By HUMPHREY NWAFOR

By now, the controversy surrounding the proposed land concession at Federal Government College Kano should have provoked a national debate. Yet the loudest response from many of those who should care most has been silence. Not the silence of ordinary Nigerians who may not fully understand what is at stake. Not even the silence of government officials who often hide behind bureaucracy when challenged. The real silence is from those who benefited from the Unity Schools and should know better.

This is no ordinary alumni community. Among the products of the Unity School system are some of Nigerias most influential figures, including Abdulsamad Rabiu, one of Africas leading industrialists; Senate President Godswill Akpabio; Defence Minister Christopher Musa; Head of Service Didi Walson-Jack; and many others across business, politics, the military, the judiciary, public administration, academia, law, banking, diplomacy, and the professions. The point is not to accuse any individual of wrongdoing. The point is more serious. A network with such reach, access, wealth, authority, and influence cannot pretend to be powerless when the institutions that helped produce it are under threat. Many Unity School alumni became who they are today because Nigeria invested in them. They received education, exposure, discipline, confidence, and a national network that many families could not have provided alone. They were placed in schools where they lived with Nigerians from every region, religion, language, and ethnic group.

They became more than educated. They became Nigerian. That was the purpose of the Unity Schools. These schools were not ordinary boarding schools. They were among Nigeria’s most deliberate post-civil-war nation-building projects. They were created to make young Nigerians live together, study together, compete together, disagree together, grow together, and learn to see one another as Nigerians before anything else.

For decades, that vision worked. The schools produced friendships across ethnic lines, marriages across regions and religions, business partnerships, professional networks, political alliances, and lifelong bonds that no government slogan could have manufactured. They gave young Nigerians the lived experience of national integration.

Former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo captured this clearly when he addressed the 50th anniversary of Federal Government College, Kaduna. He described the Unity Schools as institutions established to foster national unity through their location, admission policy, federal character, curriculum, patriotism, collaboration, tolerance, and inter-relationship. He reminded Unity School alumni that Nigeria had invested resources in them to make them different, to make them ambassadors and apostles of Nigerian unity, oneness, and integration. He said they could and must do more. That is the real issue.

If the Unity Schools produced a generation of Nigerians who benefited from national investment, then those beneficiaries cannot pretend that they owe nothing to the institutions that produced them. What is the meaning of success if it carries no responsibility? If the Unity Schools produced ministers, senators, generals, captains of industry, judges, bankers, lawyers, permanent secretaries, diplomats, academics, and public intellectuals, should those men and women not have accumulated enough wisdom, influence, expertise, institutional memory, and productive networks to help preserve the very schools that produced them? Should they need to be begged to understand that school land is not idle land? Should they need to be reminded that land is the future capacity of a school? Should they need to be persuaded that public educational assets should not be converted into private real estate opportunity under the convenient label of PPP?

This is what makes the silence troubling. The issue is not merely that they are quiet. The issue is that their silence raises questions about the content of the education they received. Did the Unity Schools produce responsible citizens, or only successful individuals? Did they produce people who know how to rise, but not how to give back? Did they produce influence without courage, wealth without public duty, and access without allegiance to Nigeria? To whom do these prominent alumni owe their first allegiance: politics or Nigeria? Government patronage or national memory? Personal comfort or public duty?

The controversy at Federal Government College Kano is not only about Pluck Global. The Pluck deal is merely the immediate example. Pluck Global’s own proposal confirms the point: it is a 24-month construction, renovation, and procurement package valued at N8.511 billion in exchange for 40 per cent of FGC Kano’s land, not a sustainable funding model for the school. It is troubling, unfair, and objectionable in itself. But the deeper issue is the thinking behind it. Selling, swapping, concessioning, or alienating school land to fund infrastructure is not a sustainable solution. It solves nothing. If school land is sold today to rebuild classrooms, hostels, roads, laboratories, or other facilities, what will be sold in ten years when those facilities decay again? What will be sold when the next round of maintenance is due? What will be sold when the school needs expansion, technical facilities, staff housing, farms, sports infrastructure, or security buffers? The answer to the decay of Unity Schools cannot be the sale of the assets required for their future.

Even if every process had been perfect, the policy would still be wrong. Even if every approval had been obtained, the policy would still be wrong. Even if every document had been properly signed, the policy would still be wrong. Unity School land is not a disposable funding source. It is part of the long-term educational infrastructure of the nation.

The land on which Federal Government Colleges were built was not accidental. These campuses were deliberately established on large expanses of land because the schools were meant to grow, feed, house, train, and sustain generations of students. Land is the future capacity of the school: expansion, agriculture, sports, laboratories, workshops, staff housing, security, and long-term sustainability.

It is not surplus because it has not yet been built upon. It is not idle because government has failed to use it wisely. It is not available for private real estate because government has failed to maintain the institution. A policy that consumes the permanent assets of a school to solve recurring maintenance failure is not reform. It is institutional cannibalism.

