Your Excellencies,
Your Royal Majesty,
Honourable Members of the National and State Assemblies,
Honourable Ministers and Commissioners,
The National Grand Patron and National Patrons of the Govt. College Umuahia Old Boys Association,
Members of the National and Branch Executives,
Members of the Press,
Fellow Umuahians.

I am very happy indeed to welcome you to this epoch making event. Never in the History of this revered institution have Old Boys decided to rehabilitate structures in this school at such a large scale. We had to do it at such a large scale because the scale of dilapidation was so large. In fact, we wondered how the students managed to live and sleep in these dormitories. We looked at our AD Block, the authority of our school, the roof was all rusted and leaking, the asbestos walls were broken, the wood of the floor was all eaten up.

The National Executive was elected in June 2004 and immediately, our focus was defined, our vision and mission unmistakable. We knew we might not be able to do all we wanted to do but we had to make a start.
Some people looked at the enormity of the task ahead and refused appointments into committees.

The first letter, “A Clarim Call to All Umuahians” went out to all our Old Boys on 27th May 2005 from the National President, I said in hat letter” All hands must be on deck to achieve our goals as I believe we owe something to Government College Umuahia. People are rebuilding their old schools with the help of their friends and associates, “I had a helping hand from Obi Nwakanma in the USA who wrote in the Vanguard – a feature captioned “Umuahia, A call to duty”.
We had o look up to our Old Boy Governors of Abia and Imo States who did their bit but our great help came through Dr. Edmund Daukoru, then Minister of State for Petroleum and now Hs Royal Majesty King Edmund Daukoru, The Mingi XII of Nembe.
At first it was not easy to ‘catch’ Daukoru. He was as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel – Oil Minister, Chairman of OPEC, today in Venezuela, tomorrow in Canada, but one of our young girls, Dr, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, our wonderful Finance Minister stepped in and helped us to make an appointment with Dr. Daukoru. What we saw as the launching of the Government College Umuahia Old Boys Association Endowment Fund in September 2006 was due to Daukoru’s influence. He provided the Chairman, The Chief Launcher and the oil industry. Ninety percent of the money we raised came from associates and friends of Dr. Daukoru.

We are grateful to him for his commitment to his Alma Mater. The planning and execution of the launching itself was due to the hard work and commitment of the organizing Committee in Abuja led by Dr. Joe Aguolu, the Abuja Branch Chairman and Professor E.E. Okon, a retired but not tired Professor of Engineering Mathematics who with his dear wife hosted all meetings of the Committee.
I wish to appreciate the Port-Harcourt and Lagos branches who came in forcefully and totally to raise funds for the preparatory stage.
I commend other branches whose contributions helped to make the launching the great success it was.

In December 2006, a Board of Trustees was formed by the National Executive Committee. This Board, headed by Prof. V.C Ike managed the fund realized and supervised:

1. The rehabilitation of the AD Block
2. The rehabilitation of Fisher House
3. The rehabilitation of Simpson House.
4. Preliminary studies into providing water in strategic locations in the college community.

The first three have been largely completed as you can see, even casually, but the last which we decided to do with help from the Abia State Government and the World Bank is still awaiting execution. We believe in the not distant future that it will be achieved.

I want to pay tribute to Barrister Lucus Nwosu, an Old Boy, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who is unavoidably absent today.
Barrister Nwosu was represented at the launching and donated handsomely but when he came to the college and saw what was going on he decided on his own to rehabilitate his house – New House. That house is being commissioned today. He is in faraway Europe looking for money with which to do more for his beloved Umuahia.

I sincerely hope that this example will be a challenge to all of us here, particularly Umuahians, to choose a project, get and pay a contractor to carry out the project for the use of our students and to the Glory of God.

We invited our Old Boy, Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, the National Chairman of the largest part in Black Africa, the People’s Democratic Party as the Chief Guest of Honour. We have no doubt that he and his friends will even do more than Daukoru and his friends did for the college.
We also invited the Governors of all Eastern States since the Eastern Nigeria Government inherited the school from the Colonial Government like Government College Ibadan, Ughelli and Barewa College. Please regard this college as yours and support it.

To our Host Governor, His Excellency, Chief T.A Orji we thank you for the wonderful reception and assistance you have given us. Apart from the fact that we still need more, we want to make particular observations.
The Old Boys are interested in returning the school to is pre civil war status when we had students from all over Nigeria, the Cameroun’s, Ghana and Sierra Leone. We are asking our Eastern Governors in particular to send children from their states here and to help us improve facilities in the school.

W the Old Boys know that our school was special, that is why it was the only Government College in Eastern Nigeria, the others were Government Secondary Schools!
We want the Abia State Ministry of Education to allow Principals to exercise discipline in the school, our housemasters must be encouraged to work with appropriate allowances. Without being chauvinistic, since this is an all boys school the number of female teachers should be drastically reduced as the male teachers population is increased. Our teachers should be given accommodation in the school premises to effectively maintain discipline. Those transferred out should make room for those transferred in or those in.

A system where more than half of the school population is made up of day students does not make for discipline. There is no need to make classes unbearably large, teachers do not know their students. We plead passionately that the whole idea of day students should be abolished from the next school year. Once the dormitories have been rehabilitated, there will be enough room to cater for about on thousand students.

Your Excellencies, our dear guests, we are happy you could make it to Government College Umuahia. For some, their fathers were once students here, for others one brother or relative was or is here. Please look around, help us and consider this your school.

Thank you and God bless you
Dr. Emmanuel Ukpong
National President