‘IN THE BEGINNING IT WAS NOT SO’ I was strutting towards our home, a four bedroom flat nestled on the 2nd floor in a greying building on one of the dusty, clay caked streets of Abule-Oja, a small suburb of Lagos, suddenly from the verandah of the first floor my cousin Taiye stuck her head out screaming with delight: “Kayode, Kayode…. You have been admitted to King’s College, your admission letter was found under a pile of washing! …….” I bounded up the gangway of stairs, and got to our first floor flat to confront the contents of the letter. Stunned and in utter disbelief, I grabbed it and stared at it; It was indeed my letter of admission into King’s College, Lagos. Pondering to myself, I thought this could not be real, for it was two months into the first term and I had already resigned myself to my fate at CMS Grammar School, Bariga, the oldest Nigerian secondary school. A few months before then, we, my twin and I had been due to resume at Federal Government College, Akure and Federal Government College, Ogbomosho respectively. I did not think you could be admitted into two Federal Government schools at the same time. In what seemed like a bolt out of the blue, my mother announced after ‘the game was set and matched’ that she had changed her mind. In later years she explained to me that she had reasoned that both of the schools were new, miles apart we were to become the foundation students which meant she would run the gauntlet of regular travel miles a few times a year! It took Professor ’Kunle and Mrs. Iyanda a whole night at their University of Lagos staff quarters’ home to persuade and cajole me to accept the option of attending the CMS Grammar School. However, my agreement was to come with one condition. The agreement carefully negotiated late at night was I would go to the Grammar School until the resumption day for the Federal Government College. The only uniforms I had were the green and white of the Federal Government College I therefore had no CMS Grammar School uniforms so an approach was made to Mrs. Akinluyi, the British born Caucasian CMS Grammar School Vice Principal and wife of Dr. Akinluyi. She provided me the dispensation to wear coloureds for a day or two. I started at CMS Grammar School a week later than my other classmates but was embarrassed on the Assembly lines by the same Vice Principal who seemed to have forgotten about the dispensation she had given. My twin who was the more stoic one, had with minimal fuss simply settled into Methodist Girls’ High School, Yaba for a year before her transfer to Federal Government College, Oyo in her second year. Later I discovered that my mother was unable to follow the terms of our agreement. I was, however, in good company with my cousin ’Gbenga Atewologun, Ayodeji Awojobi, ’Dayo Akinosi, ’Femi Parse, ’Deji Adeogun, ’Femi Mershell and Ayo Odunsi. Ayodeji was possibly the most brilliant mind of our generation; he was simply a .22 calibre mind in a .357 magnum world. He was admitted to King’s College, Lagos but his father the legendary Professor Ayodele Awojobi, the youngest Doctor of Science ever, a CMS Grammar School alumnus and a social critic, had encouraged him to go to CMS. At school together with my cousin we went regularly to purchase fried plantain and fried yam with spicy sauce as a side, (‘Dodo and Dundun’). We also attended Mr. Dada’s lessons at the staff quarters after school hours with my twin joining us from Methodist Girls High School, Yaba. In the meantime I was unable to resist the urge to dupe one or two boys in school under the presumption that I would soon depart before they discovered my true character. Sanyaolu, who had a tall burly frame, a strapping boy of thirteen years old was one of the boys who fell victim to my small time scam. He was not well disposed to me when he caught up with me; he roughened me up and issued a few ultimatums. There was no hiding place for me now, I had to stay in the Grammar School and face the music and the wrath of the boys I had duped, there was to be no saving by the school bell. At the school, there was the brutality of Papa Mose, our Music teacher who carried a heavy cane, so thick it could pass for a rod. There was something Dickensian about him; he regularly used the cane to inflict punishment for every perceived minor indiscretion. It was as if he was always searching for an excuse to apply the cane. He belonged to a school of thought that believed fear and intimidation was the best way to educate a child. He was reputed to have bruised many students to submission. I was once a victim of his brutality simply because I failed to understand the point he was making during a lesson. On that occasion, he dragged me to the front of the classroom and got two of my classmates to place me on the table in front of him and spread my legs, as I lay faced down! He then proceeded to apply the cane on my buttocks. I lay writhing in pain; the strokes caused me a tingling sensation that pervaded my entire frame as he repeatedly applied the cane. Papa Mose must have been in his late sixties but he was a law on to himself! Now I was faced with the surprise late admission into King’s College, Lagos and there was much to comprehend. Whirling around in my mind was the thought that it was not my kind that got admitted into KC, I was not the sharpest of brains, I was merely average, I was neither very confident, nor special. I heard from Mrs. Adenugba at primary school that ‘block heads’ never made it to King’s College, for she had on a few occasions referred to