( A speech delivered by Dr. Obi Nwasokwa on August 2, 2008 to members of GSSAAA during the 2008 annual  convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.A. )

Dr. Adibe please, Dr. Obidegwu please, Mr. Chairman, Mr. President, Fellow alumni of GSSA!

It feels truly wonderful and thrilling to be in your midst. It feels like old times. A lot of years have gone by. And yet the GSSA flame still burns in all our hearts. They now call us “old boys” and I see we are all beginning to look the part. Come to think of it, every student who managed to set foot on GSSA before the war, is now at least the same age as the school – 55 years old. That is food for thought. One alumnus, Dr. David Ifezue, a corrosion/materials engineer living in Manchester, England had something interesting to say about all this in his e-mail of July 15. He wrote:

“I would have loved to be in Charlotte to see how the boys are getting on gracefully into middle age, blonde hairs, expanding waist lines, pouches, warts and all.

A fantastic opportunity to celebrate our boyhood.” Some boyhood!

Time has indeed taken its toll. But it has not dulled our wits nor has it yet stolen the spring in our steps. Many of us are at the peak of their careers and all are at the top of their game. And time has also made us wiser. This wisdom now informs our judgments, our attitudes, choices and priorities as well as our sense of what is really important.

Our Rome is burning! Alumni conventions and reunions are usually lighthearted affairs. Old school mates and classmates meet, at times for the first time after several years. They reminisce, tell old jokes, wallow in nostalgia and in general have a good time. That is what is expected.

In our case, however, we find ourselves in rather peculiar circumstances.

Fellow alumni, our Rome is burning! Therefore we dare not be seen playing the proverbial fiddle.

We have now seen the pictures. Surreal images that look like a place that time forgot. Like a lost and long dead civilization. Machu Picchu, the lost Inca city in Peru, comes immediately to mind. But no. We recognize the Assembly Hall. Is that not Ibiam House? Look that must be Okpara House and School House and even the dinning hall. But where there were once well maintained buildings, well trimmed lantana hedges and manicured lawns and flower gardens, we now find crumbling buildings with broken windows or no windows at all and some without roofs. Most of the campus is overgrown with wild tall grass. Looking at these images, it is hard to believe that this was once home to a vibrant community of teenage boys, studying hard and playing equally hard – busy preparing for the future – under expert and dedicated adult supervision. Now, everywhere we look, we see neglect, abandonment, and decay. A sullen pall hangs over the entire campus.

These images shock us. We wonder how things came to this pass. We ask how a secondary school that was once one of the best in Nigeria and indeed the world fell from its lofty perch to be consigned seemingly to the metaphorical garbage heap. We know that a war and its aftermath are largely to blame. But some of the damage also came from inexplicable neglect and abandonment. We are saddened and affronted by the current deplorable state of our beloved GSSA. But we are not here to assign blame. Fortunately, we have the capacity to rewrite this story if we so desire – if we care enough. But how could we do otherwise? In the face of this indignity, in the face of this challenge, our response must not be fruitless handwringing or, worse still, indifference and inaction.

Our response must be: action and passion.

Our goal and our motivationYou ask: what is our goal? I say to you that our goal is simple. It is to restore GSSA to its previous position of preeminence among world class secondary schools. We do not aim to tinker at the margins – to patch up a building here and paint another one there. For in this crisis, we must all see an opportunity. We shall remake the school. Its best days are still ahead. It will again be the kind of school we would like our descendants to attend.

In case anyone asks “Why bother?” “Why should we care?”  I will tell you why.

First GSSA did a lot for us. Most if not all of us would agree that without the world class education we received at GSSA, we would not be where we are today. Therefore we owe a debt of gratitude to GSSA. We repay this debt by giving something back to the place that made us. For as our President, Dr. Eze David Uche, reminded us earlier, it is said: “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

Secondly this is our alma mater. The word “mater” as many of us learned at GSSA is a Latin word which means “mother”. This place nurtured us – just as a mother would – when we were little. We partook of its ministrations, both gastronomic and intellectual. We therefore have a strong attachment to this particular place – this particular patch of planet earth. We must therefore engage in vigorous and passionate advocacy on behalf of this place. For if we don’t – we who benefited so much from its existence – if we don’t, who will? As Dr. Azubike Ezeife told me recently: “This is really a labor of love”.

