Old Boys of the Government Science College, Kagara in the Kagara Local Government Area of Niger State, have denounced the takeover of their school by bandits.

Arewa PUNCH reports that the Old boys of the 1984 set literary wept when they beheld what has become of the school which they said produced some of the great minds of northern Nigeria and the nation as a whole.

The Government Science College Kagara was among the schools in Niger State, which the Governor, Mohammed Bago, shut down in the first quarter of 2024 after bandits attacked and abducted some students and their teachers.

The old boys celebrated their 40th anniversary at the Ahmadu Bahago Seconday School in Minna over the weekend where the old classmates converged in the colours of their then school uniform of white and blue, reliving life during their school days.

One of the highpoints of the event was a video show which presented the deplorable condition of the school 40 years after they graduated.

Arewa PUNCH observed that the school premises had been overtaken by wild grasses, while what used to be the laboratories and classrooms have become home to reptiles and rodents.

Also, soldiers of the Nigerian military have converted the school to a refugee camp from where they combat the insurgents.

The old students who took turns to lament how the educational system in the North of Nigeria has been negatively impacted by acts of banditry and terrorism ravaging the region called on the government both at the national and state levels to intensify efforts at ridding the region of insurgency.

The Chairman of the occasion, who is the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Jafar Tukur, and who was also an old boy of the school, was represented by the treasurer of the Old Boys, Philip Ibrahim.

He disclosed that the set ‘84 Old Boys have been responsible for providing all the infrastructure of the school and sponsoring the West African School Certificate examination of the school in the last ten years.

Asked if he is happy with the present condition of the school, Ibrahim retorted, “No sane person will be happy with the condition of the Science College Kagara and you do know that it is beyond each and every one of us. It is an issue of insurgency. You know that Kagara shares boundaries with Katsina and Zamfara and that is the route through which the bandits come into Niger.

“And you know we are a victim of banditry in Northern Nigeria, and we are not happy with the condition of the school. In the last ten years, we have been responsible for the infrastructural development of the school. I mean we in the association of the old boys.

“For 10 years, we have provided furniture for even the students to sit for their WASC examinations in that school. The idea is just to give back to our alma mata from where we finished secondary class education. We have played our roles nicely over the past 10 years.

“But what is happening in Kagara today is beyond us. It’s for the state and the federal government to take decisive actions to stop the issue of banditry in that location. Yes, the military men are using it as a refugee camp to fight bandits, and all we can do is to call on the authorities concerned to bring the issue of banditry in that place to an end.

“We are also calling on the political leadership from that area; they have senators they have members of the House of Representatives. They have an Emir, too. We expect them all to step in. The political leadership in Kagara should also do the needful to address the issue,” he advised.

The celebrity of the occasion was the Kaduna State-born and Senator of the 8th Republic, Shehu Sani, an old boy of the 1984 class of the Government Science College Kagara.

He was also the keynote speaker at the event. In his speech, Sani called on the northern leadership to take the education of the North more seriously because the North is taking the back seat among the other regions of Nigeria when it comes to education.

Sani, who lamented that most of the elite from the north would not be proud to allow their own children to attend the schools they graduated from bemoaned,  “Northern Nigeria must take education seriously. We lack behind in education. We have the highest number of out of school children, and today, the activities of bandits and terrorists have destroyed the education fabrics and the basis of Northern Nigeria.

“The school that we used to call our own has been deserted because bandits attacked the school and took hostages. This was the school that produced professors, doctors, and some of the best in the history of Nigeria.

“Secondary education used to be fun. Unfortunately, the schools we attended are not schools we can take our children to. From the president to governors to senators to ministers in this country today, they were all products of public education. And before our own very eyes that public education has been destroyed.

“So, we will not just celebrate this 40th anniversary, but we will give back to the school to return it back to its lost glory. The security challenges will be over in the whole country because it is better than the experience we had during the Buhari administration. There is every evidence that many of the top terrorists have been eliminated, and if you compare what you are having today to what you were having yesterday, it’s still the best.

“Under the Buhari administration, you had several attacks in the different schools,” Sani recalled.