The glamour of Basico Alumni Dinner, by Gambo Dori
The Annual Reunion Dinner of the Basico Alumni Association was held on the penultimate Saturday in the splendid Continental (formerly Sheraton) Hotel, Abuja.
It was a night of glitz and glamour.
Yet besides all that, it was apparent that there were solid intentions to found a platform that would bring together the beneficiaries of the sound education provided by the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) of the 1970s and 80s to fraternise and think of ways of giving back to their alma mater, now in its hour of need.
They succeeded immensely as the dinner brought together the high and mighty of the Nigerian society that had the common background of the SBS of that era.
The Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the ABU council, Yayale Ahmed, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Kabir Bala and the national president of the ABU Alumni, Adamu Mamman Kontagora, were all part of the dinner.
READ ALSO: “My 1982 memories of SBS, ABU Zaria,” by Engr. Bello Gwarzo Abdullahi
It was founded with the vision of accelerating the production of university graduates from the northern states of the time.
In the late 1960s, the military governors of the northern states under the aegis of the Interim Common Services Agency (ICSA) realised that only a handful of young and capable secondary school leavers from the North were benefitting from university education. Even ABU itself, the only university in the North, was heavily dominated by students from other parts of the country.
This was worrisome to the governors as it was slowing down the growth of the needed indigenous high-level manpower required for rapid development and for correcting the age-old imbalance between the northern states and other parts of the country.
The creation of the SBS was ABU’s ingenious solution to the gnawing problem.
The university provided a broad-based programme that was competitive and comparable to the traditional HSC programme in scope, depth of knowledge and one that was not dependent upon an external examination system.
The solution would not compromise standards and at the same time deal with the situation at hand.
Qualified students were admitted straight from the fifth form into the programme, and they lived on the university campus and were taught by university tutors, using university facilities such as classrooms, labs and libraries.
READ ALSO: Basico Alumni Chairman, Dr. Ndanusa, OON, appointed Taskiran Minna
SBS started with only about 40 students in the Arts and Social Science set in 1970 and added the science component the following year.
I joined the SBS in 1972 with the 3rd set of the Arts and Social Science class.
When I arrived in Zaria, I found it a world apart from the secondary school I came from.
Follow the Neptune Prime channel on WhatsApp:
Do you have breaking news, interview request, opinion, suggestion, or want your event covered? Email us at neptuneprime2233@gmail.com
