I had only spent three weeks in Comprehensive High School, Ayetoro, (now to be referred to simply as Compro or Yetro) but it looked like I had been there for three years. The flurry of activities that happened within this short period was inconceivable . There was life in abundance in my new school. Adaptation was made simple by the curriculum of association and fraternity that was on ground.
The school was a social hub with multiple attractions. The gangway was classic. The school hall was elegant. The dining hall was a splendour. The library was amazing. The classes were cozy. The hostels were exquisite. The toilets were shiny. The lawns were well trimmed. The environment was tranquil. The compound was spotless. The teachers were urbane.
The male students were cherubic. Oh, my GOD, the female students were seraphic. And the Principal was imperial. The first thing that made me popular was the piano. There was a school organist before I came but the way he was conducting the morning assembly was not jazzy. I discussed this with some of my friends in upper six and my classmates in lower six including Dayo Onatemowo who became my classmate again after we both survived the sudden death exam. We came up with a plan.
The assembly usually commenced at 7:30 am officially. But students would have started arriving in the hall between 6:45am and 7 am. I decided to be at the hall before 7am to entertain students with some popular Yoruba and english songs with socio-cultural value by playing the piano. Songs like “Isẹ OLUWA ko le bajẹ”, FESTAC 77 anthem, “Bata mi a dun koko ka”, “Iwe kikọ, láìsí oko…” “This old man, he plays one”, “Meta, meta lore o eh, ọkan ni wa sun leni….” “Agbe to’rọ mọ re daro o, Olele…” including a host of others. The reason for this was to kill boredom before the assembly commenced officially at 7:30.
This strategy worked more than expected as students started arriving early to the hall before the normal morning assembly began. Some students who did not like attending the morning assembly before began to attend. Most of the upper six students rarely attended the morning assembly. But the moment I introduced the pre-assembly interlude, the hall was always full.
In my hostel, aberrant things were happening which I found disturbing and they were things I couldn’t continue to tolerate. At odd hours like 1am, 2am 3am, some unruly boys in forms four and five would stand on the balcony upstairs like landlord’s children and be screaming: “Boys kan”, “Boys kan”. Initially, I was more concerned about the dissemination of corrupt English within the hostel where there were young children who may be confused about the kind of English their seniors were speaking. In simple English, “boys kan” means “one boys”.
I was later told that there was a cultus explanation for such linguistic bastardization. I was made to understand that the senior evoking the “Boys kan” screamer actually needed just one boy that he could send on errands. However, anytime he made the screamer , he expected all the Junior students (forms one and two) in the lounge to sprint to the quadrangle in whatever condition they were so that he could choose the one he wanted to send the errands. Deliberately, and for the fun of it, most of the seniors had cultivated the habit of unleashing the screamer in the middle of the night when most of the children were fast asleep just to see some of the children in their different natural anatomies.
As far as I was concerned, I didn’t like this oppressive behaviour. I discussed this with my colleagues and roommates but some of them, who had boarding house experience, opposed any intervention on the ground that it was part of school life. I moved to my caucus, Segun Omolodun, Tunji Akinyemi and Dayo. I sought their views, they told me they were indifferent but that they would support whatever action I took if I really felt strongly about it. Though Dayo Onatemowo was in Crimson house, I always confided in him some of my plans being my classmate for six years running.
As for Omolodun, we had been childhood friends since our Paddington days in Surulere. Tunji is not really my age mate, his brother, Muyiwa is. But now that we found ourselves in the same school and the same lower six, I carried him along too as my area friend. I thanked them all. I had the last consultation with my very first friend in Compro. Surprisingly, he was not in boarding house. He was a day student living with his father in Surulere, one of the school quarters. Sina Sanni was in the Science class. He saw me when I went to eat at the quarters . We got talking and I told him my life history including the fact that I was writing letters and articles on national issues to newspaper editors under a pseudonym “Tommy Dorry”. I was shocked when he called me that name some days after our first meeting. I wondered why he didn’t call me 4040, so, I asked him and he told me he preferred that. I gave him my approval.
I told him about what had been going on in my hostel and he gave me his views as one who had spent more than six years in the school being the son of a staff. Now, I had my plans.
