1972 - A Year of Clamors
GCI's regulation outfits for social outings are specified by Class levels. So, by his clothes, it was easy to decide which Class a GCI student was in. Forms 1-4 students wore khaki shorts with their white shirts. Form 5 students wore pairs of white trousers; and Lower and Upper Six students wore pairs of grey trousers - with their white shirts.
However, in 1972, a revolution took place. The Class of "69, in Form 4 at the time, decided to lobby for permission to stop wearing pairs of ..... Read More
That Man From Istanbul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPyNQB9ZjZk
ED�s Note: More than 40years after leaving GCI, one would have thought that the Stature of Limitations on all matters that occurred during our tenure in GCI would have expired. Apparently, not so: on some matters, piecing together the information on what really happened had been guarded and sketchy. �That Man from Istanbul� is obviously one of them. Why this is so is unclear. Nonetheless, the picture is a wee bit clearer, from this testimony and ..... Read More
WOOD STOCK (SCALA CINEMA, SABO)
Woodstock is a 1970 documentary of the Western pop culture; Woodstock festival took place in August, 1969 somewhere near Bethel in New York. The film was directed by Michael Wadleigh and won an Academy award. It featured a number of artists which included Joan Baez, Crosby, Still Nash, Joe Cocker, Carlos Santana, Janis Joplin, Sly and the family Stone and of course the Iconic Jimi Hendrix who played Spanish Castle Magic and Voodoo Child.
Hendrix was the guitarist that caught everyone�s ..... Read More
DAHOMEY FRENCH TRIP
I remember with nostalgia our French class trip to Benin School, Ibadan. The boys who were on this trip will remember the journey in our famous Black Maria driven by Alaska from Ibadan, through Lagos and Idi-Iroko to Cotonou. We studied for one week with the students of L'�cole Secondaire Protestante. The presence of girls among us made the trip a very exciting one. One of the highlights was our visit to the floating village of Abomey. We travelled in two groups and in two boats. As the pilots ..... Read More
Anger!!!
Inter-house sports competitions were a big deal in GCI. The frenzy was usually far more than when GCI played against other schools. Houses competed for laurels in athletics, soccer, hockey, and cricket; and oh the pride of winning the trophy.
The final of the inter-house hockey tournament in 1965 was a particularly high-pitch one. Field House was playing Swanston and it was the second successive year the two Houses were meeting in the final. Swanston House had won in 1964, so the 1965 game was ..... Read More
When The Bugger Was Bugged
There was a soft-sell College Magazine in those days called the �College Gossip'. This was a magazine specially published to checkmate students who generally misbehaved or exhibited acts of misdemeanour or, in GCI colloquial parlance, "Ibara". Now "ibara" was the shortened form of "ibara eni je and was aptly applied to any act of misbehaviour that was deemed uncivilised or against the norms of the society and ethos of the school. The interesting thing was that this magazine was supposed ..... Read More
Escaping JBO's cane
Escaping JBO's cane -
sunday evenings at GCI were well known for the "succulent Dodo" that was the meal in our dining hall. The other feature of Sunday evenings was the presence of the Principal at meal with us. The GCI rule was to eat with fork and knife. However, In my Lower Sixth Form, I had developed a bad habit of eating all meals with one small spoon. One Sunday evening in 1970, I was busy eating Dodo with my spoon, as usual, when Ogundere (a School Prefect. I don't remember if he was ..... Read More
The Historic Baton Change
The Historic Baton Change
The year was 1968 and the Class of 65 was in Class 4. We were by now senior boys and were well versed in the GCI traditions. In the outside world, Nigeria was in the pangs of a raging civil war. The radio jingles had started to ring loud:
"To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done"
A new acronym had been coined for General Gowon, the then Head of State: Go on with One Nigeria. A few our classmates had unavoidably left for the east due to the ..... Read More
AN AWESOME PRIVILEGE
Those early days in the year 1965 were quite wonderful as we were all young and innocent. Our backgrounds were as I varied as our faces, very divergent socially, economically, and culturally. But there was a common denominator: our goal was to obtain the best secondary education from a premium school under the masterful leadership of DJB and his fantastic team of teachers and administrative staff.
The first day remains ever fresh in my memory. We new students had just been dropped by our ..... Read More
GCI AS A LEVELLER
Even the youngest of us in 1965 turned Diamond well ahead of 2015. But by the timeless ticking clock and ageless calendar of GCI, we are all only fit to be Golden...and Boys for that matter. It's fifty years since we entered the Great School, and that's all that matters now. We may be in our 60s, have become GrandPas or even choose to call ourselves Boyz, but Boys we will forever remain by the evergreen traditions of GCI.
GCI has often been described as a school for the privileged, but in ..... Read More