No one knows the value of GSSA as much as we do. I say to you that that school with all it represents is a jewel. Now if you have a jewel and it falls into the mud and is dirty and tarnished, you do not simply throw it away as thrash. What you do is pick it up, clean the mud and dust, polish it up and restore its luster and sparkle. Only vandals throw away their jewels. We are not vandals.

Like other people, we take our institutional pedigree seriously. It matters and it is treasured. To put it simply, we are proud of where we went to school. Echoing the sentiment Secretary General Ozoemena expressed, which are we more likely to identify with as our alma mater: a school that is vibrant, prominent and acclaimed as the very best on the one hand, or one that is obscure, deteriorating and at best mediocre on the other. Fellow alumni, the school most of us knew was the former. The one we have now is more like the latter. This is why we must work to recreate and restore the former so that we can again stand tall when we reveal where we went to secondary school. The day must never come when we are ashamed to tell anyone which secondary school we attended.

There is a Latin quotation we learned from one of the great books we read at GSSA. The book is A man for all seasonsby Robert Bolt. The quotation is: “Qui tacit consentire”. He who keeps silent, consents. Silence and inaction in the face of something objectionable means acquiescence. Therefore if we do nothing, we would not be free of blame. By our silence and inaction, we would be complicit in the neglect and decline of our alma mater.

Our experience at GSSA was a pivotal influence on our lives. We received a world class education. We arrived there as little boys and the place transformed us into well rounded men. Woven into the warp and woof of our daily life at GSSA were the core values of love and fear of God, respect for authority and consideration for fellow students and other people. Hymn 516 of Songs of Praise (paraphrased here) sums it all up:

We learned from this great school

All the arts of friendliness

Truthful speech and honest action

Courage, patience, steadfastness

How to master self and temper

How to make our conduct fair

When to speak and when be silent

When to do and when forbear

The school’s spirit wise and holy

With its gifts our spirits blessed

Making us loving, joyous, peaceful

Rich in goodness, gentleness

Strong in self control and faithful

Kind in thought and deed for He

Sayeth: “What ye do for others

Ye are doing unto me”

Fellow alumni, we would be validating that great education by showing that the source of that great education matters a lot to us; that we think it is worth preserving and would do everything we can to preserve it so that future generations may benefit from it the way we have benefited. As our President, Dr. Eze David Uche, told me last week: “We have the lifeline. We must throw the life line in such a way that the next generation can catch it.” But suppose we choose to do nothing. And you know we do not have to do anything. No one will give us runs or put us on detention for not doing something. So let us suppose we choose to do nothing. Future generations will wonder about us. They will view us with skepticism and outright contempt. They will ask: “What kind of people were these? How could they have claimed to have gotten a good education if they just stood by and watched the school wilt away and die?” Our much vaunted education shall have been wasted on us because we shall have proved ourselves undeserving of such privilege. What would our great masters think of us?

Even if GSSA were not our alma mater, I am sure that most of us would still want to restore it. Why? Because we are enlightened men with a sense of civic responsibility. We want to lead what Pastor Rick Warren calls “a purpose driven life”. We want to do things that are good for our community and our country without looking to benefit in any way from such actions. This is part of what it means to be a well educated person. A good education inculcates an ethos of civic virtue and a sense that “no man is an island unto himself.” Hence every good citizen – and every well educated person – wishes to make himself or herself part of movements or energies directed at goals that are bigger than any one person and that transcend narrow self interests. Such voluntary and selfless action won the civil rights that we all enjoy today in America. None of us needs to be reminded that we would not be in this hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, if it were not for the sacrifice made by ordinary men, women – and children, yes and children – a little more than a generation ago. In that epic struggle, ordinary people – children included – risked life and limb – voluntarily – in pursuit of a noble purpose larger than themselves. In our case we are called upon, not to risk life or limb, but simply to work with others of like mind to restore a national treasure that will continue to benefit our country in ways none of us can even foresee. I think it is truly a no brainer. The current state of GSSA challenges our sense of civic duty and calls for action and passion. We really cannot help but get involved and act. As one US Supreme Court Justice (Oliver Wendell Holmes) said: “Life is action and passion. Therefore it is required of a man that he should share the passions and actions of his time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.”

