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Friday, December 14, 2012

I’ve never given or taken bribe in my 52yrs in Nigeria – Guy Gargiulo, retired 80yr-old British principal

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I've never given or taken bribe in my 52yrs in Nigeria – Guy Gargiulo, retired 80yr-old British principal
Dec 14th 2012, 23:00

Chief Guy Gargiulo, a Briton, came to Nigeria 52 years ago and developed quality manpower in all fields at Ajuwa Grammar School, Oke-Agbe, Ondo State, where he was principal from 1963 to 1978. He has remained in the town till date. He shares his experiences with SUNDAY ABORISADE

At 80, what keeps you going?

There are certain things that I still make sure I do now as if I was a bit younger. I also keep my body and mind moving as much as possible. I used to tell my students that as you grow older, make sure you engage in trekking, don't go about in your car always.

How do you get your mind busy?

At the moment, I just finished writing a computer programme on bookkeeping for our company. The community here gave us four hectares of farm and I am always in the farm doing one or two things there. This area and this building belong to the old students, but they say I can stay there while I'm live. I have sold my own father's house in Italy and decided to put up this structure with the proceeds and decided to live in Oke-Agbe. This house, which is supposed to be a guest house by the way, consists of four rooms and four bathrooms.

What are the challenges that you are facing, having to stay here alone?

One major challenge I face here is the problem of network (signal); I can't access the internet. Another is the poor state of the roads; it is terrible. Transportation from Arigidi Akoko to Oke-Agbe is horrible. I have been waiting for somebody to come and use my printer to print some documents from my computer since four hours ago. I am expecting the person from Ikare. The public power supply in Ikare and its environs is terrible but here where I live, we have a solar system, which is fairly reliable during the day. Essentially, the poor state of roads in this area makes life very difficult for the people. We spend about half an hour to get to Ikare from here now and it is not supposed to take you up to 10 minutes if the roads are fixed.

How about loneliness?

I am not alone, I keep myself busy with my pets (snakes) and I have two or three of my old students who stay with me. In any case, staying alone doesn't worry me. I was also staying alone in the United Kingdom.

Tell us about your family life

I have no wife and I bear no child. I am not married, I have never been married and I don't hope to get married. I don't have a biological child, but I have plenty of children around because I am a teacher. I am sure this would sound very strange to you, but that is the way I choose to live my life.

Were you a reverend father?

No. My father is Italian, while my mother was English. People don't really worry about your marital status but in Italy, the outlook is somehow similar to what we have in Nigeria. They wondered why I chose not to get married and asked me whether I wanted to be a priest. I told them I didn't want to be a priest. I never wanted to. Remember the Bible itself advises you to remain without a wife if you can manage to hold yourself.

But you came to Oke-Agbe at a very youthful age, about 50 years ago, are you saying you were not tempted to go out with any of the beautiful girls then since you were not a priest?

(Prolonged laughter) You see, there are certain things I did when I was much younger in Nigeria which would have been difficult for me to do if I were married. For instance, having to work as a teacher in the Ilaje communities, completely riverside areas, which was considered as a punishment area for teachers in those days? People said to me then, 'What have you done (who did you offend) to be sent to Ilaje?' And I told them, 'I asked for it' and they said to me, 'Were ni e' (you are mad); why should you choose to come to a place like this?' If I had a wife and children, it would have been much more difficult for me to take such a decision. As a man, you are much freer if you can manage to stay without a wife.

What motivated you to come to a place like this?

I was at Igbobi College (Lagos) and I got many things working out for me, being in the city. However, some big men from Oke-Agbe community came to do something in Lagos and they saw me. They invited me to this place; they told me about Ajuwa College. They said the school was about to be closed down by the government because they could not find a principal. In any case, I love the countryside; I was not particularly keen about the city. I was brought here two or three times. I love the surroundings. The fact that there was no water in the school, no electricity, and no road encouraged me to make up my mind to do my little effort to change things. We were able to produce solar energy, we built a dam and we engaged in a lot of farming. Some parents used to come to me and tell me that they would not want their children to be farmers and I used to tell them that this is a farming area and that children from this area must do some farming. If they choose to do agriculture, it will be a mechanised one.

What is your greatest source of joy?

