The O’Reilly Students Association has appealed to the President, John Dramani Mahama, to intervene in the acquisition of land for the O’Reilly Senior High School to continue at Okpoi Gonno at Teshie. “His Excellency, you have done it for others and we trust you can do same for O’Reilly,” it said in a statement signed by its Secretary, Mr Sulley P. Alidu. The statement said Teshie had no public senior high school and that O’Reilly would be of great service to the people in and around Teshie. This was the outcome of a meeting held by the old students to discuss ways through which they could help salvage the school from its present predicament of being operated from rented premises. O’Reilly is the fourth oldest senior high school in the country and is still without a permanent site. It was established in 1925 by Rev. O’Reilly, a Sierra Leonean, and then adopted by the government in 1960 as a public school. The school moved from Korle-Wokon to Tudu and then later to James Town in 1961 and then finally to Kokomlemle in 1966. It finally moved to its present site at Asylum Down in 1982. All these while, the statement said, the school had been operating in rented premises, for which the government paid rent to land title holders in foreign currency. “His Excellency, O’Reilly has produced a lot of prominent citizens who are doing their best for the progress of Mother Ghana,” it said. They included the late presidential candidate of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Dan Lartey. The statement mentioned the movement of Ebenezer Senior High School from Mamprobi to Dansoman and then the movement of Accra Academy from James Town to Kaneshie in Accra. It said between 1960 and 1968, a land was released to O’Reilly by the chiefs and elders of Teshie, and for some unknown reason, “no attempt was made to develop the site into a full institution with supporting documentation.” Some past students, it said, in the early 1970s farmed on the site, growing okro, tomatoes and pepper. In the 1980s, it said, the then headmistress, attempted to develop the site but could not do so as a result of her sudden transfer. “The current headmistress has taken the initiative to develop the site only to realise that a good portion of the land has been encroached upon and the encroachers have dragged the MCE of LEKMA to court. If care is not taken, the staff and students will not have a place to continue with teaching and learning,” the statement said.