A Sojourn So Bitter, So Sweet: Snippets from My GCI Days

We He would often sit on the lawns of the expansive premises of Aresha High School after school hours to sort out our Maths and English assignments before proceeding home. Jide Elemide (now a Pharmacist), Ayo Arowojolu (now a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology), Taiwo Onashile (also a Pharmacist) and I. We used the almighty Durrell for the Maths and First Aid in English for the English assignments. We were all co sufferers at the notorious Ebenezer African Church Primary School, Oke Ado, Ibadan. A very notorious school indeed! Notorious both for its killing school hours (the school was nicknamed 'seven to seven'!) as well as the legendary prowess of its headmaster, late Pa Adekoya to inflict deadly strokes of the cane on the buttocks of his hapless victims. The school also had a coterie of callous teachers. I recall Mr. Ogundiran and Mr. Oriola very clearly. But I digress. Our efforts and the endless hours we spent on the lawns of Aresha school finally paid off. Arowojolu, Elemide and I as well as numerous other classmates were admitted into the famous Government College Ibadan in 1966. As a matter of fact, in those days although there was a common entrance examination for government-owned schools, several secondary schools organised their own entrance examinations.

The school authorities at Ebenezer Primary encouraged us to apply to and sit for entrance examinations to as many secondary schools as possible, but admission to GCI, which was through the common entrance examination, was the ultimate. It was therefore not unusual to find students who had been admitted into as many as ten or even twelve secondary schools! I was not inclined towards such a wasteful and obviously purposeless pursuit. I had a clear idea where I wanted to obtain my secondary school education, even though I had gone through the three-day residential interview at Igbobi College and was indeed offered admission The endless unkind supply of weavel-infested beans at every meal time did it for me. I knew Igbobi College was not it, even though my poor father had paid the non-refundable deposit of twenty pounds. For me, Apata Ganga beckoned. The experience of the five-day residential interview exercise at GCI is a story for another day. The first term in Carr House was miserable. It was the athletics season. That meant getting out of bed as early as 5am to do the run around the school premises, presumably to get all and sundry fit enough to garner points for the house at the inter house athletics meet which would come up later in the term. The house master was Mr. Adelaja.
My first encounter with him when I was just two days old in the school was of a macabre sort. I think that must have been the first time in my life that I would genuinely pray to God to snuff the life out of a fellow human being! But I was petrified! Apparently he knew my father, a disciplinarian headmaster in his own time, and we were sort of related in ljebu Ode family circles. His thwarted logic (to my konkolo mind) was that my father used the cane to positively shape many lives, including his own, and therefore he had the responsibility to use the same method for me! Thereafter he promised me generous doses of his cane as long as I remained within his sights, whether I did anything wrong or not! It was from him I first heard the biblical saying that the sins of the father shall be visited on the sons from generation to generation. At the end of the day, and throughout my sojourn in GCI he never caned me, but he always held out the possibility at every opportunity he had, a sort of sword of Damocles constantly hanging over my head. I think he just wanted to make an impression on my mind, a kind of psychological game. On a lighter note, Young Ade, as we fondly referred to him had two pretty daughters and a son. Did we fantasise with those girls' images? They sort of developed under our very noses and quite a number of us imagined all sorts of things we could do with them if only they would leave the prying eyes of Young Ade! But they never ever seemed to! They are big girls now, Femi, the older (a public health physician and a Director at the Lagos State Ministry of Health) is married to Bayo, a Consultant Radiologist, and Shola is married to Tunji. Unfortunately they lost their little brother to the cold hands of death a few years ago. Young Ade himself passed on, and I was quite happy with myself that I was able to attend the obsequies and pay my last respect to an enigmatic mathematics genius.
I do not know about other houses in GCI, but in Carr House, Forms One and Two students tended to be quite close, and the latter never really tried to enforce the seniority thing. That would explain my fond closeness to boys like Segun Oshinyimika (a surgeon and former Lagos State Permanent Secretary), Oseimeikhan, late Atere, Akindiji and others. There was however one particular Form Two boy who constantly looked for my trouble and eventually got it. He was fond of trying to send me on errands, which I never obliged. He tried to mete out punishments and I always told him he could not, as he was only one year ahead of me! He reported me a few times to more senior boys, but he was largely ignored. I was emboldened to do all these because I was in possession of the secret of one of his physiological weaknesses pertaining to his loose urinary system! We were bunk-mates on a double-decker bed and he foolishly chose the upper bunk. I therefore knew what I endured from the trickles of holy water that dropped on me at night and the strong ammoniacal smell that permanently perfused our corner! My young mind reasoned that apart from the apparent nearness of our classes, a man that could not hold his bladder at night could not possibly want to lord it over one that could! As far as I was concerned, the ability to exert control over my bladder sphincter during sleep was a superior one and the mere historical accident of entering the school one year before me would pale into insignificance! To cut a long story short, he challenged me to a fight behind the bush latrine. I sized him up and believed I could wallop him so I agreed. He did not want any observers. I think he thought he would beat me so badly and I might even die! For some reason that I could not understand myself, I agreed. It was during siesta time that we went to 'Golgotha', and I gave this fellow the beating of his life. He begged to be released but not before I extracted a promise from him that never again in his miserable life would he be on my case.

I was finally free from his torment, and he started respecting me. Mr. Oyekan was our English teacher at some point. Government College was highly respected as far as stage drama was concerned. DJ Bullock had ensured that, but DJ had to leave. I loved to partake in drama but never really made the centre stage during DJ's time. I had one or two waka pass roles but nothing serious. I made up with major roles in plays staged by other societies in the school, all of them in English. Mr. Oyekan took over as the Drama coordinator and for reasons best known to him he chose to stage Yoruba plays. Quite a number of us who were drama enthusiasts and who considered ourselves as DJ's boys felt quite uncomfortable with this development. Mr. Oyekan wanted me as lead in one of his Yoruba plays and I declined. Late Awobodede (1966 Carr House) eventually took the role but unknown to me I had bruised an ego. I had committed an unforgivable sin and made a powerful enemy! When we then had the food demonstration and protests in 1970, this teacher, as I was reliably informed, dropped my name as one of the ring leaders of that demonstration and I was suspended along with some other boys. I swear I was innocent, but that now is neither here nor there. I would love to share a drink with Mr. Oyekan one of these days!

Eventually, it was time to round off at GCI. I was determined that I was not going through the A Levels. I needed to do the concessional examinations and enter a university, albeit at 100 Level. On this fateful day, as a sixth former just waiting to leave GCI anytime, I was somewhere within Carr House premises. I was reading a letter I had received from a Queens School girl and it had annoyed me immensely. I think she was complaining about stories she heard about me and another girl! I tore it up and dropped the shreds. I did not know that Mr. Olanrewaju, a Physics teacher and then housemaster of Carr House was watching. He came near and ordered me to pick the shreds, which I did. He then over-reached himself and decided, quite foolishly, that as a punishment for littering the premises, I should start picking all the litter in the environs. I was flabbergasted at his audacity. For crying out loud, I was a sixth former, on his way out! I refused and walked away. He tried to call me back but I did not even look back. I knew there would be trouble, but I also knew that I was not going to wait for it! I was clear in my mind that I had to leave the school, abandon any further half hearted efforts at doing A levels, and just pray that my admission to any of the universities came through.

Fortuitously, it did and that was how I called Mr. Olanrewaju's bluff and unfortunately left GCI in annoyance.
Of course I have since reconnected with my alma mater. Not once has the thought ever crossed my mind to wish I had attended any other school.

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FABAMWO Adetokunbo
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