Col YD Ahmed, commandant, Command Secondary School, Ipaja Lagos, highlights his vision to transform the school to a model command school in Nigeria. He spoke in this interview with NobleOfugha, chief editor, and Gorddy Oyailo, Jnr., associate editor.
Once again, congratulations sir. We want to really know what motivated you to embark on this kind of state-of-art projects for the school? Thank you. My motivation is the desire to make the children excel. When you are placed in a position like this, you’re to influence the youth, especially the children at their adolescent period. So I feel that now that I have this opportunity I should do my best to see the best we can tap from them.
Are you satisfied that the facilities you have at the just commissioned computer centre are enough to make it a JAMB UTME centre? In my speech I mentioned that the JAMB accreditation team visited us. They are very happy with what we have. They went to other centres before coming to our own centre, and they were very much impressed with what we have. So all the requirements that it takes to have a centre we have them.
I can see other renovations round the school, like blocks painted new. Is it a general renovation you decided to undertake this year? Since I came here, it’s been always work in progress. We always find something doing. When I came here in January 2018, I saw the hostels were not fenced. I looked into it and we started with that one. Throughout 2018 we fenced that area. And that is what people thought was very difficult or impossible. We started it with commitment and today it is a reality. We were able to fence the hostels and put gates, unlike what it used to be before. Now the children are concentrated in one place, they are easily monitored, and they are better secured. After fencing the hostels, we also renovated and painted them. So they have taken a new look. So we are very happy, and even the students themselves, their attitude and behaviour have changed. They are not what they used to be. Because the environment has changed, the students too started imbibing new attitude, new character and we have been seeing that reflecting in them. We are grateful to God.
Since you came on board as the commandant of the school, would you say that academic standards have improved from what is used to be? Yes, greatly! When you ask the students or visit any of the VPs they will tell you. When I came here I met the WAEC result at an average of 50 percent. We had to sit down together to look at it. It was not impressive at all. The year I came, that is 2018, what we recorded was 83 percent. This year again, the 2019 session, we were able to get up to 95 percent. So, we are progressing. There are so many measures we are putting in place to ensure we get a better result. For the junior, and that is the basic certificate of education, since I came we’ve never gotten less than 98 or 99 percent.
What about the number of intakes, has that increased? No, no. The truth of the matter is that there are more students wishing to come in than we can take. But the intake will always remain what it is. In fact we even reduced our intake because of our facilities. There is no point carrying more students when you don’t have facilities to cater for them. So we try to match the facility to the students. I will not be able to stay in a place where you have students that don’t have a bed or mattress. Every student must have a space for himself or herself. That’s what we try to maintain, a student with a bed. No pairing in a bed, and no student without a bed. You must have your bed, you must have your mattress, and you must have your locker. That’s the thing we try to maintain. So for now, there is hardly going to be any increase in our intake because the facilities have not yet expanded. As time goes on, when the facilities have expanded, we can expand the population of our new intakes. All these depend on the decision of the Nigerian Army, you know Nigerian Army will never do anything short of the standard.
What is your vision for the school in, let’s say, the next five years? My vision is to turn Command Secondary School, Ipaja, Lagos, to a model command school. Now you can see what we are doing. Whenever you come to this school and you leave, when you come again in two weeks, you must see something that is new, that you did not see in the last two weeks when you visited. So we will continue this development till the last day I will remain here as a commandant. And I believe that before I leave I would be satisfied with what we would have been able to achieve.
Of late people around here call you Action, are you comfortable with that? Well, I heard that’s what people call me (laughs), I wouldn’t know…but as far as I am concerned, I am never passive. I am always active. I never sit down in the office; I do my office work and I work in the field as well. I don’t just sit down and work on hearsay. May be that’s why they call me action, because I see and I act. So I don’t wait to receive information.
This is a command school, and we have civilians working here. What’s the relationship like? Very, very cordial. We work together. We have been working together. I have been education officer all through my life. I started this career as an education officer right from scratch. As I was commissioned in the Army, I was commissioned as an education officer. So, in all the places I worked, I have always worked with civilians. So that’s never a difficult thing for me; we have always been working together. I started in NMS (Nigeria Military School) and you know NMS is a purely military school, but then there are civilians teaching there. So we work together. I was their SO3 in charge of all the teachers; I supervised teachers and ensured things were done. And we lived harmoniously. After then I was an AO (administration officer) in a command school. I was the chief education officer also in a brigade. And after that one, I also worked even outside the command school service. I worked in NYSC as military assistant to the DG NYSC. It was him as the DG and me, only two of us in the midst of civilians, in fact everybody in that complex was a civilian. So there has never been any problem blending with them. It is a very rewarding experience. It is a good blessing for me working with civilians. We still keep in touch.
How would you compare your former place Enugu and this place? They are both command schools. The only difference is that Command Secondary School, Ipaja, is bigger, you know, this is a boarding school. So the experience in Enugu is entirely different from what is obtainable here in Ipaja. Ipaja is a boarding school, so the challenge here is more enormous. In Enugu, once you close from work after 3 o’clock you go and rest, you wait for the next day. But here, up till 1am, 2am, I go out, I am still in the midst of the students. You can’t sleep throughout the night and you say you are the commandant. It won’t work that way. The number of children, and going by their age, you can’t rest: you have to be everywhere. You have to be alive to your responsibility. So you sleep less.
What is the relationship between the management and past students of the school? Very cordial. We are having a very good working relationship. If you remember, when I was going with the GOC to the hostels, I pointed to the MIR, that is the Medical Inspection Room, you saw an ambulance there. It was donated by the ex-students. That is one. The science laboratory we entered, the biology, chemistry, physics labs, was renovated by the ex-students. The kitchen, recently was also renovated by the ex-students. We have our two offices here, English and Mathematics departments, those also were renovated by the ex-students. They put tiles and ACs. They made the place comfortable. Just recently, the day before yesterday, they had a football match at the stadium in Lagos, they donated sporting equipment to us. They gave us jerseys for basketball, 24 jerseys, six basket balls and six footballs. We are always in touch with each other. The relationship is very cordial. We have always been together.
Do you have students of this school eventually becoming military officers? Yes, we have many of them. As I speak to you we have ex-students that are major-generals, air vice-marshals, we have them. So many of them. And we are in touch with them. They come to the assistance of the school anytime we look for them. Sometimes we don’t even have to look for them, they look for us. There are so many of them properly placed – businessmen, clergymen – in different aspects of life. And they are doing well. And they always remember this school; that’s the good thing about them. So our relationship is very cordial.
How would you want to be remembered after your tenure here? I will want to be remembered by whatever little legacy I will leave in terms of disciplined and hardworking students and improved academic performance of the school. If I can be remembered for that one, that is, upbringing of the students, particularly in the aspect of discipline and academic progress, I will be okay with that.