me as a ‘block head’. There were boys more fitting and worthy than me. So, I am convinced that God at that particular time ordered my footsteps and ordained it to be so. I turned up at King’s College, Lagos on the 4th of December 1977 and after the completion of formalities we were led to the newly formed Form One C classroom, which was situated in a new extension block near the basketball court. It was obvious the classrooms had just been constructed from the smell of fresh paint that caused atmosphere to be constipated. Initially we were only seven in the class but as the academic year progressed our numbers increased to twenty-one. I remember ’Bayo Oyesanya, John Ogwo, ’Femi Jaiyesimi, ’Wale Goodluck, Joel Ugborogho, ’Dokun Thompson, Charles Ikpeme, Valentine Onyia, Raymond Njoku, the enigmatic ’Niran Fatunla aka ‘Lakubu’ also known as ‘Lakia’, ’Gbemi Kehinde, Eseku, Tokunbo Balogun, ’Bunmi Akinremi, Alufohi, Omotayo Johnson aka ‘Caga’, ’Bunmi Akinremi and Hussein Akram a boy from Pakistan as my first classmates. The first year was not very remarkable I was simply getting to grips with the reality of KC and constantly had to pinch myself to establish whether I was in the real world or fantasyland. I had only one scrap noteworthy to recall, it was with ’Wale Goodluck, we had a disagreement and we challenged each other to a duel. Spontaneously we decided to settle it with our fists, in the middle of the unseemingly tussle, Citizen Junaid from the top of Harman’s House dormitory emitted in a deep loud roar: “Come Here”, to us. The ‘A’ level students were always referred to as ‘Citizens’, and it was a title that preceded their surnames. At King’s College there was never the informality of referring to each other by our first names, we were always on surname terms. In any case, he had witnessed the whole incident; he gave us a lecture on the evils of fighting and then punished us by asking us to kneel before him. I was so scared and after the incident, I promised myself I would never succumb to temptation of fighting. In the first year I was elected a councillor to the Students’ Council and witnessed first hand democracy in action during the Students’ Council elections into the posts of the Secretary and Assistant Secretary. We usually ran the gauntlet of many senior boys who were bent on fagging us into submission. We were teased that we entered or gained admission the school through the kitchen gate on account of our late and unusual admission. For the day students amongst us, the school bus offered a respite and a refuge from the harsh realities of ‘fagging’ and the daily torment that senior boys delighted in inflicting on us. We were entertained with a menu of jokes and it was not unusual to hear Victor Amokeodo bellow out repeatedly “Bus Corner Sirrrrr” to gain the attention of the driver as we got nearer his stop. ’Dayo Oreagba aka ‘Natty Gba’ and ‘Ladi Lawanson aka ‘Lawi Pepper’ were boys you could not mess around with on the bus and mischief was their main occupation. Form Two boys like Shonubi and Dibia tried to maintain order but we simply humoured them. We had the opportunity to have breakfast and lunch in school and witness some of the dramas of the boarding house. The breakfast, which we paid 10 Naira a term for was rather elegant, consisting of soft and succulent slices of white bread, eggs and prettied with some spicy stew as complements. There were of course lots of kettles of tea to go with it and milk and sugar in plentiful abundance, it was certainly not the meal to miss. On one such bright morning in 1978 during breakfast, the then Vice-School Captain, Felix Onwuka was furious with some senior boy, and so he took to the front of the dinning hall and during announcements threatened in his unique accent and booming voice: “There is a certain form four boy in this dinning hall, he thinks he is very heady! If you think you are heady, come and confront me!” It became a folklore for a few years afterwards as boys recalled the incident in jest for it was the strength of his Igbo accent, which sheathed the meaning of his words rather that the content of his threat that made it so hilarious. Every new day in King’s College brought a new revelation. By the end of the year I was itching to get into the boarding house for I was convinced, that was where all the action lay. But of course my actual beginnings before King’s College, at the Grammar School and Staff School lay in my mother’s womb, which I shared for nine months with Folashade, Feyisara, my twin. She was born first, she was the natural leader of us two, boldness, style and determination were her hallmark. She was not afraid to tell me of my numerous failings and did not suffer fools gladly. I owe the richness of my beginnings to the fact that I am a twin and yet less than a century before we were born, in parts of Nigeria we would have been killed because of that fact. I have never been so proud, never been so strong than when I led in front with my younger brother bearing the coffin of Folashade, Feyisara my twin on the way to the earthly resting place of her remains in Maidstone. In fact, I insisted it was a rite we must fulfill, that in it we might find therapy. That we will meet again I am certain, that she is in eternal rest I have no doubt. It is her departure that has inspired me to begin the search for my identity, to go back to my beginnings, one so radically altered and affected by her absence.
Posted on: Sun, 04 May 2014 17:44:52 +0000
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