Douglas High School
P. 0. Box 965
Oshodi. Lagos
15th June. 1999
The Commissioner
Ministry of Education
Alausa Secretariat.

Dear Sir,
APPEAL FOR RE-OPENING OF OUR SCHOOL.
I am writing formally to appeal to you to use your good offices to reopen our school which you ordered to be closed down in the wake of the violent disturbance that occurred in the school recently.
The unfortunate incident was the culmination of some grievances which the junior students had against the senior students especially the SS3 students and the school authority. The junior students had been complaining about the high handedness with which the senior students. especially the SS3 students, handled any misunderstanding between the junior students and the senior. The senior students were given too much power to punish the junior ones. They were authorized to use canes and belts on any junior student who they considered erring. Recently, a JSS3 student was beaten up by some SS3 students for a reason that was not justifiable In the course of the beating the student was injured in the eye. The case was reported to the principal and nothing was done about it.
Secondly, the school authority was insensitive to the demands of the students. The students had earlier asked for improvement in the quality of the food they were being given in the hostel. Students in the boarding house were forced to eat beans four times in a week and despite the huge amount of money collected from their parents fruits and other beverages that were hitherto served during meals were stopped. The students were infuriated by the sudden removal of fruits and beverages from their menu table.
Sir, what really ignited the seething anger which had been suppressed for long was the acute shortage of water. We woke up that day to notice that there was no water in the school. We decided to go to the stream to fetch water for bathing. On our way to the stream a student was injured by his pail when we were trying to climb a hill. This incident sparked up a protest march to the principal's office. The protest march became violent and uncontrollable when some teachers and some prefects tried to force the protesting students to retreat to their hostels and the protesting students then became violent and began to damage the school property.
It is now three months since the school has been under lock and key. I am therefore appealing to you to order the school to be reopened. We have suffered enough and have learnt a lot of lessons. I would sincerely appreciate it if you could use your good offices to re-open the school so that those of us who are innocent could be spared the traumatic experience of staying idle at home while our colleagues in other schools are in school. We have all learnt that we should make our grievances known to the appropriate authority without taking laws into our hands.
I would be grateful if you could favorably consider my plea for the re-opening of the school.
Yours faithfully,
(Signature)
Akinade Abosede