As an excellent educationist turns 80

Educationists are one of the few sets of people who get me emotional. One, now retired, was so brilliant and dedicated to his work as a university lecturer that he made me think of how people dedicate their lives to raising others even when they remain largely unsung. It’s such a powerful emotion that I lack words to describe it. But they do what they do because they love to do it; they’re wired to impart others, and I’ve met many in the course of my educational sojourn. One of such that I can’t forget is my former principal in secondary school, Chief Mrs Esther Foluwasho Omole, who turned 80 years old on earth recently.

Looking at the life of “Mrs Omole” as we often called her in school, is, for me, looking at who and what an excellent teacher is, so I believe this piece reminds the reader of their excellent teachers too. Now, since I began to appear on this page almost fifteen years ago, I made reference to good teachers on several occasions. I did draw many comparisons that referenced my secondary school principal without stating her name. Omole was the one I was referring to. With hindsight, I can state that if one didn’t appreciate their teachers at the time those teachers were passing knowledge across, one would later on. It’s just natural that one does when one sits down to think things through. For hardly do excellent teachers, and disciplinarians, get acceptance from pupils at the time. But most do appreciate it much later.

I’ve never had the opportunity to tell Omole, who first appointed me Assistant Head Boy and shortly after the Head Boy of my school, to say, “Thank you.” Now I say “thank you,” and I say this as well to all teachers who have dedicated their lives to imparting knowledge.  Where does one start talking about one’s school principal? It’s a big task, one reason being that I can only state what I saw of Omole, during the brief five-year period during which she presided over our school.  I saw Omole’s picture a few days ago and I was like at 80 years, she looked young, hale, and hearty; my idea of how those who have lived their lives doing good to fellow humans deserve to look.

Here was Omole, the principal of a public school who was concerned about the well-being of her pupils. I had the feeling that she saw us like she saw her own kids, and there was no doubt she wanted to perform and prove herself a school principal worthy of the responsibility given to her. That part I can’t forget and I shall return to it. I understood Omole once approached the Management of Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, Oyo State, to allow their huge luxurious bus―and it was luxurious at the time— to take us to and from school. She didn’t leave our going and coming home from school to us; she fought for us. In school, Omole wouldn’t permit nonsense from any student. Those who had a taste for non-compliance did meet a strong woman in her.
Omole addressed the assembly each morning, and warning pupils who would want to misbehave was a regular endeavour. Her sense of raising well-behaved pupils was top rate. Not many of us wanted to have reasons to meet her in her disciplinarian mood. If she saw good behaviour among pupils, she pointed it out as an example to the school. She maintained a cordial relationship with the leaders of the community where we were. She respected them and they respected her. At one stage Omole got the community to give us land where she got us to practice agriculture. She made this so competitive that students in each class made efforts to keep our lot clean. What was grown was sold and the funds were used for the upkeep of the school. But she also made us bring part of the harvest to school and she would stand there supervising everything as each pupil took a specified number.
A stage came when we didn’t have enough classrooms. Omole did everything in her power to get a large hall built for us without government intervention. With a large number of students, she still found time out of her busy schedule to sign on our report cards at the end of each term, and she would write on mine that I shouldn’t rest on my oars.  The foregoing brings me back to some of the things we see and hear these days about school management. I think we are at that point where many who manage schools care little about the facilities and the pupils. I have read interviews in which teachers, and school heads, point at dilapidated structures and say because they and the pupils don’t have enough classrooms they sit outside and under trees.

I travel past school buildings with roofs blown off completely. And I say to myself, so the school management watched as the roofs of different buildings were blown off one after the other? Nothing was done to maintain what was placed under someone’s supervision.  Each time I saw this situation and asked myself these questions, my mind always returned to Omole and how she had responsibly taken care of what was placed in her care – facilities and pupils.  These days, I hear even university management talking about what their school lacks, saying nothing about what they as the management are doing to help the situation.
When I’m on the campus of any public tertiary institution, I see deficiencies in infrastructure, I wonder what the management staff is up to. Is it that they don’t have the awareness that there are ways to get these things done through assistance from the private sector? Is it that they don’t consider it part of their duty to maintain and make even better what they meet in the school? Is it that the management is only interested in what they can gain from the office they occupy, not what they can add as value to the school? Are they the kind of people who think government school is government business, not theirs, so if the government likes, let it allow facilities go to waste?

Are they the kind of school administrators who, after watching the facilities decay, wait to be posted to the next school where they watch the same thing repeat itself? Is it that they don’t know they can organise past pupils and get them excited to contribute to the well-being of the school they manage? These are some of the questions in my mind when I consider how laid back many appointed to run our public schools are. Each school administrator has the right to be either concerned or carefree. But there’s one thing those with a carefree attitude towards the schools they manage miss. Their reputation and legacy, and possibly the future of those who belong to them, don’t basically come or made from the salary and the post they occupy. It never does.  Rather, it comes from those they utilise their time at the post to impact, those upon whom they left a lasting impression. If you manage a school and the pupils who pass through your hands don’t think you care about them or the facilities, the pupils remember you as such. They’ve watched you look at the roof of their classrooms blown away one after the other.

They hear you say, it’s government that owns the school so its decay is none of your business. They watch you allow them sit under trees to learn even when you could have invited the community, as well as the alumni, to do something for them. They know they have a school management that doesn’t care. So, when the future arrives they too don’t care about you and by extension those who come from you. I remember my school principal, Omole, because she left a lasting impression on me. She cared. I bow in greetings to an excellent school administrator, a woman who deserves so much more than we can ever offer her. Dear Principal, thank you, ma, and I wish you many happy returns of your birthday anniversary in joy, good health, peace, and prosperity.