Our resources: The 5 W’sNow that we know why we must act, how do we act? First what resources should we bring to bear on this situation.

Our resources come under what I call the 5 W’s.

First and foremost is our will. It is said that “Where there is a will there is a way”. The most important ingredient for the success of any endeavor is persistence. Some call it commitment. Others call it doggedness or tenacity. I am talking about a determination to keep pressing on come hell or high water. No matter the discouragement. It is said that “Winners never quit and quitters never win”. If we are resolved that we shall continue to work on this problem no matter what the difficulties and discouragements, we shall succeed. Should we fail, it will ultimately be a failure of will. But we shall not fail if we keep on trying. We will turn obstacles into ladders and difficulties into stepping stones.

Our next resource is our wallet. Someone is quoted as saying: “Money is not everything. But it is right up there with oxygen”. Money is central to this endeavor. While we will ultimately not rely exclusively on our own internal sources of funds, initially at least, we will rely on our wallets to fund early projects. In so doing we will demonstrate our seriousness and commitment by putting our money where our mouth is and contributing generously. However we will ask that no one should contribute the proverbial milk money or money reserved for children’s education. But in deciding how much you wish to contribute, I ask that you please take a quiet moment to think and reflect. Ask yourself what the GSSA experience has meant to you. How did it influence your life? What was it worth to you? Then decide what you think would be a good way to start to pay back. For me, GSSA was where the edifice that is my education was built including the foundation and most of the above ground structure. What came after Afikpo was mostly cosmetic. The heavy lifting was done at GSSA. I say to you that I owe my education to that place.

We will need lots of money. Because our wallets are not deep enough, we will have to rely on two other resources: our wits and wiles. What we lack in depth of our wallets, we shall make up with our intellect, imagination and ingenuity – our wits and wiles. As I look at this audience, I see highly accomplished individuals. You are the kind of people who run governments. Men like you are captains of industry and leaders in all spheres of life. We are therefore not lacking in wits and the wiles to put our wits into action to utmost advantage. Our wits and wiles will enable us eventually to raise most of the money from outside sources. This organization occupies a unique position among organizations of GSSA alumni because we live in this unique country. No one will deny that the United States of America is the most generous country in all of recorded history. No other country comes close. Many of us were able to attend institutions of higher education here thanks to the generosity of the American people. In recent years, charitable giving from US private sources has exceeded a quarter of a trillion dollars annually. In 2006, it broke all records and amounted to $295 billion. We are therefore sitting atop a vast reservoir of generosity. We will be able to tap into that reservoir to siphon out the funds to use to restore our alma mater if we know how to tell our story and whom to tell that story. We shall use our wits or smarts to tell our story and thereby harness the altruistic impulses of the American people towards the achievement of our goal at GSSA. Imaginative ways to raise money should also include the use of the internet for solicitation of donations.

We will also need to be shrewd. Hence our wiles. This means that we shall handle persons and personages and circumstances and situations with a deftness that will most advance our goal and our mission – to make GSSA the best secondary school in the world. Along this line we will propose that some prospective donors be given incentives. For instance we may propose that the alumnus who donates the most money provided his donations reach a certain threshold, say a total of at least $100,000 in the next 5 years, will be honored by having the assembly hall named after him or after anyone he chooses to memorialize in our alma mater. In return for lesser levels of generosity, we propose that various other buildings and sites in the school of lesser prominence and visibility be named. The prevailing principle here will be that the greater the prominence or visibility of the building or location being named the higher the threshold of generosity that will merit such an honor. But so much for wiles. We cannot talk about them too much lest we tip our hand prematurely. Be assured that everything we do will be well within the law.