My greatest source of joy is seeing my children doing something useful. The records of many students who graduated from the school are very encouraging and delightful to me. I have never heard that any of my old students ended up as an 'agbero' (tout). I have several commissioners, commissioners of police; they have done very well in their various disciplines. Another thing is that, and which perhaps made the school famous, is that if a child was not academically good, I never believed that such a child cannot be made to do something useful. If one is not good inside the classroom, he should be able to do something good outside the classroom. For example, we have some machinery in the school. Some Americans and Dutch gave us some tractors. My boys started driving the tractors. But I also made sure that they must learn how to maintain them and grease them. One boy, who later became a journalist (Steve Iloh), was spectacular in that aspect. We have a big generator and two tractors and I am not a good mechanic. I went round to all the local roadside mechanics and I asked them whether they had any young boy, an apprentice who they were going to free so that I could engage him. One man gave me a young boy and I asked him whether he would want to be enrolled in my school and he said yes, but that he had no money and that his parents were poor. I decided to fund his education and took him on. He was quite exceptional. He really had the gift for mechanical things. At the end of the first year, the teacher said he had to repeat because he was the last in his class. I asked them about his behaviour and they said it was okay. I also asked them about his skill when it comes to repairing their alupupu (motorcycles) and they said, 'Oh marvellous!' I said he was not here to become an academic. He is a very good mechanic; he would set up his own one day. That was how he went up class by class until he took his school certificate examination. He got P8 in Yoruba and P8 in Religious Knowledge. 'O pari' teacher said, 'we told you he is useless!' I told them he is not and that he was just going to start his life. I wrote a testimonial that this young man, though not strong academically, has an excellent character and an outstanding mechanical ability. He took the piece of paper to Lagos and went round various companies, among which was RT Briscoe. The workshop manager, after he had read what I wrote in the boy's testimonial, asked him to remove a shaft and he did it without much stress. The manager was so surprised about the young man's skill and he took him up. The next year, they sent him to Sweden. The last thing I heard of him is that he is running his own company in Lagos and is doing extremely well with lots of apprentices. Well, such a person is not useless to Nigeria. Unfortunately, at the moment, we concentrate only on the academic certificate and without it you cannot get any job and many people will do all sorts of dubious things, including cheating and telling lies, to get one.

Do you have any regrets?

I don't think so. Although I am a very temperamental creature and I get angry at times, that is all. I never regret doing what I'm doing because it keeps me going. I have two quotes from Douglas Bader. He said, 'Rules are the obedience of fools and the guidance of the wise.' Another says, 'Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do this or that, that's nonsense. Make up your mind, you will never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school; join in all games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.' This Englishman had an accident and lost his two legs. He got artificial legs for himself and they were perfect. He even took part in the Second World War. The Germans took him as a prisoner and he tried to escape. The only way they could stop him was to take his wooden legs. We once broke a rule for one of our students, Oba Fajana, who later went to the World Bank as an Economist. He wanted to do his Higher School Certificate Examination at Christ School, Ado-Ekiti, in those days. He wanted to do Economics, Mathematics, and geography. This man did not do geography at the School Certificate level, but I knew that he was bright enough to start from the scratch and perform well in the HSC examination. The Geography master at Christ School insisted that the rule must be obeyed. He said since Fajana did not do Geography at the lower level, he would not be able to do it at the HSC level. I told him that the boy did not do Geography because we did not have a Geography teacher and that the boy was top of the class a year earlier when we had a teacher. He refused to enrol the boy so I went to the principal. He saw the evidence and overruled the Geography teacher and took the boy in. He changed the rule because of Fajana.

Which are your favourite foods, local or continental?

Everything that is there to eat, I also eat. I eat yam, rice, beans, fufu, semovita, pounded yam, eba, and amala with all the local soups available. I eat what the people in this area eat.

What of meat?

I eat fish and liver a lot, but I don't like meat with fat.

How did you instil discipline in your pupils?

I told them that the best form of discipline is self discipline. I do not confuse discipline with punishment. Many people do. I make use of corporal punishment. They are used to it. I don't change things suddenly. I don't have problems with pupils who break the school rules, but they should make sure they convince me that they have a good reason to break it. The teachers were not comfortable with this, they thought I was encouraging rioting but I wasn't.

You came to Nigeria when the country had just gained independence. Are you satisfied with the level of development thus far?

When I said I was coming to Nigeria, my people said yes, Africa is the continent of the future. However after that, Asia, which started late, had experienced wonderful development, while Africa remains underdeveloped after many decades of independence. Japan, for instance, was bombed out of existence. Now look at Japan today. Look at India, look at China. They are great countries. Even Malaysia. One of the reasons why African countries have remained underdeveloped is the lack of trust. People don't trust each other. Without trust, there can never be progress. Another reason is the high level of corruption everywhere in African countries. It is quite a lot in Nigeria. I have lots of stories that I won't share. In my 52 years in Nigeria, I have never given or taken bribe. It is very easy not to take and very difficult not to give.

Have you been offered a political appointment before by the state?

Yes. There was a time I was asked to come and be the chairman of the swimming association and I refused because I am not a swimmer. But they said that I started swimming in my school and produced stars and I said yes, we did the lake and our students were trained how to swim there.

