Caleb’s Best Graduating Student- I Almost Dropped Out of School

RITA ALADI

Twenty-year-old Rita Aladi leads nine other females in sweeping academic laurels at the fourth convocation of the Caleb University, Imota, Lagos, 

Two major things occupied the mind of the 20-year-old best graduating student of the Caleb University, Imota, Lagos State, Miss Rita Aladi, as she mounted the podium to deliver her valedictorian speech.

The first had to do with the burden of how she eventually graduated from the university. The second bordered on how she eventually topped the list of the 2014 graduating class. For her, the sum total of all that took place on the convocation day was a nice surprise.

She said, “I almost dropped out of school in my final year due to financial difficulties. That I eventually graduated from this school is a miracle. It came to a point that my father had to come to appeal to the authorities to give him some grace period to enable him to pay my fees.

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“Beyond this, I never knew that I could become the best graduating student. Throughout my primary and secondary education, I never came first. But I had never gone below the third position in any class.”

Aladi’s display on the podium aptly captured this element of surprise. Intermittently, she screamed ewoooo, muttered God oooo, while she yet punctuated her speech with sobbing.

The youngster, who bagged a first class in Biochemistry, posted a Cumulative Grade Point Average of 4.80 out of 5.0 points to emerge the overall best in the 2014 convocation of the university. For her excellence, she received several awards, including ‘The Most Outstanding Student of the Year’ and the ‘Best Graduating Student in the College of Pure and Applied Sciences’.

Others are the ‘Best Graduating Student in the Department of Biochemistry’ ; the Prof. Nimbe Adedipe Prize for the Best Graduating Student in the College of Pure and Applied Sciences’; the ‘Late Princess Esther Adefolawe Olukoju Prize for the Overall Best Graduating Female Student’ and the ‘Joshua Olorunfemi Prize for the Best Graduating Student in the COPAS’.

The Ideato, Imo State-born graduate, according to the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Ayodeji Olukoju, is also the first to obtain a first class from the department of Biochemistry.

Giving an insight into the secret of her success, Aladi, who had her primary and secondary education at the Grandmates Schools, Ago-Okota, Lagos, admitted that the accomplishment did not come on a platter of gold.

 “I did not plan to have a boyfriend. I am still on the path of self-discovery with regard to that. On sorting, it never crossed my mind and I do not even think it obtains here.”

Interestingly, of the 13 first class degree holders in the university this year, 10 of them are females, while the remaining three are males. Females also emerged the best graduating students from the institution’s three colleges – the College of Environmental Science and Management (Miss Oiza Osho); College of Pure and Applied Sciences (Miss Rita Aladi); and the College of Social and Management Sciences (Miss Faith Uwojeyah). While Osho studied Architecture, Uwojeyah studied Accounting.