Old students of Lagos Baptist Secondary School, Orile Agege, Lagos, have launched a campaign to ensure the return of the school to the old order whereby it is made up of both junior and senior secondary schools.
At present, the school is made up of Lagos Baptist Senior Secondary School, Orile Agege, and Lagos Baptist Senior College, Orile Agege, Lagos.
This is opposed to the old form where the school is one, with junior and secondary school together in one premises.
Tagged “Give us back our school,” the old students largely made up of the 1982 and 1984 sets chose the recent inauguration of the multi-million Naira interlocking of the assembly ground of the school carried out by old students in the Diaspora, to launch the campaign.
Present at the occasion among other officials of the education district to which the school belongs is Tutor General of District 1, Prince Bashir Adebowale.
Launching the campaign, the president of the 1984 set of the old students, Mr. Benjamin Akindele, called on the state government to restore the old order.
According to him, the Lagos Baptist Secondary School, Orile Agege, that the old students attended was made up of both junior and secondary school and not two separate senior secondary schools housed in the same premises.
Addressing the state government represented by the Tutor General of District 1, Prince Bashir Adebowale, Akindele declared that the school was already being decimated through the cancellation of the junior secondary school, thus restricting the support the old students wanted to give.
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He therefore called on the state government to bring back the junior secondary school and put an end to the destruction of the order which they, as students, passed through.
His words: “Give us back our school. What happened to the original setting which had the junior and secondary school as one? The school, as it is presently constituted, is not our school! We want our school back. Give us back our school.”
Returning the school to the old form, Akindele emphasized, would give enough room for the old students to carry out the necessary interventions needed to make the school better.
Responding to the charge, the Tutor General explained that the new order was occasioned by the exigencies of the time.
According to him, the division of the school into two was a strategy to enable the state conveniently cater for the growing number of students.
He said Lagos, being a city with an ever increasing population as a result of the migration from other states of the federation, required some level of creativity to be able to accommodate more students.
“The creation of additional schools becomes very necessary, and that is why another school was created within,” he said.
He pointed out that the situation was not peculiar to Lagos Baptist Secondary School, Orile Agege, but many other schools in the state.
Akindele, however, sought audience with the Tutor General, saying members of the old students association would like to meet him to find a way of bringing back the old system whereby the school would be made up of junior and secondary school as was the case in the 1980s.
