them to always show supremacy in the pursuit of excellence and what is right. This tradition is the reason why teachers who may not have been dedicated to their work in other secondary schools are “born again” at Government Secondary School, Owerri. They receive a new vision and mission of learning, which they had not imagined could exist in reality. Under the influence of this tradition their supremacy can easily be concretized in many spheres of life. It is why people copy from them and not the other way round. It is thus imperative for us to keep the flag “flying”, the flag of character. Wherever we may chance to be, and whatever we wish to do, we should hearken to the tried and tested tradition of the school to provide us with necessary vision and mission. In this way it shall always be well with OGSSIANS as it is now and has been in the past.
ALL HALL TO THE FLAG!
Prof Okwudiba Nnoli is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science. He taught for many years at University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is of the ’53 set.
