President of Queen’s College Old Girls’ Association, Mrs Temitayo Okunoren-Makindipe, shares her thoughts with BIODUN BUSARI on the challenges, achievements, and expectations of the group, among other things
How has the experience been for you as the president of the Queen’s College Old Girls’ Association?
I was elected as the Queen’s College Old Girls’ Association president on August 10, 2025. The association is worldwide. We have chapters in Nigeria and affiliated groups in various countries, as we have old girls all over the world. Before I was elected president, I had served as the vice president 2 of the association for four years, from 2019 to 2023. Before then, I served as the chairperson of my 1985 set for two years, and I served as the assistant secretary of my set for four years.
Therefore, I had the requisite experience before assuming the office of QCOGA president. I knew what needed to be done in that capacity. It wasn’t difficult for me to start working as president. Having said that, let me add that the work of the president of the Queen’s College Old Girls’ Association is more or less a full-time job. It’s highly demanding because I attend to matters every day.
QCOGA work does not recognise Saturdays and Sundays as work-free days, and there is no daily closing time. I get messages and demands from different parts of the world at any hour of the day or night. The demands from members are usually urgent, from their own viewpoints, and I guess they can’t understand that so many other old girls also make demands daily.
Even parents of QC girls make demands, expecting the association to wield influence on the school. Everybody knows that it’s a volunteer position and that you have your own job, yet they seem to forget that when they make requests, so it’s a highly demanding job.
What is your leadership focus?
Before I took up the position, I had a three-point agenda. The first one was to create an atmosphere that would attract Queen’s College old girls to get more members involved in the association. The second one was to do what we can to make QC the school where our daughters and granddaughters can attend, just as we attended.
The third was to make the association one that our members want to identify with and belong to, because it’s a beacon of light and authority in Nigeria. Each one of those three points has its own strata — different steps. One of the steps in achieving these is to set up committees that our members can belong to.
We ask for volunteers to come and serve in those committees. I’m encouraging younger people to come. We also have chapters in different parts of the country and groups outside the country. One of the things that we want to do is to involve them more in making decisions that affect them.
Another one is to revitalise our class sets. Many old girls don’t think of belonging to the association until they are in their late 30s, 40s and 50s, because before that period, they are focusing on their education, jobs, or raising families, but we invite young girls to see reasons they should participate in the old girls’ association.
Then we have our Elders’ Network, which I love so much. I like helping people, so when our past president initiated the idea, I volunteered to serve the elders and learnt a lot from them. I don’t qualify to be a member of the Elders’ Network because I am not yet at that age, but I enjoy the things they do.
What are the challenges facing the association?
Our main challenge is funding. We need money. We have some old girls who need money. We have a welfare fund, and one of the things we actually need to do is encourage our members to continue to make donations to that fund so that any time somebody comes forward for assistance, we can help them better.
Having said that, we have assisted members before who needed a kidney transplant and other medical and non-medical challenges — people will rally around and donate to assist their QCOGA sisters.
How does the association handle infrastructure decay as one of the challenges that public schools face in Nigeria?
The primary aim of coming together as old girls, really and truly, is to support our school and it is out of love and passion. Therefore, considering the infrastructure, we have a projects committee. We typically get a list of needs from the school, and we let members know.
So, for any member or a group of members that wants to donate, we give them that list. They select what they want and what they can do. There was a time when the cost of electricity became prohibitive, and we wanted to have solar power for the entire school, but it was a very expensive project.
Therefore, we started gradually by first of all getting professionals to conduct an energy audit of the school. Incidentally, that was in 2022 during the tenure of the executives, where I served as vice president 2. The principal decided that the top priority for lighting was street lights because, once there was no electricity at night, the entire school compound would be very dark.
Therefore, our then-president got an organisation to install solar street lights all over the school. It was wonderful. Subsequently, members came together to donate solar-powered lighting for the classrooms under the ‘Light up QC Project.’ We have a vast population, which affects the infrastructure of the school.
When I was in school, we were not more than 1,200 students. However, at a point, there were sets (just one year group) having 1,000 students! Infrastructure is a major challenge, but we just continue to do our best to work with the school.
What are the initiatives put in place to help the current students?
I’m very thankful to God to be able to say that within the first hundred days of this particular administration, we have been able to touch the lives of every single student in the college — and we’re talking about almost 4,000 students! The only ones that were probably not touched directly would be those who were not in school on the days that we were there, but I know that their friends and classmates would have informed them.
Our exco embarked on a massive mentoring reorientation programme at the start of the school session, after our first official visit to the principal. We couldn’t do it in one day because there were so many students that they couldn’t all fit into the assembly hall. The principal wanted us to use our school song to make a meaningful impact on the students.
We used it to reorient them. We talked about morals and counselled them against bullying and that they should ‘pass on the torch’ of love to one another, as our school song advocates. The principal and some teachers were in the hall to start each session, and then left so that the girls could feel freer with us, and we had many old girls who came to talk to them.
We then had breakout sessions in their classrooms and came back to the hall for a debrief session, with some classes making presentations of what they learnt from the programme. We reminded them of the legacy of the college and made them think of where they would like to be in 10 years and what they wanted to be remembered for.
Our exco would like to continue to have a proper, structured mentoring programme to begin in the new year by God’s grace. Personally, infrastructure is good, but if you have that and your students are not behaving well, what is the essence? We also give career talks from time to time.
During our Founders’ Day celebrations, we gave gifts to all teachers, on Teachers’ Day and also to all the students and the non-teaching staff. Everybody in the QC community got something from the old girls, no matter how small. Our old girls in the Americas also contributed towards this.
How do you combine the tasks of being a wife, president of your Alma Mater, and managing your career?
Let me add this: I’m an ordained minister of the Methodist Church Nigeria. Recently, I was appointed as the General Manager of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering, the apex and elite corps of the engineering profession in Nigeria.
All I have to say is that I manage all these roles successfully, only by the grace of God Almighty. Secondly, I prioritise my time. There is nothing I do that my husband is not there for me. I don’t like to use the word ‘supportive’ for a husband.
As far as I’m concerned, the husband is the head of the family and owns all the work, and the wife is the supporter! For me, my husband is always there for me. We do everything together, and he understands me.
My husband is my best friend. We work together. My husband knows everything that I do and all of the roles that I have to play. He’s a full-time minister of the Methodist Church Nigeria.
What encouragement will you give to Nigerian women?
What I would say is this: train up a child in the way the child should go, and when the child is old, the child will not depart from it. The Bible teaches this, and it makes a lot of sense to me. My advice for women and mothers is to train that child in the way that you know is right.
Generally, our society has lost so many values. Our children watch everything their mothers do, and they copy. Therefore, we should consciously encourage ourselves to follow in the steps of the good things we see around us, especially from our elders. If you know your values are not good, then you should change them.
In addition, we must not lose our culture and language. If a human being can go to university at the age of 16 or 17 and decide to study Russian, which he or she has never studied before, and excel at it and get a PhD in it and speak Russian, why can’t a child start learning about our culture and language at age 15?
In the same vein, there should be no excuse for Nigerian children not to speak a Nigerian language. Even if they are 10 years old or 15 years old, they can still learn and excel at it if the parents make the effort.
My husband and I made up our minds to teach our children our language and they read, write, and speak Yoruba with no problem at all — our family study Bible is in Yoruba and that has helped us a lot. I cannot leave God out of anything I do. I’m a Christian, and I need to ensure that our children are brought up in the way of the Lord Jesus Christ.
