Return Our Lady of Fatima College to Mission, Omogbai urges Edo State

BOTHERED by decadence in public schools, Professor
Eric Kelly Inanemo Omogbai has urged Edo State
Government to return Our Lady of Fatima College to
its original owner.

Omogbai who made this call during the school’s
celebration of its 58th anniversary said: “The resultant
military administrations destroyed the moral,
economic, ethical and social fabric of our society and
the schools were not spared.’’
According to him, there was no longer any respect for
proprietorship, religion and ethics, adding that the
quality of education plummeted and schools were and
have been badly neglected ever since under
government management.
He said: “Pupils and students were and are still no
longer exposed to moral and religious instructions and
the vacuum thus created, has now been filled by
cultism and blood-curdling practices in the society.”
Going down memory lane, Omogbai said: “In 1981, the
simmering territorial tension between the two
neighbouring communities (Auchi and Jattu) that
sandwiched our school boiled over and Fatima College
was razed, our classrooms, laboratories, dormitories,
offices and records were destroyed and till now, the
school has not quite recovered from that trauma which
has been exacerbated by continuing Government
neglect.
“If we desire an alma mater worthy of its name, we
have to get involved and truly endow the school. How
can we achieve this? That should be our pre-
occupation from now on so that when we meet to
celebrate the diamond jubilee in 2020, we would have
put our College on an irreversible path of restoration
and positive development and we would then have
achievements worthy of celebration.”
He continues: “In 1960, Catholic Church established
Our Lady of Fatima Grammar School at Auchi at the
time of Nigeria’s independence. So, like conjoined
twins, independent Nigeria and Fatima Grammar
School came to life at the same time.
Fifty-eight years later, the simultaneous nativity of
independent Nigeria and Fatima College has meant a
mutual practical experience of the topsy-turvydom that
has come to characterize our lives.
“In the early 60s while the Nigerian and Western
Region political crises raged, Fatima, under the
tutelage of the founding Principal, an Irish SMA
Catholic Priest, Rev. Fr James Hickey (fondly called
Hickeyboy) and a motley of teachers from Europe, US,
India and Nigeria, took the school through its early
tentative steps that led to the production of the first
batch of WASC graduates in 1965.”