Work – hard work – is the final resource we need. We will have to organize and exert ourselves with vim and vigor to succeed. The work we have set out for ourselves is herculean. We will all need to be men in the arena. We are lucky to have men like our Secretary General, the Hon Leonard Ozoemena and our President, Dr. Eze David Uche, both committed men who give 110% of themselves to our cause. These are, not coincidentally, the men who started this organization less than a year ago and have worked tirelessly to advance its goals. We are very grateful to these men. The Hon Leonard Ozoemena himself reminds me of none other than Dr. G.C. Akabogu (“egbe”) our legendary and incomparable antebellum principal. Ozoemena is like Dr. Akabogu in a lot of ways. And this goes beyond the moustache and the clear and unmistakable diction. Those who knew Dr. Akabogu know that he did not merely work from 8:00 am to whatever time work was supposed to end. He worked all the time! Why? Because he did not work simply to earn a living. He worked to accomplish something great. He loved his life’s magnum opus  – GSSA – and he was a man on a mission. His goal? To make GSSA the best secondary school in the world. That was why he always seemed to be everywhere at all times. Gentlemen, we need more alumni with the Akabogu-like drive, dynamism and dedication, the patience and when called for, impatience, and above all the passion – of Leonard Ozoemena. We must not leave everything to Ozoemena L, Uche D and a few other highly committed alumni. Please think of what you can do to advance our goals and please step forward and offer your help. Do not underestimate the impact your passionate participation can have. The difference you make could make all the difference.

Our immediate objectivesYou know I am reminded of that poem that goes by the title “IF”. I think Rudyard Kipling was the author. The poem counsels that while we must dream, we must not make dreams our master. And while we must think, we must not make thoughts our aim. Thus at some point both dreams and thoughts must be translated into concrete actions.

The board proposes that we begin to deploy the resources outlined above to begin to restore our school, mindful that when all is said and done, “it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness”. The board has met several times and the following specific proposals have emerged out of a consensus reached by its members. There are both short-term and long-term proposals.

For now I will concentrate on short-term proposals so as not to bore you. Short-term proposals are things we must begin to do immediately. These are projects that have a time horizon of one year for completion. It does not mean that we should not be able to do more. But at a minimum, we should be able to complete these projects by the time we all meet again at next year’s convention. The impetus for action here is that the problems addressed are of such exigency that urgent action is warranted. The board had asked the President and Secretary-General to contact the current principal of GSSA, Mr. Onyemachi Oti, and obtain as much information as they could from him about the current state of the school and thereby identify needs that must be addressed urgently. Dr. Oliver Akamnonu, a board member, visited the school just two weeks ago and returned with stories that the pictures were not able to tell. These three stalwarts of this organization have carried out their tasks extremely well and we have most of the information we need. We thank them for their efforts.

Based on the information we have, the following are the projects we will carry out in the next year to address the most pressing needs:

(1)   A clean up campaign: This organization gives priority to cleaning up the entire campus to lift the demoralizing pall of neglect, abandonment and decay that hangs over the entire campus. All the tall grass will be cut and the campus cleaned up. We will fund the clean up campaign but will insist that the campus be maintained in a clean state by the students after this initial clean up.

(2)   Building of lavatories for workers: As soon as possible, we will build enough lavatories for workers and other individuals so that no person will have an excuse for relieving himself in places other than the lavatories. Regrettably we learned that Afikpo house is now used as an open lavatory. This practice is egregious, unconscionable, disgusting and indefensible, no matter the circumstances.

(3)   Water project: We will build a reliable source of water supply at a site on campus to be chosen by the principal.

(4)   Provision of a health facility: Our organization will establish a dispensary in which a nurse and/or properly trained students under the supervision of a nurse will triage students with health problems, provide first aid to students and treat common minor ailments while referring more serious problems to a doctor and a hospital. The model of health care on site could mirror the prewar model. Masters took turns transporting students to Mater Misericordiae Hospital to see a doctor.

