Kings College Lagos trapped in the web of politics

The famous Kings College Lagos was established more that a century. But a surreptitious, stinky though subtle succession battle has thrown into the public domain the good and ugly sides of one of the few surviving legacies of British colonialism. Daily Trust on Saturday examines the situation. Nurudeen Oyewole, Lagos Climbing the wooden staircase leading […]

The famous Kings College Lagos was established more that a century. But a surreptitious, stinky though subtle succession battle has thrown into the public domain the good and ugly sides of one of the few surviving legacies of British colonialism. Daily Trust on Saturday examines the situation.
Nurudeen Oyewole, Lagos

Climbing the wooden staircase leading to the principal’s office, a first time visitor to Kings College Lagos can only hazard a guess, rightly too, that the building is perhaps one of the few surviving colonial edifices in Nigeria.
Indeed, Kings College has a name. Since its establishment in 1908 through the Act of British Parliament, the college has served as a reference point for many within its generations and subsequent ones. Known for the stern moulding of students in character and learning, the school also has to its credit as alumni, many prominent Nigerians, in different sectors of economy.
“Here is a powerful school with a powerful history. As a matter of fact, the seat of Kings College’s principal used to be powerful in those days. It is on record that whenever the colonial administrator of Lagos was embarking on leave, he often handed the reins of governance to whosoever sat as the college principal,” Otunba Oludele Olapeju, the principal of Kings College said.
Olapeju’s assertion is one that is capable of making principals of other secondary schools grin with envy. But that is as far as it goes. What many may not envy about the principal is the plethora of challenges he may have to contend with as the countdown to his exit from office begins.
Though not known to have faced any crisis of such in recent years, the school today is enmeshed in a controversy that has pitted some aggrieved parents against the school principal as well as the Parent Teacher Association (PTA). The bone of contention, the aggrieved parents said, largely bothers on their children’s well-being.
Whereas the aggrieved parents are accusing the principal of maladministration and poor running of the school, the principal insists that he has been diligent in his work and is only being hounded by those who are hell-bent on scuttling his smooth exit.
The crisis came to the open on June 28 when some parents, about 20 of them, staged a protest at the entrance of the school annex on Victoria Island on what they termed “inhuman treatment” of their children. The parents under the aegis of Concerned Parents of Kings College accused the school authorities of cancelling the Open or Visitation Day already slated to hold that day since it is the last Sunday of the month.
They said the tradition in the school has always been that parents are allowed to visit their children who are in boarding school on the last Sunday of every month but this particular one was cancelled at the last minute because the school authorities were shielding the rot in the premises from them.
The parents also complained of inadequate water supply in the school, a development they said had forced some of their children to fetch water from a well. Other complaints include poor sanitary condition of toilets, non-availability of medical facilities, children groping in darkness for several hours because of malfunctioning generators and students’ extortion on laundry services that are not rendered (each student is made to pay the some of N3,000), among others.
The unyielding resolve of the aggrieved parents was said to have necessitated the school’s management to call on security forces to arrest them.
That was a development that did not go down well with the parents and they minced no word in saying so.
Addressing the press, leader of the Concerned Parents, Nwosu Obisike said some of the challenges facing Kings College today can be traced to the principal who has been mismanaging allocated funds meant for the school.
“Kings College used to have the best PTA but what we have today is a disjointed association. The nonchalant attitude of the so-called PTA chairman is unbecoming,” Obisike said.
He also accused the school’s management of supplying their children with bedbug-infested mattresses. He said the school has been unable to act on many of their complaints.
“Rather, what the principal has been busy doing is to raise the entry cut-off mark so as to enable him negotiate price for admission from concerned parents,” Obisike said.
Such accusations are such that both the principal and the PTA chairman are taking lying low. For the two gladiators, Obisike and his cohorts only represent nothing but a destabilising force, hired to fight surreptitious battle on behalf of their masters.
“The truth is that I am leaving in November. So, what you are seeing is the politics of succession. I have been here for many years but I can tell you that this is the first time we are seeing a bunch of errant parents. They are being used from inside here. Though I am not surprised but what I am actually surprised about is their level of ignorance. In fact they are new parents who don’t even know how schools run here,” the principal said.
The principal said each of the issue raised was simply an excuse that holds no water because the real agenda was to disgrace him out of office and get his “hard-earned reputation tarnished simply on sinister motive.”
“They complained about erratic power supply, but here at the main school where we have the senior classes, we are connected to Lagos Island Independent Power Project, so we do have power supply here 24/7,” Olapeju said.
“At the annex where the junior classes are and where they were complaining about, in January this year, we bought a 350 new KVA generator for the place. We didn’t award the contract, we bought directly from the company and it was at the sum of N11 million. The money used was not from government but what we raised on our own,” he added.
“In all, we have four functional boreholes at the annex yet they are complaining about water scarcity. But it may interest you to know that what we have there is an industrial borehole capable of serving entire Victoria Island. I was not the one who did that, I met it there. But even with that, we have sunk about four other boreholes so that if there is a problem with one, others will keep running,” the principal added.
Corroborating what the principal said, the PTA chairman, Emmanuel Oriakhi, insisted that the motive behind the unrelenting smear campaign against him was all about the politics.
“Let me just say straight away that these aggrieved parents are not speaking on behalf of parents of Kings College students as represented by the PTA. This is a just a group of some misguided parents. They are about 30 out of about 6,000 parents we have on that school. They have also spent less than a year in the school. They really didn’t know what is going on, and yet they are the ones causing problems to destabilise the college as well as the PTA,” Oriakhi said.
The chairman though conceded that while aggrieved parents were summoned to a meeting to resolve the impasse, the school management and the PTA agreed with them on “one or two issues especially the toilets,” he was nonetheless emphatic that the real bone of contention had nothing to do with students’ welfare.
Daily Trust on Saturday checks at both the main campus and the annex show that construction work on a new school library by the Federal Ministry of Education as well as the PTA six storey building were on-going making the main campus to look like one big construction site.
Signs of raindrops and festering algae could be seen on the walls while the white and navy blue paint on the building has peeled off.
On the other hand, the school barbing salon, the ICT building and a number of other buildings, within the premises maintain a clean look.
However, it was observed that the first and second floors of the PTA six-storey building which is still under construction are already serving as hostels to some of the students.
“Well, I can say we are not facing any serious challenge either in academic or extra-curricular activities. We have access to water, the light is always on and our teachers are always there to teach us. The library is also accessible to us. We often eat three times a day. Although, for some of us who are in final year do ask for increased ration,” said one final year student.
“The environment is serene and is good enough for learning. We have laboratories that we do normally go to learn practical of what we have been taught. All we are hoping the school will provide us with now are computer aid learning materials,” Okafor Kelechuckwu, a JSSII student said.
For Silas Emeje, a teacher in the college, despite the challenges especially in the area of funding, the management is still doing its best.
“It may interest you to know that it is under the leadership of the current principal that we have most of the modern infrastructures we have here. He is trying no doubt and we all know one person can’t do it alone,” Emeje said.