Commandant of the Navy Officers’ Wives Association (NOWA) Educational Centre, Karshi, Abuja, Lieut.-Commander Aondowase Mnguve, has expressed confidence that their students will excel as they transcend to the next phase of life, while the Vice-Principal (Academics), Mrs Chamberlain Chika, said the school was sending out products fit in learning and in character.

But in his goodwill message to the graduating 31 pioneer students of the NOWA Secondary School over the weekend, the Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Ibok Ette Ibas, looked beyond academics and addressed the moral issues challenging today’s youths nationwide. He charged:

“So, be determined to shun any tendency that may want to lure you into cybercrimes, terrorism and other misdeeds. Our great country Nigeria awaits you as great leaders of tomorrow. You, therefore, need to do the utmost to seek sound knowledge.”

In his uncommon humility of openly giving credit to subordinates, the commandant of the institution, which operates both primary and secondary sessions, equally commended the two vice-principals (Academics and Administration), for tenacity and the staff for “resourcefulness in bringing up the students on the firm foundation of hard work and discipline.”

The National President of NOWA, Mrs. Theresa Ibas, who tasked parents to ensure that the graduating students “continue to tread in the right path, gave kudos to their teachers for dedication and commitment to work, describing them as the source of the good morals and hard work of the students.

She devoted the rest of her speech in celebrating the successes of the school so far. Among them, their first position in Nasarawa State in the National Common Entrance and overall best position in the state in the 2016 Cowbell Pedia Mathematics Competition for Secondary Schools.

In praise of its location and scenery surroundings, a guest had observed: “It is a school with a natural capacity to make news. Its atmosphere and ambience is the type most investors in university education would pay any amount to locate. It is surprising none of the new universities springing up here and there today spotted that space long before the Naval Officers’ Wives Association did and located the NOWA Educational Centre, New Karshi, some six years ago. Today, the school is fast establishing itself in the ranking order far beyond Abuja.”

As the Vice-Principal in charge of Academics, Mrs. Chika, noted that the graduating set grew “with the discipline and high standards with which the pioneer Commandant, Commodore M O Amoda, inaugurated the school and which subsequent commandants have strengthened.”

Last Saturday’s graduation ceremony looked like amini-convocation, from the nature and sequence of activities to the spectacle of nursery kids decked in the school’s academic gown. They too were graduating, having completed the nursery segment. “It was captivating looking at those ones and their significance for Nigeria’s future,” said a parent. She added: “This also compels the question of how well Nigeria takes care of teachers, the most strategic intervening variable between these kids and the future.

Besides the dramatic performance and the choreography session enacted by some of the students, one could conclude that these children might be less stiff and more imaginative in their own time. May they not disappoint Nigeria!

After expressing gratitude to NOWA president and other stakeholders for the various contributions listed to their credit, the Commandant stressed how the school would continue to bombard the stakeholders with more requests for assistance, if they must “succeed in their determination to improve things.”

Mr. Ugoh, the vice-principal in charge of administration, stressed that the school might not be perfect, “but there is no going back on the determination to restore the old tradition in public schools. At the moment, the school is not only co-educational but open to every religion and race.”

•Photo shows some of the graduating students of NOWA Educational Centre, Karshi, Abuja.