“We must restore this jewel”
(Chairman’s New Year Message, 1/1/2008)
Fellow alumni of Government Secondary School Afikpo:
In his poem The Four Quartets, T S Eliot wrote that
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time”
How true those words ring.
You know, I did not really know Government Secondary School, Afikpo until I did my “exploring” abroad. It was only then that I got to “know the place for the first time”. I arrived at the knowledge that our school was one world class institution.
Today this jewel is tarnished – largely from neglect including mine and yours.
We can no longer act as if we do not know the value of this jewel. We cannot continue to stand by and watch and wring our hands as this jewel is almost consigned to the metaphorical garbage heap.
We must act to restore this jewel.
We all have a stake in the fate of our school. Our institutional pedigree matters and is treasured. We are the custodians of a wonderful and precious legacy. We must remain ever vigilant. As our President, Eze David Uche, M.D., Pharm D., F.A.C.C. told me the other day:
“The torch is in our hands. Its flame is flickering and about to die in our hands.
We must not let its flame die in our hands. We must keep it burning bright”
We all know what Government Secondary School Afikpo did for us. We would all want the school to do the same for future generations of students.
Let us then be resolved that there must never come a time when someone educated in our alma mater is viewed as anything but a well educated, well rounded and responsible person likely to make positive contributions to society.
Lofty ideas and wishes must be backed by resolute action directed at reaching concrete goals. What we do now will determine the fate of our school
I ask you to become involved. There cannot be – there must not be – fence sitters. Register as an alumnus and be part of this effort. Support this fledgling initiative to restore our school.
In acting to restore this jewel, we seek absolutely no personal gain for ourselves except the satisfaction of having done something worthwhile – of having left our footprints on the sands of time.
For me –and for many of us – this will be one of the most important things we shall have done with our lives. I am sure we would all welcome this opportunity to give something back to a place that means so much to us because it did so much for us. This place is the very cradle of our success. It has earned a cherished place in our hearts. It commands our loyalty. We had arrived there as little boys, unsure of ourselves. The place transformed us into self-assured young men well equipped to meet the challenges of the outside world.
By restoring this gem, we will be doing our small part to shape the future in a positive way.
We will show our commitment to this effort by doing our very best to assure its success. Participation by all our alumni will be important.
To accomplish our goals, we will have to have funds. The projected expenditure of one billion naira (roughly 10 million dollars) over 10 years is only a minimum. But we are yet to collect one kobo towards this goal. This means that we will have to raise these funds. Our alumni will be a major source of funds. In the near future the first appeal for contributions will go out to all alumni. In future an appeal will go out periodically, at least once a year. We all know what our school is worth to us. I am confident that every one of us will want to make a contribution. But I ask that everyone make a generous contribution each time the call goes out. No one will be asked to contribute what they cannot afford.
We must not emulate other people who seem to stand by and watch their great alma maters diminished from neglect and bemoan the fate of an erstwhile great institution. That is not us. We must act on our own. We must show these other people an example. And maybe after they see what we have done, they too will be roused to action.
We now number in the thousands. There is strength in numbers. Collectively we have the resources to see this initiative through to success. But everyone must participate. Everyone counts. So please let everyone STAND UP AND BE COUNTED. Wherever you are on God’s good earth, go to our website and register. Stand ready to play your part. Be active. Make constructive suggestions. Do not sit on the sidelines.
If you happen to be thinking of watching – and perhaps criticizing – from the sidelines, I wish to remind you of what one wise man (Theodore Roosevelt) said:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
My fellow alumni, in this matter of restoring our school, we must not be “cold and timid souls”. We must all be men in the arena.
May God bless you and yours; and Happy New Year!
Obi Nnaemeka (Anthony) Nwasokwa, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.C.Chairman, GSSA Alumni AssociationSchool Captain, GSSA, 1967.