For distinguishing themselves academically, students of Santa Mary Nursery and Primary school 2, a school managed by St. Theresa’s parish, Catholic diocese of Awka, Anambra state, were during the weekend, given ‘goats’ by the school management.
According to newsmen report, students that came top in their classes were given the unusual gift which has never been given to students in the history of the Nigeria education system.
Comments on social media about the unusual gift shows that the need to celebrate the forthcoming Christmas by the students could be the rationale behind the ‘Goat gift’ by the school.
Nwedo, who is one of the people that commented on facebook wrote; “I love this school, they know that Christmas is near and many families cannot afford to buy meat due to recession and hardship in the country, but with this kind gesture, I suppose the parents will no longer bother themselves about the meat to buy.
“This is one of the greatest gifts for this season, if you don’t want to kill it for the celebration of the xmas, you can sell it, use the money and buy whatever thing you want”.
However, some critics are of the opinion that the school management believes that the community is poor and might not be able to celebrate Christmas, so they decided to give their students items they feel will be useful to them. “This could be what the school thinks the community deserve. One cannot give what he does not have”, a critic said
In a chat with a youth in the community who pleaded anonymity, the youth said “No doubt Nibo is an Agrarian community located behind Anambra state governor’s lodge that has a reasonable population struggling to break even, but that does not mean that we cannot afford to give our kids items bigger than what we gave them.
“See, we are in a season likened to be full of enjoyment and happiness, a season we use to recall the birth of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. So we gave them goat to either kill on Christmas day or sell it to buy anything”, he said.
