King’s College And Its Concession Conundrum

King’s College And Its Concession Conundrum

By

Felix Oboagwina

I am a KCOB.

I proudly identify as a King’s College Old Boy.

For my Higher School Certificate (HSC), I spent a couple of years in this seminal institution as a boarding house student. Mine was Hyde Johnson’s House. Our L-shaped dormitory cast lustful glances at the daytime busyness of Lagos City Hall to the West and the night-time lethargy of the Brazilian-style bungalows of Igbosere Road beyond the school’s northerly wall.

More than being simply a student, I earned the badge of a Prefect at a time Mr. Augustine Ibeagbulam, himself a distinguished old boy and teacher, served as the school’s Principal. Talk about small body big engine. This pocket-size educator packed dignity, etiquette, classiness and service into his small frame. He reigned as “Lord of the Manor” in that boys-populated community that he ruled with utmost firmness, care and class. Under his wings came the children of the high and the mighty. During my time there, the likes of Steve Osuji and me from the hardboiled corners of Lawanson and Chukwuma Njoku from Oshodi-Oke studied, played, quarrelled, roughhoused, formed fraternity and kept malice with the sons of dignitaries from palaces. Refer to the offspring of General Murtala Muhammed, General Olusegun Obasanjo, Vice President Alex Ekwueme, Governor Ambrose Alli, Chief Ernest Shonekan, Justice Akpata, Justice Victor Ovie-Whiskey, NNPC pioneer MD Chief Festus Marinho, Super Stores Owner Israel Adebajo, Patrick Dele Cole. Sons of these super-Nigerians blended very well with commoners in KC.

With students indiscriminately adorned in their white uniform, sportswear and blue blazer, KC proved a leveller. No segregation. This was a potpourri and hodgepodge of North, South, East and West. Here, the wealthy and the lowly interspersed. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat mixed. The soldier-fitly able-bodied and the unfortunately physically-challenged. The Caucasian. The Negro. The Christian. The Muslim. In this male-only school, the only demographic cluster missing was that of girls. Those ones you found in KC’s feminine archetype and sister school, Queen’s College.

Therefore, KC is not just ANY school. Although it ranks chronologically as the 11th secondary school established in Nigeria, King’s College, Lagos, opened in 1909 as the country’s first one established directly by the colonial government through public funds. This 117-year-old institution remains a legacy structure, a piece of this country’s history. Its colonial past notwithstanding, this school comprehensively reflects the dreams and aspirations of Nigeria as one entity under one God, chasing one destiny.

That burden of history and the quest for unity perhaps inform why the Parents-Teachers Association of King’s College and Labour bodies have taken up arms against the move by well-heeled old boys of the institution to take over the school in a N100 billion concession deal. The old boys’ arrangement has provoked a conundrum.

Both sides mean well. The old boys yearn to restore the school to its glory days and believe throwing in huge money would do the trick, but on the condition that they would administer its affairs under a full concessionary agreement. Opponents of the apparently juicy deal raise major concerns:

• The school could become unaffordable for ordinary Nigerians
• The move could end up being a despicable experiment, a dangerous precedent that would endanger Nigeria’s other Federal Unity Colleges in similar concession deals
• The school could lose the vision of the founding fathers and the character currently defining it as a truly national vehicle for unity.

Sceptics can point to what has befallen Lagos, the President’s home constituency. Concession and PSP arrangements have taken over –from public dump sites, to hospitals, to BRTs, to toll gates, to mortuaries. KC concessionaire opponents nurse the fear that the same soulless, merciless and mercantilist disposition might extrapolate to the Centre and shut out the “ghetto” kids and farm boys from, not just KC, but all the 104 Federally-owned unity schools designed to embrace all classes, tribes and tongues. Even worse, this brewing KC model might just be the sounding board for introducing the same system nationally, which would percolate beyond the other 103 unity schools to the Federal universities. The concession might just be the first step towards wiping out FG-owned schools entirely. This creates fertile fear for “Unitarists” and “Federalists.” Protesters are stitching in time to save nine.

