CHAPTER 2
The school
A school is where you learn to read and write.
I remembered the voice of my nursery one teacher ring out as I sat staring out the passenger seat of papa’s car. I remembered learning later that a school is where you learn things that make you a better human being in the future but I guess that’s not the case of papa’s school, the university, because it is often mentioned among papa’s colleagues and lecturers that only about a quarter of graduates from the University get good jobs that can really make them better people in the future and that was why my daddy had insisted that none of his children will school in a local university. The graduates were simply unemployable and the employable ones were still not employed because even after Nigeria had been split, the various nations still drew little investments and new jobs were not being created.
That was primary six and I was about nine years old then when they had all these discussions.
Then Mr.Vahashanya or something, an Indian, thought me mathematics two years ago in JSS two and said school is where you learn how to escape from poverty. I never knew before then that poverty was a petty policeman who went about arresting people who had low marks in mathematics while in school. I never can claim to ever know poverty but nevertheless, I had an unprecedented 89% in mathematics that term but never made it to the top five in mathematics. Some boy named Gbenro, who had the oldest and most patched uniform in the class, got the honour of being the best math student in the class all year. I think Gbenro knew more about poverty than me because he had almost dropped out of school on two occasions because his father had not been able to pay the school fees and once because the principal had in a fit of self-righteousness said his school uniform which he had worn constantly for two years, washing it in the night and wearing it in the day, was an embarrassment to the school because it had patched holes on it. I guess she later knew the effect of her words on the boy’s father when Gbenro stopped attending school for a few weeks. The class teacher had visited the boy’s home to find him having home lessons with his elder sister who had just finished from secondary school. She was his teacher in all subjects never minding she had studied arts-based subjects while Gbenro was more science-inclined. Gbenro’s father had calmly told the teacher, he was a poor civil servant, a primary school headmaster who is trying his best to give all his children the best education they can get but when a child gets embarrassed because his father can’t afford to buy a new uniform in two years, it’s best to sit him at home and give him the finest tuition they can afford without any accompanying insults. It’s not my son’s fault that we can’t buy uniforms every half-session like other parents. I’m a teacher like you, paid by the government and you know how much the government values us, pennies, because we are teachers and not university lecturers but obviously, your school head, doesn’t understand that fact and he’s more concerned about the boy’s uniform than his education. Not only had the man hit a nerve in our class teacher’s brain by using the term school head instead of the slightly respectful head of school, he had made it known to the principal that all teachers were poor, at least if you’re being paid by the government, and it’s just a matter of time before you become unable to afford some basic things. All said and put into perspective, Gbenro knew poverty and did his best to escape from it when he got the opportunity. He scored 96% twice in the session and 97% once and he was easily the best math student in the class that year.
I stuck my head to the glass of the vehicle looking outside at the fence of what papa called school. No uniforms, boys openly laughed with girls and there was no single cane in sight. Americans don’t know what a cane is, I remembered my sister once told me. She read in one of her novels that an old man used a cane to walk. That’s not a cane, that’s a walking stick and these white people could not have shown more ignorance than this. Ask a five year old Yoruba boy what a cane is and he tells you without equivocation. It’s a long thick or thin instrument of correction, very painful when applied and usually kept in the most unreachable parts of the house. Now, that’s a cane and white folks need to learn that.
That’s tower building; I heard papa’s voice say and instinctively looked up at a tall building with a giant clock at the very top. I couldn’t help envying the freedom with which he spoke of his school and the freedom with which the school was operated. It’s not just a school; it’s the great University of Ibadan, founded 1948 as proclaimed by the giant marble carving at the gate through which we entered this mammoth school. I had always known papa was a professor at the university, but I now knew he was a professor of African history at the University of Ibadan, the first and only university in the whole area around the Niger, he often proclaimed when he was in the company of Uncle Jimi, his colleague and friend at the university whom I’ve never met but I’ve heard a lot about like several other millions of Yoruba children.
