The plan was that I would play the tonic solfa and then my special choir would lead the congregation. I was about to do that when one of the “coup plotters” ran towards me and whispered into my left ear that I shouldn’t play the special song yet because “Mammy Flooder” was not yet in the hall. Meanwhile, the Principal was outside enjoying my interludes. I could see him from afar. I knew that he always enjoyed the interludes too. Suddenly, I started playing the students’ favourite song:
“Awọn ọmọ alaigbọran po ni ilè iwe.
Won ki fetí sí iṣẹ t’oluko nko won.
To ba d’ọjọ idanwo, won a gbo’do wa ‘le.
Iṣẹ, iṣẹ, ìyẹn kii se ti won.
Ere, ere, ìyẹn sa ni ti won.
Dodo ati rice ko gbọdọ koja
Won a jeun, jeun, jeun, won a má wo bóun”.
My English translation goes like this:
“Many disobedient children abound in our schools.
They lack concentration during lecture hours
During examinations period, they go home with failure.
To toil, to slog, is difficult for them.
To play and play is so easy for them.
They dote after every plate of rice garnished with dodo.
They eat, eat, eat looking so dense.
We were singing it the second time when “Mammy Flooder” walked in. It was a very thrilling scene. As soon as that ended, I quickly played the tonic solfa for our “special song”:
d: m: d: s-: r: f: r: d: m
d: m: d: t::- d: d:
s:s:s:s: f:m: }
f:r:d: d: m: r : } 2ce
d:m:d:t:-d:d:
And the “Coup Choir” (as different from the school choir) sang:
“Mammy Flooder, Mammy Flooder eeh
Mammy Flooder, Iwin
Iwo arúgbó yi, iwo roforofo (2ce)
Mammy Flooder, Iwin”
The English version:
Mammy Flooder, Mammy Flooder eeh, Mammy Flooder, ghommid
You naughty old woman, how “muddy” could you get (2ce)
Mammy Flooder, ghommid
The presentation was top-notch even though we sang it only twice. Trust Compro students with beautiful songs. The way I introduced the harmony, the beats, and other jazzy musical elements, especially the tonality made the song to make sense. I made sure I used the home-note (doh) on the key C so that the pitch would not be too high for the congregation. This musical packaging and engineering made the whole presentation a worthwhile campaign against “flooding”.
We didn’t really have any chance to discuss the episode when we got to the class after the morning assembly because the lesson teacher was around. But after the first lesson, discussion on it commenced. We were on it when someone came to inform me that the Principal was calling me. I sauntered to the admin block with high expectation for a rewarding commendation. But it was a different scenario I met on ground. As soon as I entered the Principal’s office and saw “Mammy Flooder” and two of her classmates, a girl and a boy, I knew the summon was not about commendation but condemnation. The Principal inquired: “Dapo Thomas, do you know the lady standing there (pointing at “Mammy Flooder”). My natural answer was “Yes Sir”.
He skipped the introductory niceties and went straight to the assembly activities. The Principal (Baba Ibikunle) loved drama. He knew where he was going but he wanted to be dramatic about his interrogation. He complained that the lady had come to report me that I lampooned her with a song in the school hall during the assembly. He now asked the guy among them to sing the song and he did it brilliantly. The Principal now asked me why I played the song and why I called the girl “Iwin”. I denied playing any song like that. He then asked me to sing my own version. He probably had forgotten that I was my church organist and a song composer. On the spot there, I composed a song that would flow with the rhythm of “Mammy Flooder”. And I sang:
Oh, oh, JESUS, Oh, oh JESUS
Oh, oh JESUS, my Saviour
Only you will I praise for the rest of my life (2ce)
Oh, oh JESUS, my Saviour.
The Principal instantly dismissed my version saying that the “Iwin” version was sweeter than my own. Can you beat that? My improvised song was dismissed on the whim of “Iwin”. And I was banned from playing the piano for the rest of the week. What a man, what a judgement!!! For the fact that the song came out well and that the flooding campaign was gaining traction, the punishment was disproportionate. There was no need for any protest after all, the piano was school’s property and as the Principal of the school, Baba Ibikunle could stop me from touching the property of the school.
By the time I got back to my room on that day, a consolatory development was waiting for me. As soon as I opened the door to our room (I came ahead of my roommates), I saw a load of letters addressed to me. They were all from the junior students who wanted me to be their school father. I guessed this was a consequent of the Jamba’s episode. The letters were more than 15. I was still reading the ones I met in my room when about five junior students came to my room with similar request making 20 junior students asking me to be their school father. I had to wait for some of my roommates who had boarding house experience for them to explain the economic implications of such “school fatherism” knowing what Senior was going through with eight children. It was properly explained to me that “school fatherism” had nothing to do with me spending on the children. What was required was your capacity to protect your school children from school hoodlums and bullies. No doubt, the children needed protection, but being a school father to 20 children was like establishing a Nursery Department in the hostel. I was not in any way ready to usurp the responsibilities of Mr Junaid, our housemaster, who was being paid by the school to do such job. I decided to screen the letters and pick only 6 of them. Eventually, I picked Yinka Sorungbe, Dapo Sorungbe, Anthony Omolayole, Femi Mosaku,
Morakinyo Akiode, Eniola Sobola.
