Trying to forget Remo Secondary School at 75

Skipping around schools

Much as I would have liked to remember, it is also forgettable, and that is why I find myself writing about it two days after the event. I attended three primary schools in Kaduna and Jos, in the north of Nigeria in the early 1970s.

The first primary school, the Army Children’s School in Kaduna I barely remember apart from the fact that the headmistress was Indian, and she would walk through assembly in the morning checking our nails then striking our knuckles with the edge of a ruler if they hadn’t been cut. What a child can do about their nails when it is a parent’s responsibility, I don’t know, but that is how we all learnt to bite our nails.

The uneventful year was soon eclipsed by our move to Jos where I attended the Corona School, Shamrock House, Bukuru, and I do have many memories of my being there having jumped a class straight to class 3 through to class 5. We returned to Kaduna for my last year in primary school at the Sacred Heart Primary School where I was away for 4 months in early 1976 attending common entrance examinations for secondary school admission in the south-west of Nigeria.

Never forget the injustice

Remo Secondary School (RSS), Sagamu won my pupillage in September 1976, in it’s 30^th founder’s year. My 5 years in this school, though eventful and interesting remains somewhat forgettable, for I maintain the minimal ties with the place and the institution apart from memories tragic, sad, and unsettling besides the fact that my set in the last year of the Class of 1981 were unjustly punished collectively for what a few miscreants did because the Parents Teachers Association was too lazy to conduct a proper investigation of the issue.

Beyond that, life in the school whilst having thrills left me with hardly any enduring friendships, I have met a few of my class and school mates, even have social media connections with them, but I have shunned all old student association meetings or involvements, this is a part of my history that will be recorded but not necessarily cherished to any extent.

For the little matter

Yet, because dates hold some sort of significance to me, the 4^th of February 2021 was the 75^th Founders’ Anniversary of RSS as the 1^st co-educational secondary school in West Africa, or so it is reputed. We had the school motto of 'For God and Fatherland', the former stands strong, the latter is constantly under review.

That I have visited the grounds a few times in my dreams as it then means for all my misgivings it did have a significant impact on me, I had the nickname of Pastor for most of my time there. Anyway, I am just journaling a piece of my past, there are more stories to tell, in the 40^th year of my exiting that place.