I looked outside at the throng of passing students outside the faculty of arts where we were currently parked and I concluded it didn’t look the least like any definition of a school that I could conjure in my mind. It looked more like a museum, there were sculptures, paintings and some of the students quite looked like rock stars with their colourful dressing and in the extreme cases, they were comparable to some of the masquerades that paraded the streets of Ibadan during the odun egungun, the city’s masquerade festival where you could see the colourful masquerades in red, yellow, black, purple and any other colour thread available. I led the way into a wide passage way dotted with notice boards, graffiti and on one side was a large half-torn poster with a burly shape dressed in cheap suit and dark sunglasses proclaiming “Picasso for President 2025/26”. Obviously it was an oversized campaign poster for “Picasso” who was running for the president of something, a group of students likely. I instinctively moved slowly, fixing side glances at the obvious frame of Picasso on the wall, before noticing similar bills and posters at various points along the wall and bearing various names and advertisements. There was Shakespeare running for the post of general secretary and a host of others with a couple of adverts for sales of cheap bed spaces. My steps instinctively followed these postings that littered the walls as did my eyes, trying to catch each name and the purpose of each pasted item until papa guided my arm down another corridor.
These posters were a good reminder of the political situation of the nation that was known just a few years ago as South-western Nigeria. Nigeria had been a bedevilled state I heard, with stories of greatness amidst a population plagued by gross poverty. A CNN report had called it a bleeding nation and a failed state and two years later, the military coup had taken place and the nation split along its major ethnic groups owing to the fact that the spearhead of the coup was a group of northern generals in the army, much to the anger of south-east and south-west leaders.
The southern leaders formed a joint secret coalition that silently planned the assassinations of the imposed military administrators and their family members in the southern states knowing how unstable the central government was. These actions forced the northern oligarchy to withdraw its administrators in southern states in order to avoid excessive bloodshed like it was happening in other countries in the North African region that had similar situations. Two years later, while the system seemed to have settled down, a group of south-easterners who were not convenient with self-government under a Lagos-based capital, declared secession from the young state of Southern Nigeria. It was a peculiarly bloodless affair, papa had told me, and each sovereign state has been relatively stable except for the minor skirmishes that happen at the border between Biafra and the northern states, somewhere around Benue. About seven years after the split of south-eastern and south-western Nigeria, there has never been a presidential election held in the southwest, which is now called Yorubaland. The new state has been headed by a sort of selected parliamentary group of respected indigenes called Elder statesmen. The selection was done by paramount rulers of the various major tribes that make up Yorubaland. The
re is no central seat of government like in many other organized nations and communities across the globe. Many of the older population of the Yoruba prefer this system but the younger generations and a few of the older still clamoured for a return to the democratic system that never worked for Nigeria. The argument of the elders was based on the fact that they witnessed the corruption brought by democracy to Nigeria and also that the sovereign rulership of Yoruba land was never in the hands of any single individual before the region became a British colony and life then, according to tales that were handed down, was much fairer for all. However, the numbers of elder statesmen have been increasing rapidly and there have been allegations of bribery of paramount rulers by specific interest groups and money bags. There are fears that the absolute lack of consolidated authority in a specific representation of a central government will soon lead to chaos and a total lack of accountability as regards utilization of public funds. Hence, there have been massive protests, mostly involving the younger crop of politicians calling for the establishment of a central and accountable government across the several cities that make up Yoruba land. There have been debates all over the print and electronic media on the type of government to be instituted, a parliamentary or presidential system of government. A couple of ambitious politicians have even rolled out campaigns under the platform of several existing and some other fictitious political parties. The nation is at a crucial point in its history, papa had said. We will either make men or make good out of our men.
At this point I was willing to ask him if UI made men from these elections and posters or made good out of men. He seemed to be reading my thoughts as we climbed a flight of stairs that led to the faculty offices.
Those are posters of people contesting for positions on the SUG, that’s Students’ Union Government, he said motioning at the walls.
They stand as representatives of the entire student body, the eyes, ears and mouth of the over forty thousand student body when crucial decisions that concern the university is to be made.