This is why the reported existence of similar arrangements involving other Unity Schools is alarming. If eighteen other schools are affected, then the issue is no longer only FGC Kano. It is a national policy danger. It suggests that the permanent assets of Unity Schools across the country may be treated as expendable property to be traded away in the name of development. That cannot be the future of public education. It cannot be the model for sustaining schools. It cannot be the reward for decades of national investment. 

The cure for decay cannot be dispossession.

The question of intent can no longer be avoided. If the schools do not gain, and Nigeria does not gain, then the beneficiaries are plainly those acquiring, developing, allocating, approving, facilitating, or profiting from the conversion of public-school land into private real estate. That is the real transaction. Not education. Not reform. Not sustainability. Public educational assets are being transferred into private hands under the convenient disguise of PPP, and the decay of the schools is being used as the excuse. That is asset-stripping dressed up as development, and no serious beneficiary of the Unity School system should be silent in the face of it.

That is why this protest must not be misunderstood. FGCKOSA is not saying that FGC Kano should remain dilapidated. It is not rejecting reform. It is not saying private-sector support is impossible. It is not arguing that alumni alone should dictate government policy. FGCKOSA is already working on a ten-year sustainability plan for FGC Kano. That is the conversation government should be having with alumni. How can alumni networks, old students, corporate partners, foundations, legacy donors, and responsible public institutions fund, rebuild, maintain, and sustain these schools without selling their land? That is the real solution. A sustainable school system requires recurring funding, transparent management, maintenance discipline, alumni participation, donor confidence, asset protection, and measurable outcomes. It does not require the permanent loss of school land.

The irony is painful. The very people who should know this best are the people who have remained quiet. 

Where are the captains of industry, senators, governors, permanent secretaries, judges, generals, senior lawyers, bankers, diplomats, academics, and public servants who once wore Unity School uniforms? Where are those who speak of national unity in public but disappear when one of the countrys most important instruments of unity is threatened? Where are those who celebrate their old schools at anniversaries, reunions, dinners, and award nights but say nothing when the land, future, and integrity of those schools are at stake?

Where are those with access to the President, ministers, legislators, regulators, business leaders, media institutions, and the courts of public opinion? If their voices cannot be heard now, when should they be heard? At what point does silence become cowardice? At what point does neutrality become complicity? At what point does discretion become betrayal?

There are moments when silence is wisdom. There are moments when silence is restraint. There are moments when silence prevents unnecessary conflict. But there are also moments when silence is surrender. There are moments when silence is self-preservation disguised as prudence. There are moments when silence is a refusal to accept responsibility. This is one of those moments.

The call is not merely for government to act. The call is for those prominent alumni who have benefited from these schools to use their influence now. Let them demand that the Federal Government cancels the Pluck Global deal. Let them demand the cancellation, suspension, and full public review of every similar land-swap or PPP arrangement involving Unity School assets. Let them demand disclosure of the eighteen other schools reportedly affected. Let them demand that alumni bodies be allowed to present asset-preserving alternatives for the rehabilitation, modernization, and sustainable funding of Unity Schools. Let them insist that no Unity School land should be sold, swapped, concessioned, alienated, or converted into private real estate as a condition for providing infrastructure to the school.

This should not require extraordinary courage. It should be automatic.

If these alumni are truly successful, their success should have produced more than titles, offices, wealth, and access. It should have produced judgment. It should have produced gratitude. It should have produced responsibility. It should have produced the instinct to protect the institutions that formed them. It is not enough to have passed through a Unity School. The real question is whether the values of those schools passed through you.

Institutions, just like nations, do not die only because enemies attack them. They also die because beneficiaries abandon them. They die because those who owe them the most choose comfort over courage. They die because those with access refuse to use it. They die because those with influence pretend not to see.

That is why this matter is larger than FGC Kano.

It is about the future of every Unity School. It is about whether public educational assets can be quietly converted into private commercial opportunity under the language of reform. It is about whether alumni networks exist only for nostalgia, photographs, dinners, donations, and WhatsApp messages, or whether they can become serious custodians of public legacy. It is about whether those who were lifted by national investment understand that they now have a duty to lift and protect the institutions that lifted them. The issue is no longer whether these alumni love their old schools. That is easy to say at anniversaries and reunions. The issue is whether they will defend those schools when defence has a cost.

If they cannot demand the cancellation of land-for-infrastructure deals, if they cannot demand disclosure of the other affected schools, if they cannot demand that alumni be allowed to present sustainable alternatives, then their silence is not caution. It is abandonment.

And if those who benefited most from the Unity Schools cannot stand up now, then perhaps the greater tragedy is not that public officials may be trading away school land, the greater tragedy is that the schools may have produced many successful people without successfully imbuing them with character.

History is rarely kind to silence, especially the silence of those best positioned to speak. Because in moments like this, silence does not merely avoid the story.

Silence becomes the story.

•Mazi Nwafor writes from Lekki, Lagos.