“The Locked Room Housed Igbo People’s Luggage”, Hadiza El-rufai’s Shares Nostalgia Of Her Secondary School In Kano

Hadiza El-rufai, wife of former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-rufai has reflected on her secondary school days in Kano state following her visit to the school on 21st of January, 2026.

She wrote: Yesterday, my sister and I visited St. Louis Secondary School, Kano, from where we graduated, in 1980 and 1976 respectively. Three other Isma girls and quite a number of our relatives finished from this same school. We were shown around the premises by the Principal, Reverend Sister Christiana Biyab and the Vice Principal (Admin) Hajiya Halima Babayaro. I saw the dormitory (St. Pius) that housed me in Form One. And ….. there was a water heater in the bathroom! We never had that privilege. We used to bathe with cold water and Kano was much colder then than now.

I was overcome with nostalgia, seeing the old buildings — the dormitories, the refectory, the convent, the chapel. There were a few new buildings including a mosque that caters for the Muslim students, something we didn’t have in our time – we prayed in our dormitories. Sadly, the assembly hall, where we used to have choir practice and Saturday dances, was razed by fire on the 4th of December 2025. We made a donation to the reconstruction fund.

In the building adjacent to the assembly hall, there used to be a room packed with luggage. We met it locked when we came to Form One in January 1972 and it was still locked when we left in June 1976. The luggage belonged to the Igbo students that were evacuated in a hurry when the Nigerian civil war broke out in 1967. The Reverend Sisters kept those children’s belongings safe for all those years, perhaps in the hope that they would return one day. They never did. I’ve always wondered what happened to those children. Did they survive the war? I hope so. I wonder what eventually happened to the belongings they left behind. The Principal didn’t know. She only started working in the school in 2018.

As we walked around, my eyes were drawn to the trees in front of the classroom blocks. It was on the branches of these trees that we did tasks, like rope climbing, to earn our Girl Guides Association badges. As I looked at the trees, my mind went back to the day my classmates and I were made to undergo eye screenings. Surprisingly, I was amongst those that were subsequently referred to an optometrist. Until that day, I never knew I had a problem with my eyesight. When I got my prescription glasses a week later, I was flabbergasted. I’d never seen such sharp images in my life. I remember looking at these same trees and realising, for the first time, that one should see the individual leaves on each individual branch, and not just a green blur as had hetherto been the case with me. That day was truly an eye-opener for me. No pun intended.

After the tour, we had the opportunity of interacting with some of the SS3 students. We asked them about their ambitions for the future. They spoke intelligently and eloquently. We gave them some advice about life in general. They listened respectfully. Standards may have fallen in other schools, but not in St. Louis.

When we arranged ourselves to take photos and I said ‘cheese’, I was quickly made to understand that saying ‘cheese’ before taking a picture was now rather cheesy. ‘So what do we say?’ I asked. ‘Let’s clock it!’ they said. So we yelled, ‘Let’s clock it.’ Whatever that meant.

Before leaving, we promised to give a monetary prize to the best graduating student. In my year, I was that student. Nobody gave me a prize though.

I had been feeling sad on account of the shocking, nasty news that came out of Kano a few days ago. But yesterday’s visit lifted my spirits.

Truly, “with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world…”