A week after their selection, I was ambushed by six junior female students along the gangway on my way to the dining hall. They must have been very desperate to see me because they were almost standing close to the gate of Crimson house, a male hostel. Coincidentally, I was with my new six school sons. Initially, they (my school sons) pretended as if they knew nothing about the ambush. It was when I started seeing squinting and blushing signs that I knew that it was insider’s job. To crown it all, the girls were also six and they came with a similar request -Please, be our school father. The coincidence of 6 and 6 was beyond human comprehension. The six of them were: Funke Oduneye, Rashidat Ògúnlolá, Foluke Oniyide, Yemi Oniyide, Yomi Olubi, and Taiwo Abiodun. There and then, I became a school father to kindergarten crushers using the gangway as their monument of contact. And my first assignment was to intervene in a matter that concerned the girls. I couldn’t really say if the offence had been committed before their enrollment. All I could say was that a friend of mine called “Dignity” had punished them for being rude to him. Talking about “Dignity” reminds me of the names we all gave to ourselves on arrival in Compro. Most of us thought it was a childish idea to write our real names on our school uniforms just to prevent them being “fapped” on the lines. Instead of writing our real names, we wrote our nicknames and aliases. I was the only one with a figure nickname (4040). Others had letters. The popular ones were: Rustics, Gbad, Atuma, DeShow, Alatike, Lord Jasse, Abbey Smart, TJ, Zico, Ofege, Rybes, Aboogba, Omoo, Manda, Big Stuff, NNG, MANQUE, Presky, Agbone, Afefeyeye, BobTay, Olugbe ika (what an alias!!) Senator, Omo egbon, Bonje, Rotex, Sofi, Adu Spoko, Shabaka, Costtita, Franco, Osas, etc.
Anyway, the complaint against “Dignity” by my school daughters was that he told them to cut the grass. When he showed them where to start, they asked him where to end but “Dignity” told them till “infinity”. Pray, which normal human being would ask little children to cut grass till infinity when they were not under a spell and jazz. Going by the literal interpretation of infinity, “Dignity” was simply asking my school daughters to spend the rest of their lives clearing the entire forest of Ayetoro. Honestly, for children, boarding house is a scary collectivity where grace, not grits, guarantees one’s survival. If I had not intervened passionately on behalf of my school daughters, Dignity would have transformed them into human “grass cutters” with his infinity impunity. Parents who live under the illusion that their children would learn how to live a disciplined life if they go through the boarding house system may come to discover very late that there is a big difference between terrorism and chastisement. Protecting twelve children (this number did not include those outside the nuclear family) for two years was like a life battle for me.
I had some classmates who also shared in this informal proxy parenting. Some of them had between 2 and 5 school children to look after but mine was humongous. The only consolation and compensation I got was the ceremonial community title of “Baba Ewe” as if I was a group patron who did not know his own biological children. It was in the course of protecting these children that my bravado was almost demystified. I forgot to warn my boys to avoid having any encounter with two people I was not sure of subduing in the event of any confrontation. They were TJ and NNG. TJ had a team of tough guys with reckless loyalty. They ruled Green House with ubiquitous visibility and overwhelming rascality. They walked and moved together like a Mafia. They looked so gentle but underneath their gentleness was raw toughness, majorly a protective charm for territorial sovereignty. I respected the clique but I couldn’t say if the respect bordered on fear. However, I should have warned my boys all the same. There was a time they had a brush with TJ’s team in the dining hall (80 per cent of fights in Compro was always about the dining hall).
Sometimes, I always sent my school sons to pick up my food for me in the dining hall. But being junior students, they were not meant to be in the HSC column. So, most times, the HSC students would want to collect the food from them. This was what happened between one of my boys and TJ’s people but somehow, it was resolved without escalation. As for NNG, he was in the same hostel with me. Initially, we both respected each other but somehow I exposed my weakness to him in the course of sharing my past with him. He got to know that I never smoked Indian hemp against the general impression that being a mentee of the dreaded Darasingh of Mushin, I must have smoked Indian hemp or I was still smoking Indian hemp.
Meanwhile, he was able to disclose to me the meaning of the NNG on his school uniform-Nigerian Natural Grass. He showcased his own strength not only by confirming to me that he was smoking Indian hemp but by also indulging in promotional extravaganza of the commodity through the initialization (NNG) and nationalization (Nigerian Natural Grass) of the local herb even more than Fela Anikulapo-Kuti did. Confronting NNG under this circumstance would require a free ground like Elelubo field where I successfully challenged Late-tua’s dominance. To attempt re-enacting the Late-tua’s scenario in an environment like Compro would be antithetical to my academic progress and aspiration. The best way to manage my relationships with both TJ and NNG was to adopt the “Superpower Template” of Mutual Respect (MR). How? I had to warn all my allies (school children) to avoid any kind of unwarranted collision with these two people since I was not sure of defeating them in the event of an all-out war. This approach was a perfect model for the prevention of mitigated disaster.
One dominant feature in Compro was that it was a school which allowed us to fully express our talents in any area of life-sports, academics, music, vocational expertise, entertainment, politics, technology, science, charity and drama. As soon as Baba Ibikunle banned me from touching the school piano, I moved to drama. As the President of the Dramatic Society, I came up with a stage play titled Obaluaye, an adaptation of a play written by Wale Ogunyemi in 1972. The idea behind the staging of the play was to honour all our final year (79/80 set) students both at the “O” and “A” levels who had just a few more weeks to spend in the school. Besides, the whole school was in celebration and sendforth mood. At the same time, we all had examinations to contend with. It was the season of exams-May/June. Aside from the outgoing students, for those of us in the lower six, we must pass the promotion examinations being the last set of HSC students in the school. Whoever failed would have to leave the school. I didn’t care about that. I went on with the rehearsal and the staging of the play in a questionable circumstance. For this act, I got into another very serious trouble with Baba Ibikunle again.
To be continued