The concession deal happens under a Minister of Education who, if you ask many, is doing too much. Since administering the Ministry of Education from August 2023, Medical Doctor Tunji Alausa has demonstrated an eagerness to correct “ALL” the ills “HE” alone sees in education. Just like a little boy who finds himself at the console of a vehicle, he is pressing, punching, tuning, turning and twisting every visible button just to see how fast this engine can fly (or fall?). Handing over KC to private runners could just be another experiment up his sleeve.

Slow down Tunji and co. Education is a right! A fundamental human right! According to Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to education. But today you have a government parading itself like those dead-beat dads who wash their hands off all responsibilities to their children. Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, the Federal allocation to education as a percentage of the total national budget has failed to measure up to the 15 percent-20 percent benchmark recommended by UNESCO. Although he inherited a 2023 budget that allocated 8.8 percent to education, Tinubu in 2024 provided 7.9 percent, and in 2025 allocated 7.07 percent to the sector. If no one has told Tinubu, not a few people feel he is the worst thing to have happened to Nigerian education –so far!

Forget all the silence of a compromised NANS. Is this really NANS? Emmanuel Ezeazu, Chima Ubani, Segun Okeowo, all these legendary NANS presidents would turn in their graves that the association they once led with revolutionary zeal chose to snooze when school fees took the wings and skyrocketed under Tinubu. The regime took away affordable fees and hoodwinked students with NELFUND, a loan scheme turning young Nigerians into debtors-in-waiting.

Let’s leave all that and return to KC. King’s College is a legacy institution. It represents a huge slice of our history as a nation. Planted just beyond the Marina in the nation’s former capital Lagos, KC has a 117-year history that speaks to the enduring nature of the Nigerian spirit. Its classes and hostels bear the silent imprimatur of Nigerian greats. The man who first raised Nigeria’s Bill of Independence schooled there. You cannot trace the history of the Civil War without referring to the revolutionary spirit that sparked, sparkled and exploded in its key Actor and his modern-day devotees. Thousands of Nigeria’s most fertile minds have passed in and out of its gates to impact the country and indeed the world. KC is a monumental treasure you want to guide jealously by all means necessary.

That is what great nations do. Just for the records, the oldest public secondary school in Britain is The King’s School, Canterbury, which was founded in 597 AD by St. Augustine. It remains public. The oldest public secondary (high) school in the United States is the Boston Latin School, established in 1635, and it continues to run under the administration of the Boston Public Schools District. These are nations that don’t joke with public institutions. Today, the United States has approximately 99,200 public and government-funded schools bankrolled by Federal, state and local governments.

Without doubt, the old boys floating the concession idea are moved with passionate patriotism to render service to the living and honour to the dead. Fortunately or fortunately, they have found a willing seller in this government, a government eager to sacrifice citizen for state. Its load-shedding allows it to readily cast off King’s College like a long-suffered burden to the first bidder in a flippant auction.

To the old boys, hear this plea. Money speaks and money is power. A drumroll announcing N100 billion concession and a N1 billion down-payment appear really very salivating. But why don’t we consider an Option B?

Alumni the world over routinely contribute to the upgrading of their old schools! UNILAG alumni continue to build structures on their alma mater’s campus, regularly bank-rolling massive projects and programmes. With all their investment, these eminent alumni never talk about concession of that school. In fact, they rose up in arms and won when a name change was proposed to honour no less a personality than MKO Abiola. The alumni are: Pumping in their private funds. Attracting international grants, donors and donations. Providing scholarships. Building classrooms. Refurnishing the classrooms. Equipping the library. Rebuilding its sports facilities. All these renovations they continue to bestow on the child without plucking it from the mother’s breast. The school remains government property even as its benevolent old students opted to ADOPT it.

Like many schools in the country, King’s College undoubtedly could do with some opulent injection of informal, non-government funds to restore it to glory days. But fund donors can as well achieve the needful by embracing, instead of the concession deal, the adoption model. Forget concession. Embrace adoption.

Floreat collegium!

A KCOB, OBOAGWINA IS A JOURNALIST, AUTHOR AND ONLINE NEWSPAPER PUBLISHER, AND HE WROTE THIS PIECE FROM LAGOS