The Culture of Secondary School Reunion; Past and Present -By Aliyu Idris

It is an undeniable fact that seeing or meeting your secondary school classmates reincarnate memories shared together, after successful completion of secondary school every one of us travels through different paths of life and you will be nostalgically reminiscing the good times you had during the old school days, everybody will be eagerly waiting to meet his or her missed colleagues.  

Reunion is the one of the major way to meet all or almost everyone from your class and graduated students, apart from uniting the dispersed colleagues, you will meet your friends and other graduated students whom you graduated the same year from same school, you will also have a refreshment.

Reunion as a basic element for unification of graduated students gives us an avenue to know about the lives of our friends and colleagues whom we studied together after graduation, a lot of people attends secondary school reunions almost everyone not all, the secondary school  reunion in the past was unlike of this our generation, why because despite meeting your friends and colleagues, knowing about the life of everyone, the gathered participants  make contribution(s) to aid the status of one them who is in need of help financially and socially this has been the culture practise mostly in the reunion events Nationwide especially among our parents, elderly people, etc. In the past and still today, The Reunionese travels from far places of the world from Enugu to Sokoto, Imo to Bayelsa,  Yobe to Lagos and from home to abroad for the purpose of reunion which always end remarkable, memorable and successful.

The reunioneses of the past generation also make donation(s) to their graduate school(s), to patients in the hospitals, orphanage homes, they also contribute heavily on the development and advancement of their Alma mater(s) which includes provision of the items that are scarce in the school, building of class(es) or hall(s), the alumni/alumnae in various schools made the aforementioned gestures which is part of their vision,mission and their culture.

Today in our generation the story is different, reunions were organised and are still organising, the Reunioneses of our generation takes a different dimension, and it is rare for alumni/alumnae to organise a reunion inside their Alma maters which supposed to be their venue for such occasion not restaurants, hotels, or parks. It is disheartening that in our era reunion are taking place without invitation of teachers.

It is also hardly for the generation of our time to keep the culture of the occasion as I stated but rather making it a Surveillance camera for hypocrisy and contempt among them. Reunioneses of our generation attends reunion event only to eat, drink, to take portrait pictures, post them on social media for comments, reactions, likes and acting rich while they are most humanitarian poor.

Our former classmates want to know how are we doing, did we excel than them or they excel than us vice versa, we find such mentality in reunion occasions, Being successful or unsuccessful should not be our concern, our priority should be helping ourselves and the school that taught us everything about knowledge, moral and how to live a better life. Some reunion events do not end happily, sometimes it leads to fighting and conceive hatred among them, which is probably shameful and peccable to how  and what reunion is known.

Sometimes the misunderstanding arises between the organisers and participants from different angles, if you are organizing reunion avoid any kind of misunderstanding be sincere to your fellow alumni/alumnae, we all know the complexity of human character let’s control ourselves and behave matured. Just imagine you gathered for unity but end in enmity, these issues have to be stopped, If reunion cannot unite us and  keep our bond, then there is no use of organising it, since it separate us.  We should follow the footsteps of our elderly people in organizing reunion occasions, retain their culture of reunion is worthy of emulation. 

It’s sad to experiences the lavish dissipation of money on unnecessary reunions taking place in hotels, event centres and parks not spending on the school that nurtured us.

Dear fellow alumni/alumnae secondary school reunion should not be an event for contempt, hypocrisy, but an event which will unite us to sit down and contribute positively to our Alma maters either educationally, financially, morally or socially. Even after graduating from the school we still have role(s) to play and to reciprocate our Alma maters in the best way we can.

Our secondary schools needs us let’s make every reunion inside our schools and spend the contributed funds on the development of the school through purchasing of items not available in the school or provision of useful educational materials.

 Aliyu Idris was born in Jimeta , he goes to Bayero University, Kano.