He turned the key to the door of his office and walked in briskly going in directly for the window blinds, then the electrical socket outlet that supplied the Air Conditioner and refrigerator. You would know it was a routine, almost religious, the way he did it. I have been with my grandparents for a week and I have been papas’ guide to his office for about four days and the minimum time it has taken us to make the short trip about eighty metres between the car and the office is 40 minutes, often stopping to exchange greetings and pleasantries with every secretary, colleague and sometimes students who turns to exchange greetings but today was peculiar, there has been no familiar face on the way waiting to exchange greetings. That meant a lot to me in ways the foreigner would not understand.
If papa has to stop to greet ten people, then I had to stop to greet ten people, majority of whom expected “proper greetings” from me on hearing I was papa’s grandchild. The situation gets complicated knowing papas’ popularity and fondness for promotion of our proper cultural ethics and pride. In other words, I would do my best to lie prostrate and rise up ten times and always repeating the phrase e’kaaro sa or ma. I’ve recently decided to stick to the new age method of a simple bow, which may be quite unacceptable by the more eccentric of papas’ colleagues, I guess that’s why I’m from the new school, young bloods if you please but I decided against the push-ups. Today was different, I remembered, it’s Saturday and there were no colleagues here just like you don’t find students in my own school on Saturdays. Most of them were out partying or watching live sports on TV. Papa seemed to me now like a workaholic but I’ve always known him to be a jolly smiling ol’ fellow who just enjoys life and what he does. He had no children to pay their school fees, so it definitely wasn’t about money or surviving in some rat race. It was purely fun to him; at least that’s what I think.
I didn’t understand. Late night reading, early risings, going to school on Saturday, all by a 73 year old man who took little solid food.
Incomprehensible.
But I enjoyed it. It’s my holiday and I’m meant to enjoy it. The pace was relatively slow for me despite papa’s heavy workload.
I sat down at the small reading table where I had kept a couple of storybooks the previous day and picked out my best – “The Three Musketeers”, never boring. Papa made his way to the door slowly glanced up and down the quiet narrow passage and closed the door slowly and pulled out a tall sheet of foam that looked thick. He seemed to have pulled it out from the part of the wall that was concealed by the back of the door when it was open. He slid it gently across the back of the door, covering all crevices and allowances left at the edge of the closed door. I heard a small click as I saw a small contraption on the wall snap and hold the foam in place firmly against the door at four different points on opposite vertical sides of the door. He turned and went to his seat at the mahogany table and brought out a massive file, pressed on a button by the wall which brought out his personal office desktop computer and its typing pad from their hiding places beneath the table. No noise, just motion. I was familiar with the office and papa obviously thinking I would be a bit nervous at the only new experience I just had - the foam covering, explained to me that he had some important work to do and wanted to use the foam to minimize the effect of external noises and also give observers from outside the impression that nobody was in since they couldn’t peep through the key hole and the door edges. I simply said yes sir…ok sir, though I wasn’t afraid, at least not of my grandfather. If there was a reason to be afraid of him, my dad, his son would have told me but I instinctively knew there was some other explanation for the foam, which was not mentioned. Papa settled down to his work and everything continued quietly for about half an hour with only short pauses when papa asked me what I wanted to be in the future and when the mobile phone on the table buzzed and papa promptly cut it short, and probably switched it off because I never heard it give off the sound again.
I buried my head in the novel in my hands, the three musketeers. I took interest in the novel and read on as the seconds ticked by in the large silent room until at exactly 11am, there was a large tick on the great wall clock and a correspondingly loud rasp on the door outside, to which papa asked me to unlatch the foam from the door and open it. I saw a hint of a coy smile on his face when he said so but I was not sure if I was just assuming it. I opened the door standing behind it, trying as much as possible to stay out of the important visitor’s way and avoid the possible long greeting processes to follow. The man bounded in, so full of life and boisterously exclaiming alagba! Meaning ‘elder’, he seemed to be coming for me or so I thought
Yes, he was coming towards me……. And he was addressing me, 13 year old me, Akinkanju Aluko as alagba. I looked up quite alarmed and ready to prostrate but the firm old hands held my shoulder and I looked up into the dreamy face of Jimi Alalo, popular Uncle Jimi, and every Yoruba child’s dream face.