Features: 66 Years After Pinn Margaret School Calabar Rots Away In Neglect As Old Students Cry Out
Bassey Bassey
Pinn Margaret Secondary Commercial School is among the earlier schools established in 1959 in the heart of Clabar. It started as a private school founded and named after Pinn Margaret but was later taken over by the government of Cross River State after her demised.
But 66 Years after, the school is gradually rotting away. The Vice Principle office, Physics, chemistry and biology buildings are dilapidated, the JSSI, JSS2 and JSS2 blocks are in tatters. The SSS1 block is a shadow of itself.
The entire premises is a shambles yet the award-winning has been neglected by Cross River State government, making it difficult to run one shift.
Decrying the poor state school, the Old Students Association (Class of 2005) lamented the prolonged neglect and severe infrastructural decay at the school which has compelled the school management to operate two daily shifts, a development that is peculiar to the school alone in the entire Cross River state.
Pinn Margaret School, a once a prestigious secondary school that has produced accomplished professionals who are contributing meaningfully well across various sectors in the state and the country at large, now stands in deplorable condition.
Presently, students lack adequate classrooms, laboratory facilities, and essential infrastructure, despite its national recognition as an award-winning school in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics by the West African Examination Council in 2022 and winning the 1st and 3rd positions concurrently in the just concluded Calabar Carnival Essay & Creative Writing Competition 2025.
Speaking anonymously to our correspondent, a teacher in the appealed for urgent intervention, noting the absence of seats and staff rooms as a major challenge bedeviling the school. "Our primary challenge is the shortage of classrooms and staff rooms, which is why we run two shifts daily.
As it is, this school is the only one from records that run two shifts daily in the entire Cross River State if not even Nigeria as a whole. The morning session runs from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., handing over to the afternoon session from 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.," the teacher explained. Tragically, students in the morning and afternoon shifts of the same class may never meet or interact.
Another teacher, also speaking anonymously, revealed that years ago, individuals claiming to represent the government and the United Nations arrived to renovate structures but instead removed roofs and zinc sheets and cart away with them, leaving the buildings in worse state.
In a press release signed by the 05 Alumni President, Engr. Daniel Christopher Nsese, and shared with journalists, the association highlighted that the school which is located on Atakpa Street in Calabar South LGA, at the heart of Calabar city has been abandoned for over a decade, necessitating the unprecedented shift system.
The alumni urgently calls on the government, elected office holders and public-spirited individuals to rescue the school from eminent collapse.
"We appeal to Governor Senator Prince Bassey Edet Otu, the Commissioner for Education, Rt. Hon. Joseph Bassey (Member representing Calabar South, Akpabuyo, and Bakassi in the House of Representatives), the Member representing Calabar South in the Cross River State House of Assembly, and other concerned individuals and alumni of the school to come to the school's aid.
"As it is there there's no electricity in classrooms and staff rooms as well as electrical fittings in nearly all part of the school."