Coincidentally, I was still putting my plans together when Jamba (his alias) one of the boys in form five met “Agbako” on the same night I discussed with Sina Sanni. It was around 1am as usual. We were in our room downstairs when I heard : “Boys kan”.
All of a sudden, there was drunken scampering among the children and obvious trudging by those who were sick among them. They all assembled in the quadrangle to know which of them would be chosen for Jamba’s errands. I was fuming where I was wondering how some rascals would turn themselves to slave masters in a country with law and order.
As I was thinking of what to do, a radical thought came to my mind that I should go and do James Bond 4040 for the guy called Jamba. However, I changed my mind. I went out to meet the students where they were. I ignored Jamba and his cohorts who were still standing on the balcony upstairs. I started addressing the children. “What are you doing here.” Some of them replied that Senior Jamba called “Boys kan”. I didn’t say it out but I said it in my mind that “ko dé ni da fún Jàmbá”. I told the students: “Before I count 10, I want you back in that lounge.” I started counting from 1. Till I got to 10, none of the children moved.
That was how much they feared Jamba. They had seen Jamba in action many times but they had not seen a single action from 4040 because I was new. I told them I would repeat the counting and whoever was last to enter the lounge would incur my wrath. I started counting again but this time I had started removing my belt. Jamba was upstairs watching and listening to me from his observatory. By the time I was on seven, the children had started moving one by one. By the time I got to 10 all of them had disappeared. They must be very reasonable children.
They probably obeyed me the second time when they realized that the Jamba that screamed “Boys kan” couldn’t utter a single word during my operation. I went to their lounge to warn them that if I should see them again in the quadrangle at odd hours, they would see “pepper”. I decided to walk back to my room through the quadrangle so that Jamba could do a quick assessment of the “Agbako” he was going to encounter for the next one year he would still be in the school. I entered my room and heaven did not fall. My roommates that were still awake didn’t know what to say. It was a quiet night. About an hour after my James Bond operation, two of Jamba’s mates came to my room. They are my younger brothers from Paddington, Surulere. Kunle Alugo is the younger brother of Nike Alugo, my friend in primary school and in the area and Biodun Sulaimon is a cousin to Ahmed Sulaimon, my friend, whose father helped me on so many occasions when I was staying with Iya Ibadan.
They came to discuss the incident with me. They told me Jamba was coming to fight me but they warned him by giving him my profile as “Ogbologbo ọmọ ita” (dangerous rascal). According to them, the one that terrified him most was when they told him that I normally fought with broken bottles. We all laughed in my room. Surprisingly, Jamba and I met at the gangway later in the day. I was going to the hostel, he was coming from the hostel. There was no way he could detour because he realized that I had seen him. He behaved like a man by coming straight towards my direction.
When we met, I called him by his real name, Shamusi. It was uncanny to him. He was rarely called by his name. Even the Principal called him Jamba. I stopped him. I held his right hand. I then decided to lecture him: “What I did early this morning was not meant to embarrass or humiliate you in the presence of the junior students. However, I will never offer any apologies for doing it because I will do it again if you insist on treating the children that way. If you need to send anyone of them errands, walk to their lounge, pick one of them and send him whatever errands. Don’t disturb the sleep of other children again.” He was still doing “ganku-ganku” (flexing) by raising his shoulders like a spoilt brat.
This time, Segun Omolodun came to meet us thinking I was about to fight him. But I told him we were not fighting, I was only advising him. Jamba didn’t utter a word. I then continued: “By the way, they say you are Jamba, I know you know me as 4040 but my other name is “Ewu”. Segun laughed hysterically. I explained further: “Jamba” means ordinary accident, “Ewu” means calamity plus the casualties of the calamity. I hope you understand.” No doubt, the alliterative effect of the definition frightened him. Segun now dragged me away and said “Dapo, o ti ya nkan sí Yetro” meaning Dapo, you have turned to a terror in Ayetoro.
A lot kept happening in quick succession and I didn’t know why everything was happening in November (1979) my birthday month. Some days after the Jamba episode, I was in my hostel battling with toothache with my “Alcool”, a liquid medication that sounds and smells like alcohol. It was around 10pm. I was busy gurgling with the Alcool when about four hefty guys emerged from nowhere to invite me to Crimson House to assist them in pacifying a friend who “used to have tutorial classes with insanity” (better known as scoin scoin) once in a while.
