By Ozioruva Aliu

BENIN CITY – THE leadership and members of the 1992 set of the Anglican Grammar School Igarra Old Boys Association ANGSIOBA ’92 have drawn the attention of the Sen. Monday Okpebholo-led administration to the poor state of facilities and the alarming rate of encroachment into the school land.

The group called on the state government to embark on perimeter fencing of the schoolland to secure what is left from being further encroached on and recover what has been wrongly taken from the school.

This position was taken at the Old Boys 2024 Annual General Meeting (AGM)which was hosted in Enwan, Akoko-Edo local government by Professor Emmanuel Ogbomida and Egr. Samuel Akao.

Speaking to the media after the meeting, the president of the association, Clinton Akande said the set also expressed concern over the decaying facilities in the almost 70 years old premier secondary school in the area including lack of security which has led to the vandalism of classrooms, removing of tiles on the floors of some classrooms, ceilings and window fittings apparently by encroachers to use in their buildings.

According to Akande “The school is being largely encroached by outsiders though we don’t know who they are so much so that you could see everything inside the school from all the areas they have encroached and built structures.

“We are calling on the government of the day to see what can be done to fence the school because it is a capital-intensive project and that would help salvage what is left of the land.

“That is a school that has produced high-profile personalities across all sectors of life including a former Vice President of this country, high-profile traditional rulers, people in the academia, oil and gas, banking, law and other fields of endeavour. This school has the potential to produce more of these and we call on Governor Monday Okpebholo to look into this urgently as part of his efforts to change the narratives in the administration of the state,” Akande said.

He said a committee set up to interface with the principal of the school has also visited the school where it has also discovered that the Assembly Hall was in very poor shape without doors, burglar bars and chairs.