USAfrica: Decaying infrastructure in schools has become a national calamity and shame

Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.

Speech by DR. OKEY ANUEYIAGU, CHAIRMAN DR OKEY ANUEYIAGU FOUNDATION, ON THE OCCASION OF THE COMMISSIONING AND HANDOVER OF A SCHOOL BUILDING AT UDEOZO MEMORIAL PRIMARY SCHOOL, AWKA.

The Proprietor,
Government Officials,
The Head Teacher
All Teachers,
All the School Children, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen

It gives me great pleasure and pride to make this speech on this historic occasion of the commissioning and handover ceremony of this school building, designed, constructed and furnished by Dr. Okey Anueyiagu Foundation, to the authorities of the school.

The Foundation was founded several years ago at the instance of my wife, Hadiza, upon seeing firsthand, the many sufferings and deprivations that have befallen the poor and less-privileged members of our society especially in the rural areas. We believed then, and even more compellingly now, that without private contribution to elevate the conditions of the many neglected areas of the lives and endeavours of the poor, the needy, the sick and especially the children and the youth, our society will decay and deteriorate to very low and dangerous levels.

Our Foundation started small in the areas of providing welfare and shelter for orphans and displaced children. Our intentionally muted and quiet activities spanned several years and touched the lives of many. We have made significant foray in supporting religious institutions and schools in utilizing them as tools for instilling the prerequisite discipline and comportment required for the spiritual and mental development of our children and youths in the advancement of national stability and growth.

We have also provided extensive support in the areas of social welfare, healthcare, education, provision of portable drinking water, culture and art promotion, as well as the protection of our wildlife and the environment.

Our current activities are in the areas of building new structures in the terribly dilapidated primary schools in our communities. The eyesore that has become our school classrooms and learning environment, has become an extremely disturbing and disheartening phenomenon.

The decaying infrastructure in these learning institutions are eating deep into the psyche and behaviour of our children. A situation where children and pupils are forced to sit on the floor, under leaking roofs, or sit outside under trees to learn, has become a national calamity and shame.

We have strategically planned and mapped out areas in Awka, Anambra State, in eastern Nigeria, to start off our initiatives in the building and furnishing of brand-new classroom buildings within existing schools. This is to enhance the capacity to accommodate an ample number of pupils under a conducive learning environment. Today, that plan has become a reality as we are here to handover one of the completed schools.

Our strategy is to build as many as 100 schools and by so doing, provide an additional 1000 classrooms, each accommodating 50 students. We are also developing a new curriculum and teachers’ training programmes to meet with the advanced international educational standards that are fast leaving our children and country behind and endangering our progress and growth.

Today, we have successfully constructed and fully furnished 3 classroom buildings with strategically instituted programmes to teach and retool the teachers and staff for optimal teaching and administrative skills and techniques.

My statement recognizes the critical fact and element of the neglect our society and leaders have, over the years, foisted on our people. My rapid awareness of these maladies, defects and inconsistences in our society has awakened in me, the spirit of philanthropy.

In establishing this philanthropic charity, I believed then and still believe now, that there is no form of human endeavor that will thrive without well secured liberty and happiness that create virtue in the people, especially in our children and youth. The strength of any strong and progressive society must be attributed to the habit of the heart; the sum of moral disposition to public responsibility over selfish interests. We must collectively turn from our private interests and invest in the ambition of the future by accumulating and implementing clear and practical ideas and realities about the need to generously give to those in need by providing an equal chance for them to succeed.

As our Foundation grows from strength to strength; and we seek ways and means within our scarce and limited human and fiscal resources to better the society, I implore those with the power and conviction to change our world, to be courageous and generous in pursuing the common good in combating hunger and disease, greed, corruption and abuse of power; and all the other ills that negatively affect and impact our societies. We must provide quality education, healthcare, shelter and exemplary lifestyle attitudes for our children, if our society must develop for its own common good as the greatest creed for success and growth.

The Dr. Okey Anueyiagu Foundation is deeply entrenched in the redemption of the moral fiber of our society that has been gravely weakened. We can only fight this decay by investing in the education of our children. Because I believe that our situation is not hopeless, and that we can all collectively fight these forces of retrogression, I am through our Foundation, strengthening the bonds that interconnect people to pursue the art of giving and providing for one another to help resurrect our dying civilization. It may appear to be a difficult and daunting task, but as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history”.

In this era of conscientious primitive acquisition of wealth and contemptuous avarice, the decisions we make everyday, big and small, have the power to effect lasting and impactful changes in our society. We must collectively advocate for causes and matters that positively affect the conditions of the poor and needy. I hope that what our Foundation is doing will inspire others to pursue, even in smaller ways, their passions in purposeful ways.

I have always believed that each and every one of us is gifted by God with talents to support one another, and that we can all perform small miracles in each others lives if we take advantages of the unique intelligence and gifts we all possess in improving the lives of people and the growth of our society.

THE FOUNDATION TEACHER’S TRAINING

We seek to train and develop the capacities of teachers to understand and plan instruction – content, resources, activities and outcomes- to ensure progress and achievement of all learners in the classroom and entire learning environment.

Every child is unique, developing at his or her own rate. Diversity is at the heart of this as each child is coming from a different background, is a particular gender, has a preferred learning style and certain interests and operates at different levels of readiness in different learning areas.

In the teaching-learning milieu in our country, with many teachers being inadequately trained for the job, and monitoring and evaluation of the teaching-learning process not well managed, it is very pertinent that our teachers need to be trained in diverse areas covering teaching and learning strategies for different levels of education and subject areas, Child psychology, Lesson Observation and Assessment for Progress, Differentiation and lots more.

We are driven by the genuine desire to change the face of education in Nigeria; we therefore seek to train and empower teachers so that they are able to accelerate the progress and raise the achievement of all pupils thereby ensuring the realization of all the policy items and the holistic development of learners they have contact with. We also seek to train school administrators so that they can provide the necessary structures, framework and support for their teachers. We intend to make teacher’s training a regular and continuous exercise.

On behalf of our Board of Trustees, I wish to express my profound gratitude and appreciation to all individuals and groups that have supported our efforts. To my Board and to all the members of our team, I thank you for your positive and resourceful role in the success of our Foundation and completion of this school building.