Ombaci stretches to be ‘first among equals

44/50: St. Joseph’s Ombaci. The College founded by Verona Fathers was the paragon of academic excellence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The virtues of hard work, honesty and endurance made its alumni high achievers. The pluses are hard to rub on present generation students.

Its quadrilateral setting and all-round concrete enclosure manifest a physical guard for something priceless. Administrators may have employed the fortification to cage the students of St. Joseph’s College Ombaci, but it helped reshape their psyche, refine character and illuminate the future.
Named after Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, Ombaci College in Arua District enjoyed distinction for exceptional performance, becoming a pacesetter in West Nile – and beyond.

Hard work and honesty are virtues students learned and the school’s motto, Primus Inter Pares (First Among Equals) placed them on the tenterhooks not just to outshine, but also endure. Religious strictness brought the reward of moral rectitude.

Students that slipped in academics were summarily dismissed and colleagues likened this unceremonious exit to being “blown away by monsoon winds’. Thus no Ombaci student wanted to exit prematurely, and or disgracefully, after enrolling with good aggregate.

The reading culture was deeply entrenched that fraught students carried cold water in washbowls to classrooms and dipped their feet in it to stay awake and read at night! They used tilley lamps to light the classroom for the evening preps or ungodly midnight reading session.
This perhaps was a bizarre re-enactment of Joseph-the-carpenter’s devotion, but it yielded some stellar results.

Radio boys
In mid-1970, Ombaci produced Mr Goffin Candria as East Africa’s best student in the regional examinations. The excel button had been switched-on, the brittle political situation notwithstanding.
Succeeding at the college, and in life, was guaranteed for the students that they became confident of the future.

When the Italian head teacher, Fr. Mich Lino Marco, suddenly died in an accident, his deputy Hercules Abiriga took stewardship of the institution rather seamlessly. The performance remained outstanding and Ombaci was the academic juggernaut in the 1980s and early 1990s.

About 90 per cent of students who took S4 examinations at the college passed in Division One. Official records show that in the decade 1984-1994, Ombaci produced more than 600 O-level candidates in Division One, an average of 60 per year!

It was not just about the quantity, but quality too. St. Joseph’s College Ombaci was a household name when it came to conversation on academic fineness. It perennially featured among top ten schools in UNEB ranking - and some of its students named the best performers in national examinations.

Such was the elation that parents in West Nile gathered around radio sets to hear firsthand whose child in the neighbourhood excelled because their names would be read over Radio Uganda - whenever results of national examinations were released. Residents baptised the star performers as “radio boys”, among them, Eng. Patrick Okuni, now a UN staff in Sudan, Mulago Hospital medical consultant William Worodria (PhD) and Eng. Joel Ogarubo.

Self-destruct switch

However, the school’s performance slumped on the back of students’ indiscipline, convoluted public policy that has put academic success on sale and puny administration. A 1994 strike saw headmaster Abiriga, reputed for placing Ombaci on solid academic plinth, frog-marched to the District Education Officer’s office with students warning he would be dead on arrival if he dared return to the college, some 4 kilometres north of Arua town.

Abiriga passed on in January, this year. He was a model head teacher and a symbol of unchallenged authority that his violent ouster shocked the region and injected fear among his peers with ruinous consequences for schools.

His successors, most of them in acting capacities, became timid to reign in wayward students and staff while some played politics to appease a divided Board of Governors so their contracts could be renewed.

In the end: Cliques developed among teachers; unchecked students turned unruly while board members as well a divided Parents Teachers’ Association (PTA) members bickered about everything else except redeeming the college’s academic glory.

Fresh breath

Concerned by the accelerated decline, the alumni stepped in to try to salvage their alma mater. Few of thousands of Ombaci Old Boys may be involved. They began acting in the 1990s; offering career guidance, re-stocking the Library and buying 15 computer sets to enable the school begin computer lessons for the students.

Over the last two years, they have arranged for temporary placement of selected S4 and S6 candidates as well as their teachers at top-performing schools in central and western Uganda, hoping the exchange programme enables beneficiaries to learn new techniques of knowledge transfer, retooling students to succeed in a holistic manner and better school management. Introduction of the ‘Ombaci Oscars’ to reward best performers has buoyed staff and students’ morale. The academic performance is once again showing signs of recovery.

On March 24, the alumni pulled off a first during the observance of the Day of St. Joseph, the worker and Patron Saint. The alumni mustered Shs7m, and the school topped it up with Shs2m, to install a solar electricity to light a six-classroom block for Senior Four students.
Rev. Fr. Peter Debo, the school BoG chairman, said at the launch of the solar project that: “A shining Ombaci is the making of all (stakeholders). This solar lighting will take the school and students to greater heights.”

Yet blighted infrastructure and crowding remain a headache, according to acting headmaster, Mr Andrew Tumwesige. The teachers are fewer than required, the student numbers have almost doubled to 900 and Shs70 million required for fixing the broken roof of Jerusalem, the S1 dormitory, is unavailable. The urge to maximise revenue means Ombaci no longer admits the best, but the paying, yet it wants to produce the first among equals.

Until administrators plug this loophole, the 65-year-old college might not measure to its motto, Primus Inter Pares, again.