A WELCOME ADDRESS BY CHIEF JOHNSON MODIKA BAROVBE, JP.,

THE MANAGING DIRECTOR OF WESTMINSTER COLLEGE LAGOS

ON THE OCCASION OF THE 7TH VALEDICTORY SERVICE AND

GRADUATION CEREMONY ON 13TH JULY 2009

It is with great pleasure and delight that I welcome you to the 7^th Valedictory Service and Graduation Ceremony of our College.

The graduating students today, forty-six in number, have honourably spent  six good and profitable academic years here, in Westminster College Lagos.

I want to sincerely thank the graduating students for obeying the college rules and regulations and also keeping to the ethos of  Westminster College Lagos.  I am indeed grateful to you.  It will be unfair if I do not appreciate the contributions of the parents who laboured diligently to source the funds for which tuition and boarding fees are settled.  To the parents I sincerely say thank you.

We are proud to label Westminster College Lagos as a family institution of learning for the reasons which are not far fetched; class sizes are small and every child is known by his first name, and in some cases there are two, three or four students from the same parents studying here.

We have evolved a deliberate policy, a deviation from the orthodox and regimental rules of running boarding houses.  In that vein, parents are allowed to visit the college at any time to ask about their children’s progress.  The frequency of interaction brings about mutual co-operation and understanding between the parents and the teaching staff.

With this understanding, parents are happy, teachers are delighted and students feel much more at home.  Consequently, parents usually say that Westminster College Lagos is a place to live, learn and grow up.

Here in Westminster College Lagos, we believe in hard work, dedication to duty and discipline.  We teach family values, community relation and good neigbourliness.

Some of our students have extrapolated the Westminster College Lagos belief in hard work into their tertiary institutions.  Last year 2008, a student from Westminster College Lagos was the best overall at the University of Lagos (Unilag) diploma examination.  The student is Mr Hafeez Musa, who had the highest GP at the diploma course.  We consider that achievement a great feat in academic realm.

Another student from Westminster College Lagos,  Miss Peace Okugbo graduated last year 2008 from  Covenant University with a first class degree in Accounting and was  adjudged as one of the best students in the accounting department of  Covenant University.

INTERNATIONAL COMMENDATION

The most intriguing was the commendation letter we received from a University in England that recruited 5 students from Westminster College Lagos last year 2008 to do the University Foundation Course.

Those students were at the top of their classes and the University could not conceal the development but wrote to congratulate us.

HOLIDAY  CAMPS

Westminster College Lagos is developing an International policy which will initiate our students in the global world affairs and we are starting this programme by August 2009 by sending 25 students to Camp Beaumouth in Norwich in the United Kingdom, where they will meet and interact with other students from various countries.  This will be a yearly routinization with the intention to go to camps in other countries in the future, and by the time a student leaves Westminster College Lagos, he or she may be proud to say ‘I have visited Ghana, South Africa, UK, US or

Canada’.  We believe that, apart from knowing the immediate community, a student should be able to discover the world other than seeing it only through maps and  websites.

The University Foundation Course at

Westminster College Lagos.

Last  year 2008, we did send out nineteen students who graduated from  Westminster College Lagos,  to various  universities in the United Kingdom and United States of America to do four  years to obtain their first  degree.  Now, with the economic or financial  melt down, our friendly  universities in the United Kingdom have arranged  with us here at  Westminster College Lagos to start the ‘One Year University Foundation  Course’  in September 2009.

On completion of the University Foundation Course, students will move to Universities in the United Kingdom (UK) to do three more years to obtain their first degree in engineering, economics, business management accounting, law and sciences. 

However, the students who will go to  the University  of Buckingham on the completion of  the One Year University Foundation course here in Westminster College Lagos, will only spend  two years in the UK to obtain the first degree in economics, accounting, business management,  law, politics, marketing and sciences.

It is the University of Buckingham that will set up the One Year University Foundation Course here at Westminster College Lagos.  The University of Buckingham will be the regulatory authority for the programme.

Therefore,  I wish to advise Nigeria parents to take this opportunity to save one year tuition and accommodation fees,  maintenance allowance, in Pounds sterling in the UK by sending their children to Westminster College Lagos for the One Year University Foundation Course, before proceeding to the UK.

I want to seize this opportunity to thank the Chairman, Deacon Gamaliel O. Onosode,  OFR and members of the Board of Governors who have discussed the  University Foundation Programme, gave meaningful suggestions and approved the programme to take off in September 2009.