How cordial is the relationship between you and the people in your immediate environment, I mean the Oke-Agbe people.

Yes, we're getting on well. The relationship is cordial. They help me a lot. Of the four current kings in the town, three of them are my former students. Of course you know there are four different kings in the town. I learnt the people came from different places and settled down here.

You speak Yoruba language, how did you learn it?

I listen to people as they speak it and watch the actions that go with it. I respect the Yoruba a lot for their proverbs: you know the wisdom of a nation lies in its proverbs and Yoruba is very rich in proverbs. I started learning the language when I started teaching at Igbobi College in Lagos.

Are you still having problems with the immigration in your bid to secure permanent residency through naturalisation?

That is my major source of worry in this country. I keep on wondering why it is still difficult for me to get necessary papers that will make me become a Nigerian after staying here for 52 years, developing hundreds of quality manpower in various fields. All the senior immigration officers I had confronted over the issue agreed with me that I deserve it, but that the system prevented them from doing it. They have to obey the rules anyway. There was even a time that a controller of immigration in Akure almost stopped me from extending my stay. I am not happy at all because it is affecting Nigeria's reputation abroad. The perception of Nigeria abroad is not too good. The only stories you hear about this country is that the people commit fraud, engage in 419 and all sorts of things. I have a visiting visa, which I extend from time to time. Initially, it lapses in six months, later it was reduced to three months. I can't even renew in this country again going by a new rule unless I get naturalised. I think my old boys are doing something in that regard at the moment.

Do you have plans to relocate to either Italy or United Kingdom?

No; not at all. I wrote in my will: 'Bury me where I die.'

Education then and now, what is your impression?

I'm not encouraged by what I see and hear about our education system in this country at all. (Though) more people are being educated, the standard has really dropped and I am not happy with the way it is now. I pasted the map of the world and out of 100 secondary school pupils, very few of them could locate Africa on the map, while a majority of them could also not find Nigeria on the map of Africa. It is as bad as that. In those days primary school pupils could identify any country on the map easily.

So, what in your opinion are the reasons for the drop in the quality or standard of education in this country?

We have teachers who cannot teach. All they do now is copy something from textbooks inside a notebook, and give to a student to copy on the board for other students so that they can copy in their individual notebooks, with lots of distortions along the line because there was no accurate explanation before or after the notes had been copied. When I was teaching at Ilaje, a young Geography teacher was telling his students that the ocean is water and that the Atlantic Ocean is between Africa and America. No map, no illustration. He never thought of saying that we were about two or three kilometres away from the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the students there either swam in the Atlantic Ocean or fished in it, but the teacher had succeeded in making them think the ocean is thousands of kilometres away by his explanation. Many teachers complain about shortage of teaching aids, what about the various natural ones around them?

What aspects of our culture fascinate you?

The Yoruba proverbs, but unfortunately they are dying now. For instance, I used one of the proverbs to get the community here to clear the land where we built our dam. They did not want to do it initially so I took permission from a priest one Sunday afternoon during church service. I said, 'Agbalagba kii wa l'oja, k'ori omo tuntun wo' (An elder would not watch and see the head of a baby bend at the back of its mother without adjusting it), and I stormed out of the place in annoyance. The next day, the whole town came together and cleared the bush.

At what stage did you start rearing snakes?

When I came here from Lagos, I saw that everybody here, young and old, was in a state of fear. They feared charms, they feared failure, they were even afraid of animals around them. I told myself that I could not teach people in a state of fear. So I made up my mind to overcome fear in myself. I feared snakes a lot then and I killed all the snakes I saw. Two years after when I went back to the United Kingdom, I went to read some books in the London zoo. I picked up a book on snakes. I found out that snakes are animals. Some are very, very dangerous and you have to be careful with them, but some are totally harmless. In fact, over 70 per cent specie of snakes have no poisonous venom in them. Pythons, which I have at home, have no poison at all and they are absolutely harmless. They have small teeth, but they cannot bite. Even if they do, nothing will happen to you. I wouldn't play with them if they were dangerous. Young children come here and I encourage them to play with them.

What is your general advice to Nigerians?

Parents should find out what their children are interested in and encourage them to achieve it instead of trying to force them into doing things they are not really interested in doing. They should be interested in their children's class work. They should not leave it for the teachers alone. Gbenga Omotoso of The Nation newspaper wrote to me sometimes ago and thanked me for advising him to become a journalist. He said I was his counsellor. I did not do Guidance and Counselling in school, but I study children and try to find out what their interests are. All teachers should also take a special interest in their students and help them develop their talents. The government should also do everything possible to stop the senseless attacks on innocent people in the Northern part of the country.

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