According to the leader of the team: “once it starts like that, it will take the intervention of someone who is very close to him for him to calm down”. That was when I started suspecting them. Yes, I had met Kashie (his alias), the guy in question, but I didn’t think we were that close for me to see it as a privilege to dabble into a tutorial class on psychiatry. I asked them some questions which they didn’t answer satisfactorily. But I wouldn’t behave like a coward by refusing to follow them. I took another bottle of “Alcool” with me and I followed them. I had my plans. On getting to Crimson House, I noticed some bizzare movements.
I didn’t panic nor did I say anything. I didn’t spend two years with Darasingh in Mushin to come and display infantile timidity in ordinary Ayetoro. I entered the gate of Crimson with fearlessness in my heart. I entered the court of Crimson with grit. I would have gone straight to Dayo’s room but they would think I was afraid. I applied the psychology of intimidation because they were not sure who I really was for me to have decided to follow four guys I barely knew to their den, in the night for that matter. They were also wondering why I put my left hand in my pocket all through the 50-metre journey to Crimson from my hostel.
They took me upstairs where I saw about 7 guys standing by the door pretending to be showing sympathy for the man in “tutorial” class. They thought I would be afraid to enter the room. Before we got to the door, I drank the entire content of my “Alcool” . By this time, some of them were beginning to withdraw from the door. I poured another bottle in my mouth, this time, I didn’t drink it. I started spraying and sprinkling everybody on my way till I got to the room. I now changed my voice to “Oga Dara’s battle tone” and exclaimed in Yoruba:”O gbo Kashie, won ni o nba were se lesson. Were na da? Odun meji ni mo fi ba awon were gbe ni Rainbow Cinema, Mushin. Ko ni da fún were”. (Kashie, I was told you were having tutorials with madness. Where is it? I spent two years living with mad people in Mushin.
May it not be well with madness.) My baritone voice and the way I switched to it shocked them. Immediately, they saw the drama I displayed they knew I had not been flexing around the school with fake certificate in thuggery. My display was a strong evidence of physical attendance in a recognized thuggery Montessori. They started hailing me and jubilating, muttering “A ti ri oko Ibikunle” (Finally, we have seen the person that would tame Ibikunle (the Principal).
Two weeks before this incident, Bature, Kashie, Ifede and Tope (four of them were members of the School’s Dramatic Society with Kashie as the President) had approached me to join the Society because they could see that I had the swagger for drama. I didn’t hesitate to join the Society because I loved drama. After that, we had seen again on one or two occasions . I was getting to know them when they came up with this maddening prank.
According to them, they did this for me to know if I was the right person to hand over the Dramatic Society to when they were leaving. They were all in upper six with about 7 months to exit the school. Needles to repeat that I was in lower six. Having shown them the stuff I was made of, they made me the President of the Dramatic Society in January 1980 to enable them prepare for their HSC 2 final Exams. At the same time I became the editor of Gong Magazine, the only bug magazine we had in the school. Again, I became the school organist alongside a guy called Grillo.
Not long after becoming the school organist, Kashie and co. had an assignment for me already. Sometime in February 1980, they came to my hostel to report one of their classmates to me. Her nickname was “Mammy Flooder”. They had composed a song for her but it gained no traction because it was only known to their classmates. Their objective was to popularize the song during one of my morning interludes in the school hall.
Though they told me they wanted to embarrass the girl because of the frequency of her “flooding” in the dining hall, I saw it as a worthwhile advocacy because I detested “flooding” too. What was “flooding” in Compro’s lexicon? “Flooding” was an intentional stampede created by a student or a group of students in order to run away with several rations of food meant for tens of students. In order words, “flooding” was a crime against juvenile humanity. In culinary terminology, another name for “flooding” could be “food-ocide” (just like genocide). Food-ocide is the denial of mass of students their right to food. We held several rehearsals because it was not a common tune even though it was a simple tune.
On the day of the rendition, the mobilization was massive as the hall was full to the brim. Both the hall and the gallery were pin-tight. The Principal didn’t need to struggle with his instinct to know that something “weird” was happening. The stage was set for the presentation. I created a dummy to give the impression that it was the usual interlude humming but few minutes to the official assembly, I gave the key signal for the commencement of the song and…
*To be continued*
