The several attempts by the present management of Queen’s College, Yaba, Lagos, to suppress information about negative developments in the school induced the provocative title of this essay. The title is also meant to spur the Old Girls Association of the school to step in, like their counterparts in the colonial boys-only colleges, and rescue their alma mater from ruin. Moreover, the title is a condensed metaphor for the “watery” standard of education and character moulding offered today by QC.
Established in 1927 with a start-up class of 20 students, QC was the quintessential secondary school for girls during the colonial period, rivalled only by premier missionary schools for girls, notably, St. Anne’s School, Ibadan, established way back in 1896, and other first generation heritage colleges. QC, nicknamed the “sister college” to KC, was designed to be the foremost girls’ secondary school to lead in academics and character.
This mission was achieved throughout the colonial period and even during the first few decades after independence, when QC produced generations of women, who excelled in their professions. The school’s alumnae include Professor Grace Alele-Williams, the first female Vice Chancellor in the country; Professor Oyinade Elebute of Lagoon Hospital; and Mrs. Prisca Soares, former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NICON Insurance and now Secretary General of African Insurance Organisation.
However, the fortunes of QC began to decline once the Federal Government lumped it with the over 100 so-called Unity Secondary Schools, whose initial purpose was to foster national integration by admitting students from different parts of the country. The multiple Principals and Deputy Principals of the school were posted there by the Ministry of Education as civil, rather than mere public, servants. Like other education projects, established and financed by the government, QC soon became a victim of shortage of funds, personnel, and infrastructural facilities. Not even the increase in tuition fees could make up for the shortfall in government subvention to the school.
Today, merit has been jettisoned as the yardstick for admission. Instead, admission is based largely on networking, racketeering, and the payment of a fee. The school population is now over 3,000, without corresponding improvements in facilities. Classrooms, science laboratories, boarding facilities, and even playgrounds are overstretched. The school is poorly funded and short-staffed. As in many other Unity Schools, the school’s management looks forward to youth corps members every year to supplement available teaching staff.
The recent crisis rocking QC resulted from poor infrastructure and insensitive management, concerned more about its own reputation and the school’s than about the safety of the kids. The school lacks a good source of water supply, about which the students had been complaining for weeks. Unfortunately, in the absence of a safer alternative, the students in the boarding house continued to drink from the same polluted water used in cooking for them. This eventually led to an epidemic of diarrhoea among the students. Already, at least two students are confirmed dead, while no fewer than 200 students were admitted to the school’s sickbay or hospitals all over Lagos.
To complicate matters, the school’s management issued a gag order on parents and students not to disclose any information about the plight of the students or the school for that matter. Thanks to social media, such a gag order hardly works these days. What is even worse, the school’s Public Relations Officer, Mr. Osifala Olaseni, first deflected attention away from the polluted water, by talking about the spaghetti eaten by the students the night before the epidemic broke.
He did not even see the hollowness in his own remarks about the spaghetti. Listen to him: “Yes, the students complained after eating spaghetti … Samples of the spaghetti were taken to the place where it was purchased. We discovered it was the same spaghetti that was sold to everybody that was sold to us” (The PUNCH, February 27, 2017). Come on! Doesn’t that immediately tell him to look elsewhere for the cause of the students’ problem?
When he finally turned his attention to the water problem, the school’s PRO had this to say: “We have water for washing clothes. We have drinking water, which is always treated. We also have toilet water. We have factory where water is produced”. Why did the school have so many different sources of water supply in the first place? Why were students told to stop taking tap water after the epidemic broke? And why was sachet water served to them only after two students had died?
This is a civil service self-defence, blame deflecting, and nondisclosure mentality I have experienced in the last few years in dealing with civil servants. Someone or something else is often at fault. Besides, much information is enveloped in a cloak of secrecy, especially if it is negative information for which they could be blamed.
In the case of QC management, nondisclosure orders are not new. Similar orders were also issued in 1998 and 2016, when allegations of sexual harassment were made against some male members of staff. Attempts were also made to mask the admission scandal, which occurred in the school in 2002, leading to the expulsion of some 30 students. Similarly, the school’s management once distorted information about the school’s average class size, by reducing the actual number of 50 or more to about 30!
On a larger scale, what is happening at QC is a metaphor for the decay of public institutions generally and of educational institutions in particular. The problems may take different forms in other institutions. They are nevertheless abundant in primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions throughout the country.
However, it will be wrong to put all the blame on the government. Accusing fingers have also been pointed at the management of these institutions. Just as the management and governing councils of some universities have been indicted for corruption, so have some secondary school principals and even some members of the Parent-Teacher Association been accused of corruption, poor management, and delayed or lack of responsiveness to students’ complaints.
It is high time the government mounted a high-powered visitation to the Unity Schools in order to hold the Principals accountable for the government’s subventions and the high tuition paid by the students as well as to adequately assess the needs of the schools.
It may also be helpful to constitute a Board of Governors for each school, whose members are drawn from the Old Students’ Association, the PTA, and relevant officials of the Ministries of Education and Finance.
In the meantime, the Lagos State Ministry of Health should conclude its investigations into the diarrhoea epidemic at QC and make the report open to the public. Beyond that, however, the government should ensure the supply of safe water to the institution.
In the meantime, my heart goes out to the families, relatives, and friends, who lost loved ones in the epidemic, and to the students who are still struggling to recover from it.
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