(5)   Estimate of the cost of renovation of the entire campus. An old boy who is an architect will be recruited to survey the campus and provide estimates of the cost of renovation of all the buildings and landscaping of the campus. This will include drawing up a schedule for such renovation within a 5-year time frame.

(6)   Provision of doors and locks to all buildings to deny unauthorized individuals easy access to buildings not currently in use.

(7)   Fund raising: A call is hereby made for donations. Our goal is to raise an amount between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand dollars by December 31, 2008 so that we can begin to fund the above projects. We ask that everyone give what they can. If one dollar is all you can afford, please for goodness sake, do not deny us that dollar. If you can afford more, say ten thousand dollars or more, please step up to the plate. We need you. The school needs you.

Among long-term proposals is the establishment of a vehicle for stable and sustained fund raising in the future. Such a vehicle should facilitate fundraising from American philanthropic organizations and foundations. Its name should have immediate resonance with potential donors by directly reflecting its purpose. The board favors the name, African Education Fund. As currently conceived the mission and goal of this organization will be to promote secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa starting with places where war and the aftermath of war have disrupted or otherwise adversely impacted the educational system. The activities of The African Education Fund will thus benefit not only GSSA but also all the great “leadership academies” of the former Eastern region of Nigeria that was Biafra. Beneficiaries will therefore include Government College Umuahia, Government Secondary School Owerri, C.I.C., Enugu, Queens School, Enugu, DMGS, QRC and CKC Onitsha, BSC Orlu, Hope Waddell Calabar, SPC Calabar, CCC Uyo, Methodist College Uzuakoli, HGC, Owerri. The great teacher training colleges such as St. Charles’s College Onitsha, HRC Enugu, McGregor Laird’s College, Afikpo, WTC Enugu and others will also benefit. The intent will be to erase the adverse effects of the war by rehabilitating all these great institutions. The new organization will also promote secondary education in other parts of Africa that have known war in recent times.

It will be sometime before the African Education Fund is operational. For one thing, it will have to have 501(c)(3) status to be active in serious fundraising. This will take time. Moreover our best information is that it will have to be a separate organization independent of GSSA. Nevertheless it will be an effective vehicle for major fundraising. It is still in the concept stage. In the meantime we will be raising funds for GSSA under the auspices of GSSAAA.

A moral imperative of our timeFellow alumni of GSSA, fate and happenstance have presented us a major and peculiar challenge. Schools are supposed to be some of society’s most venerable, enduring, cherished and treasured possessions. They do not yield immediate dividends. Yet they are arguably the most important investment any society makes. Thus any society that cares about its future invests heavily in its schools. For schools are where the future is in gestation. Schools are where the future is shaped and groomed. Proper nurturing is crucial. Schools are never discarded. They last as long as the society that created them. They may be moved to larger quarters or otherwise improved and enlarged. But they are never allowed to die unless the society dies. Eton College in Britain established in 1440 is still going strong and growing stronger each year after 568 years. You can learn a lot about a people by observing their attitude towards their schools and towards education. A people who allow school buildings to crumble and decay are a people without a future, a people perhaps unworthy of a future. As Senator Barack Obama said recently: “Our success as a nation depends on our success in education”.

In the face of the crumbling buildings in our alma mater, our task could not be clearer. Restoring GSSA is a moral imperative of our time. Therefore I now borrow the words of hymn 635 of Songs of Praise to sound a clarion call to action:

Rise up!  Men of GSSA

Be done with lesser things

Give heart and soul and mind and strength

To serve the school we love

Rise up! Men of GSSA

The school for you doth wait

Her strength unequal to her task

Rise up! Make her great again.

Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless GSSA.

Obi Nnaemeka (Tony) Nwasokwa, M.D., Ph.D.

Chairman, Board of Trustees, GSSAAA.

School Captain, GSSA, 1967.