Old students of Government Secondary School (GSS) Ilorin, Kwara state have called on the state government to transform the premier secondary school into a mega institution.
Speaking at the 2023 annual general meeting of the association in Ilorin at the weekend, the national president of the group,
Alhaji Mohammed Toyin Adebayo said that a premier school like GSS Ilorin deserves transformation into a mega institution.
The old students, who commended the present administration in the state for the recent presentation of 500 mattresses, pillows, beddings and furniture to the school, called on Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to rescue the school from neglect allegedly suffered under the successive administrations in the state.
“We strongly appeal to His Excellency to help with perimeter fencing of the school and internal road network”, he said.
Alhaji Adebayo, who said that the efforts of the old students of the school had helped to save the situation from getting worse, added that all the developmental projects in the school were facilitated by the various sets of Old Boys.
“Such developmental projects includes but not limited to; renovation of classrooms, hostels, laboratories, provision of boreholes, provision of transformers, provision of solar power, street lights, clinical equipment, books, furniture, mattresses, sporting facilities”, he said.
In his speech, titled, Alumni as Solution to Stem the Tide of Alma Maters’ Fading Glories, the chairman 2023 annual general meeting of the GSS, Engineer Kawu Sulaiman Bolakale, called on the incumbent federal government to implement the mother tongue policy for education, which he said that the immediate past administration of Muhammadu Buhari introduced.
He recalled that on December 1, 2022, the then-Federal Executive Council approved a new national
language policy for primary schools.
“It makes the mother tongue a compulsory medium of instruction from primary one to primary six. There’s a no-brainer that it would require time to develop instructional materials and train teachers to make this a reality.
However, I think that the policy is too good to be discarded, and no amount is too much to invest
in it.
“It tends to protect our mother tongues and traditional values from extinction, and improve the quality of our education.
“Statistics have shown that using universal languages like English as medium of instruction in schools in developing countries reduce children’s assimilation because most times the languages are different from the one they speak at home.
“Some countries are trying their hands at it, and recording encouraging success.
“One of them is Zambia where the authorities announced higher test scores in Mathematics, Reading and Writing in Primary School in Chavuma District where it is in use since 2014.
“The place of language and its importance in the lives of nations cannot be overemphasised.
Countries like China, South Korea, Japan and many others are doing great in science, art and humanities largely because their medium of instruction in schools are indigenous to them. They are equally the official languages of their respective nations. We would do well to follow in their footsteps”.
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