Two Schools, 5,000 Exercise Books and a Message That Went Beyond the Pages
By Our Correspondent
On a single day last week, eighteen members of ST Tamandu Marine Patrol, the Lagos chapter of De Norsemen Kclub International, visited two public primary schools in Lagos carrying 5,000 exercise books for distribution to students. The first stop was Erinoso Primary School in Ikate, Surulere. The second was the Muslim Community Primary School in Ishaga, Idi-Araba. At both locations, the reception was the same: rows of uniformed pupils, outstretched hands, and a morning that will not easily be forgotten.
The visits, organised as part of the patrol’s ongoing community development programme, were more than a routine donation run. Members of the group moved through each school’s assembly ground, handing books directly to students, a deliberate choice by the organisers to ensure that the materials reached the children they were intended for rather than disappearing into a storeroom. Five thousand exercise books, split across two schools, were placed one by one into the hands of the children who would use them.
Speaking at the ceremony, Sailing Skipper Jubril Babatunde addressed pupils, teachers, and school officials, grounding the visit in ST Tamandu Marine Patrol’s founding mandate. “Service to Humanity is not something we talk about. It is something we do,” he said. He spoke about the importance of education as the foundation on which every other form of community development rests, and outlined the patrol’s intention to build sustained, structured relationships with both schools that would outlast any single visit. “We are not here to drop something off and disappear,” he said. “We are here to be part of what this community is building.”
Teachers at both schools described the donation as timely. Many pupils, they noted, had been managing without adequate writing materials for weeks, a situation familiar to most public primary schools in Lagos, where government provision of basic learning resources remains inconsistent. The arrival of 5,000 exercise books distributed directly into the hands of students rather than passed to administration was received with visible enthusiasm. Pupils cheered and pressed forward as members of the patrol moved along the rows, placing books into outstretched hands.
The two schools represent different communities but share common challenges. Erinoso Primary School in Ikate, Surulere, serves a densely populated urban neighbourhood where classroom overcrowding is a routine condition of learning. Muslim Community Primary School in Ishaga, Idi-Araba, draws from a community where many families live and work in proximity to Lagos’ industrial corridor. In both settings, the scarcity of basic school materials is not an occasional problem. It is a persistent one. The patrol’s decision to cover both in a single day was deliberate, a signal that the programme was not built around convenience but around need.
School officials at both locations used the occasion to highlight broader infrastructure and material needs, opening a conversation with ST Tamandu Marine Patrol about how the organisation could provide structured, ongoing support. The exchange moved beyond the formalities of a donation ceremony into something closer to a working discussion about the schools’ longer-term requirements. That dialogue, according to members of the patrol, will continue.
ST Tamandu Marine Patrol is the Lagos chapter of De Norsemen Kclub International, a non-profit brotherhood incorporated under RC 7458 and committed to community development, volunteer service, advocacy, and leadership. The visits to Erinoso Primary School, Ikate Surulere, and Muslim Community Primary School, Ishaga Idi-Araba, are the latest in a series of community outreach activities undertaken by the patrol across Lagos.
For the pupils who left the assembly ground that morning with a new exercise book under their arm, the significance may have been simpler than any statement delivered from a podium. Someone came. Someone saw. And someone thought they were worth showing up for.
For more information about ST Tamandu Marine Patrol and its community programmes, visit www.santatamandu.org
