Why I’m in school at old age – 65-yr-old SSS3 student

By Nosa Akenzua, Asaba

A 65-year-old student of Izion College in Bomadi Overside in Bomadi Local Government of Delta State has attributed his going to school at old age to the high level of poverty of his parents.

Seribo Adelabu, who spoke to journalists during the week in Asaba while explaining the reasons he chose to be educated even at his old age, disclosed that his quest to be educated had in the last few years subjected him to begging and doing odd jobs, adding that he had poor and complicated parental upbringing.

Preparing to write the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE), Adelabu said: “My life story is very complicated, and I love education from my youth but because of my parents were so poor that they struggled in the forest all through their lives and nothing to write home about in them, and I decided to be pushing wheelbarrow to eke a living for myself and family”

He said that his father, Seribo, was a hunter and a palm wine tipper who hailed from Torugbene in Burutu Local Government Area of the state while his mother, Mary Seribo, took him to Ekeremor in Bayelsa State where he was later moved into Delta State, precisely to Ojobo in Burutu where he claimed tod have continue his primary education.

“At the Primary School in Ojobo, Burutu township, I could not bear the flogging from my teacher and one day I sneaked into a market Canoe of my step mother, Mrs. Brasingbegha Seribo, who my father married after my mother died, and she came out of my father’s palm bush to buy foodstuff at Ojobo market, and so I left school at Primary 5 and continued with my father from one palm wine bush to another, from one community to another tapping palm wine”, he said.

Continuing Adelabu said: “My father later died and I continued to wander in the forest tapping palm wine, and I became a man of the forest, and when I left palm wine tapping, I began a new job in a Madig Bakery and I worked as a Miller in various bakeries until my hand was hooked in the mill machine and after the incident, I came to Bomadi Overside where I resumed wheelbarrow job for survival”,

Adelabu further disclosed that it was during the process of his wheelbarrow business he saw Izon College, adding that thought came in him that he should continue his education there after he had sat for his First School living Certificate Examination.

“I have really suffered, but I still trust in God that he will help me to go to school, and I am a father of four children and I am appealing to everyone for help so that I can complete my studies and go to higher school to be qualified as a teacher to teach others’, Adelabu said.