From Aniekan Aniekan, Calabar
Professor Emmanuel Attoe, the Global Coordinator, Class of ’74 of the Hope Waddell Training Institution, says corruption is destroying Nigeria’s school system.
Professor Attoe made this known during the 50th-anniversary celebration of the admission of students of the class into the Hope Waddell Training Institution, Calabar.
“We don’t have a school system any longer. Even in the university, every year, the standard keeps dropping, and it’s an eyesore.
“It’s the corruption in the country, sorry to say it, because people are not earning wages that can take them home. There is no merit for hard work.
“It just boils down to the system, and it gets worse yearly. The solution is for our institutions to do the right thing,” he said.
He decried the present boarding system, saying it’s no longer what it used to be and that he cannot send his children to a boarding school.
He said the experience they had as students at Hope Waddell fifty years ago really moulded them and has helped take them this far in life.
Also speaking, Ntufam Hilliard Eta, a former acting national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said the institution helped shape their lives and they are always grateful for this.
“Some of us have attained the pinnacle of our careers. It’s not the tertiary education that we have had but basically Hope Waddell that shaped our lives.
“Hope Waddell is an experience that is so valuable that you cannot estimate it,” he said.
As part of the celebration, the Class of ’74 of the school laid a wreath at the statue of a former principal, Elder Effiong Ukpong Aye.