The weekend before last Tuesday 64th Independence, I had stumbled into the reunion meeting of a set of old boys/girls of my alma mater, Titcombe College, Egbe, Kogi State. Call it divine orchestration, the same set, had exactly four years back, invited yours truly to offer my reflections on the past and the present situation of the school. After the usual forth and back greetings with some of the familiar faces, discussions naturally zeroed on the direction the country was headed. As one might imagine, the context was the independence anniversary celebrations which was only a few days away.
Not surprisingly, everybody somewhat agreed that things are hard even if only a few could intelligently dimension the problems not to talk of their origins. Not a few referred to the cost of living crisis and how it is increasingly challenging for families to make ends meet. There were discussions on the state of insecurity and how this has fostered the atmosphere of despair and gloom all of which has made any thought of renewal of hope an illusion. One fellow in particular, could not understand why a democratically elected government would elect to punish the people at the time this administration did through the twin policies of fuel subsidy removal and the ‘forced’ convergence of foreign exchange rates!
Of course, the discussions went on and one about how the economy was not headed in the right direction, how they were disappointed that the government couldn’t swing the magic to get the naira to wake up from its deep slumber, how nothing worked, how food items have suddenly become essential commodities over which Nigerians needed bouts of prayers and vigils to get to their tables and how, on the whole, it is increasingly hard to see the way out of the mess that the country has found itself.
Mercifully, most in the emergency panel would agree that most of the identified problems actually predated the current administration; and that states in recent time have had more funds flowing into their coffers to address some of the developmental challenges facing the people (some say they couldn’t be bothered about where the funds were coming from). Although many doubted that the government had the power to unilaterally fix the exchange rate, not a few nonetheless appear to still believe that the old discretionary method of foreign exchange management, (which they also concede merely served the interest of those connected to those in the corridors of power more, at least to the extent that it satisfies their illusions of a performing currency), should have been allowed to rule! Same with the petrol subsidy; none of the rational argument about the need to remove the subsidy and the allied infrastructure appeared to make sense! It is our oil – they said – and so we should be free to what we please with it!
The irony was that these discussions actually took place in that same old school of ours; an institution that is now only a shadow of its glorious past.
However, while I was more embarrassed than alarmed that a group that I shared that common heritage neither showed a willingness to interrogate the issues more deeply nor an inclination to move beyond the emotive cants that have become wearisomely commonplace, my real consternation was in their grim failure to see the connection between the decadence of their once distinguished school now thoroughly run down and their equally ‘disappointing’ Nigerian story.
So much for the finger-pointing, free-loading generation: this was a generation which only a while back, would have claimed to have held the promises of a future in their hands. Some two-score years on, they are apparently, trapped in what is now a national pastime of lamentation; part of a generation that assumes that their country owed them a perpetual debt!
Read Also: Crisis at Adeseun Ogundoyin Polytechnic over absence of Governing Council
By the way, I had only some weeks before the trip re-read the tiny paperback, It Just Happened to Happen– authored by Howard F. Dowdell one of the pioneer Sudan Interior Mission missionaries who founded the school that was named after another pioneer missionary, Rev Tommy Titcombe. The book, a riveting story of a young Canadian missionary sworn to reach out beyond the comfort zone of his homeland to get the simple message of the gospel across to the interior of West Africa is a study in human grit and heroics.
Drawing insights from the story, I concluded it would not hurt to tell my indignant audience another facet of the Nigerian story – that of a trio – not the Hebrew Four thrown into the lion’s den – but the exertions of Walter Gowans, Thomas Kent and Thomas Bingham – Sudan Interior Mission’s distinguished Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) missionaries who braced the odds to lay the foundations of the foremost church that is today known as the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) – the once proud owners of the famous school! In fact, two of the trio actually died within a year of arriving Nigeria while the only one left shouldered on! Think of his Nigerian peer at this day and age choosing to risk his life in some backward country when there are rich fields in Europe and America’s to conquer!
Yes, I reminded my friends that their beloved Titcombe, at 74 is actually older than Nigeria by nearly 10 years and so has more bitter tales to tell!
I challenged those willing among them to take a study of what has happened to the legacies bequeathed by those pioneer founders. I tasked those present to take a tour of the Challenge facilities in Jos, the headquarters of ECWA and those in Ibadan, Lagos, Ilorin and in nearly a dozen other locations where the mission chose to have their bases. And then the question of what they – as individuals and collective – have done to sustain those legacies of the founding fathers!
As inheritors and beneficiaries of that proud legacy, to them, surely belongs that other version of the other Nigerian story that is yet to be told!
As for their famous school, I have twice on this page written about the sorry state of the school, how the school lies not only lies in ruins but of how those sturdy structures, the exemplars of the labours of those heroes past, have become an unflattering testament to the callous indifference of those generations that once took shelter under its broad canopy. Yes, both the governments of Kwara, and later Kogi, that took over our beloved Titcombe, may have failed her; but so also have the successive generations that have passed through its walls contributed through neglect, to the incremental demise of that foremost citadel whose motto is ‘Learn and Worship’.
Counselling my friends to be more hesitant when it comes to passing judgment on the role of the leadership in the unmaking of our beloved Nigeria, I told them that the school’s story parallels that of the Nigerian Railways, the Nigerian Postal Services and a few other public service institutions bequeathed by the colonialists but which have been left to decay.
And my point? Simply that our beloved Nigeria can only be built, bottom up! All of us – the leaders and the led – are equally culpable in the mess that is today’s Nigeria. The earlier we start sacrificing the comforts of today for the future that we desire, the better our prospects of national redemption.
