|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Old girls of St Anne’s School, Ibadan have rolled out programmes as part of activities to commemorate the 150 years anniversary of the school.
At a press briefing organised in Lagos, Funmilayo Soleye, chairperson of the 150 years anniversary committee, said the anniversary is the high point of the old girls celebration every year adding that it serves as a reminder of the status and history behind the school.
St. Anne’s School can be said to be the forerunner of all girls’ school in this part of Nigeria as it is the first School in Nigeria to offer formal education to the girl child.
Its history is traced back to the establishment of the CMS Girls Institution in Lagos in 1869 and Kudeti Girls School, Ibadan in 1899. It is the merger of these two schools in 1950 that produced St Anne’s School, Molete, Ibadan.
Read also: Foundation targets teenage girls in empowerment programme for youth
Soleye observes that over the years, the old girls from different sets have been carrying out several projects in the school, adding that 150th anniversary represents the first time the old girls will be coming together as one body to celebrate and inaugurate the legacy projects.
Speaking on the 150th anniversary theme: ‘The trials and successes of the girl-child education in Nigeria: The St. Anne’s Story’, Soleye said the anniversary scheduled for 17th to 19th October in Ibadan would serve as an avenue to honour past and present principals and to commission projects by old students in the school.
Adenike Adeshina, member of the committee in charge of finance and funding while speaking on the challenges faced by the school currently urged state governments to return missionary schools to the owners willing to take their schools back.
According Adeshina, “The government has the mandate to provide quality education for its populace, but it should not stop the private sector. For the schools that have been set up by the missionaries, if they are ready to take the schools back the government should release the schools to them”
“The government can carry their share of the burden but they should allow the missionaries who founded the schools to do same if they wish to. The government can provide a regulatory framework to ensure the standards of education are kept,”
Bisola Ariyibi, in charge of media and publicity committee of the 150th anniversary recalled that “St. Anne’s in those days had people from the north, south, east and outside Nigeria.
“The school also had Cameroonians who came to our school and we learned to live with one another, the question was not where did you come from?” Ariyibi said.
