Government College, Ibadan

Government College Ibadan, (founded February 28, 1929), is a "boys only" secondary school located on the hills of Apata Ganga in Ibadan, Nigeria.

History

The expatriate Founding Fathers were Selwyn McGregor Grier, who conceived the idea of setting up the school, and V.B.V Powell, the first principal of the school. Government College was modeled after the British secondary boarding schools of the era, and the first set of students numbered twenty-nine. During the Second World War, the school temporarily moved to several sites before finally resettling back at its original site.

Curriculum

All students were required to complete a number of core courses in the Arts and Sciences. The courses were designed so that all students, no matter what their strengths were, obtained the basic skills of critical thinking, effective writing, effective oral communication, library literacy, laboratory competency, creative thinking and problem solving. The school was a Centre of Excellence for cricket and field hockey. The school also had an Officer Cadet Corps that offered instruction camps in precision field drills, adventure training and the cadets were introduced to the principles of meritocracy.

Laurels in academics

In the period before the dissolution of the Western Region, Nigeria, the school earned the enviable fame of being the best secondary school in Nigeria. It had well-resourced classrooms and laboratories. As the school grew in numbers, in reputation and in fame, its students constantly achieved high scores for exam results at O-Level and A-Level. In the decade of the sixties, over 78 distinctions were obtained by Government College students in the examinations, an unprecedented achievement in Nigeria. Suffice it to say that the school boldly summoned in the decade of the seventies by upholding its laurels, in both the academic and extracurricular fields. The school has produced over 80% of the presidents of the Nigerian Society of Engineers since its inception, and one of the four Africans in history to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

School houses

Prominent alumni

External links

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