The Atlanta chapter of the GCUOBA-USA, hosts of the sixth edition of the annual convention of the Government College, Umuahia Old Boys Association in the United States, gave a full dose of the “southern hospitality” to the old boys as they converged in Atlanta. To put it in familiar lingo, Atlanta rocked. Thanks to what Onyema Nkele, an engineer and current president of the GCUOBA-USA always called, “a few good men” .

Just watching from the lobby of the Renaissance -Waverly Hotel at Atlanta’s Galleria, the two figures of Dr. Ike Ukeje, professor of education at the Kennesaw State University, and Dr. Basil Ezenwa, MD, alone like Sisyphus logging up remnant convention materials up the elevator in trolleys, as everybody else danced the night away. They were worn but not out. But it was a commitment equally shared by the group of Umuahians in Atlanta, whose chapter also includes Dr. Bato Amu, Ed Ukaonu president of Vixio Technology, Dr. Bob Agbogu, Mr. Henry Chiedo, Dr. Okoronkwo Ogan, Ikem Onyilogwu, Dr. Casmir Okoro, Senen Anyanwu, Dr. Ogugua Okoye, and my own classmate, Kingsley Umezurike, who tilled the grounds for a fruitful meeting. So we drove, Dr. Sam Nwaobasi, a trauma surgeon, and of the class of 1956 and I, with our families - his wife, my wife and two kids – in the same car from St. Louis to Atlanta, an eight-hour haul by road.

Umuahians drove or flew in from everywhere, with their spouses, our venerated “young girls.” From Nigeria came, Engr. Sam Onyewuenyi, renowned power engineer, former president of the GCUOBA, Lagos and a trustee of the GCUOBA; Engr. C.N. Nwachukwu of NEPA (I guess PHCN) Abuja, and Eze Ejikeme, an attorney in Lagos.

Dr. Chuka Nwokolo came in from London. Chike Momah, Dr. Rommie Ogbolu, Randy Nduka, Ali Talib, Jay Oji, Egwuonye, Dr. Fiemu Nwariaku, from Texas, Onyema Nkele, Dr. John Uyanne, Charles Ohabor, Austin Uwakwe, UK Obasi, Ibekwe, from Carlifornia, Denis Onwualu, from Oregon, George Ezikpe from Las Vegas, Dr. Emma Okafor, the investment broker Enyi Kanu, Dr. Okechi Nwabara, Charlie Morka, Dr. Emeka Aniagolu, Dr. Ike Mbanugo, from the Midwest, Dr. Nwaneshiudu, Chinedum Ahaiwe, Dr. Okonji, Attorney GCU Okedi, Dr. Mbanaso of Howard University, Mr Ikeji, from Washington DC; the New Jersey Attorneys, Don Egbuchulam, Sebastian Ibezim, Charles Chikezie, Gordon Ilogu, Dr. Ibezim, Dr. Ike Ezekwe, and the “young Turk,” Dr. Uko of the Umuahian class of 1981-86, came from New Jersey/New York axis; from Louisiana came Dr. Okey Ifediora.

Indeed, too many Umuahians, and many more sent their regrets, unable to come as they planned, as a result of very sudden but unavoidable developments. And what drives this commitment? Two things: memory and nostalgia. Many Umuahians have great memory of a once beautiful place from which most Umuahians gained the initial confidence to engage the world, and launch on to the great careers.

Many old Umuahians remember the great red roofs of well built houses shimmering in the horizon, as one descended into the valley from the long school drive, to a beautiful compound of well laid gardens, tropical trees, flower hedges, sculpted pines, finely mown lawns, the carpet green of the golf course, the upper and lower fields, the runs track, the botanical garden, the artificial pond that once had a crocodile, and from which many a student in biology got polliwogs for dissection. Many feel nostalgic for a well-stocked school - from its tuck shop to its laboratories, from its metal or wood workshop to its pantry and library. Many Umuahians understand the privilege of their education, for there was arguably no school in Nigeria, in terms of the sheer layout, that had all the resources available to the students at the Government College Umuahia.

By the time my generation came to Umuahia from the middle of the 1970s to the early 1980s, however, things had started to rot quite a little bit, but nothing compared to the picture of desiccation, the desolation which is Umuahia today: collapsed buildings, overgrown houses, empty labs, a thorough muddle. It is unfair, and it is a tragedy. It re-echoes in fact, that statement credited to the famous historian and former vice-chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Professor Tekena Tamuno, while addressing the convocation of the university in Trenchard hall in 1978: “all things bright and beautiful…Nigeria destroys” or words to that effect. The Government College Umuahia embodies that sense of tragedy; the destruction of heritage, which is at the roots of the Nigerian crisis.

How does a country allow the destruction of its best schools; places that have nurtured statesmen, great jurists, world-famous scientists, some of the greatest writers out of Africa in the 20th century, international civil servants, scholars, and distinguished public servants? Umuahia is, of course, not alone in its crisis. But that’s hardly a consolation. A look at the condition of Nigeria’s top boarding school for boys - Kings College, Lagos and the government colleges at Umuahia, Ibadan and Zaria (Barewa), reflects this tragedy, the result of a crisis of values, and a failure of policy. It speaks, perhaps even more intimately to the condition of an elite that emerged out of Nigeria: a subaltern elite which had very little awareness or interest in the programmatic nature of the public education policy designed to create an efficient, national work force from a “talented tenth.”

In any case, Umuahians came to Atlanta, determined to find a solution to the crisis in their alma mater; to retrieve it from its current miasma. In his message to Umuahians, through video conferencing, the novelist Chinua Achebe, himself a famous Umuahian, reminded the old boys that it took the selflessness of an English educator, Robert Fisher, who was neither kin nor sibling, to establish Umuahia and nurture it to become in Achebe’s words, “the best boarding school for boys in West Africa.” He reminded Umuahians that it was pay back time, to our children and their children after them, by ensuring that Umuahia was not only retrieved from its current crisis, but that we use our energies to ensure that more schools like the Government College and its sister schools are established in our life time. Umuahians deliberated thus, on a number of proposals to this end in Atlanta, buoyed more perhaps by the current picture of the school transmitted through video.

An important moment of the Atlanta meeting was the presence of the Nigerian minister for power, Mr. Liyel Imoke, whose father, the late Dr. S.E. Imoke, former minister in the Eastern Regional government, and an old man Umuahian was honoured for a true life of selfless service. But it was then also time, to take our formidable spouses, all those gals from Queens, Holy Child, Elelenwa, and St. Cathy, to the dance floor. Umuahians of course, don’t only know trigonometry, they also know to do some wicked steps. And we danced to the wee hours.