I saw my assumption of
office on the Council as the affirmation of my identity and linked it
intrinsically with the exercise of power. However, subsequent events proved
there was more complexity to the issue of my identity. In 1984, it was
three months into the Council year and I had it up to my neck with what I
considered the constant snipping and display of ‘petty politics’ from my cabinet colleagues. My ego
had become exaggerated by my proximity to power and I reasoned that since Panaf
Olajide Olakanmi had schooled me in the art of student union politics I could
not allow these ‘young
upstarts’ to upstage me. In
my musings, dripping with arrogance, I thought and asked:
“What did they understand about politics?”
At the time I thought it was all about ‘Panafism’, an ideology,
but upon reflection, I now know it was more about the exercise of raw power and
some remorse begins to creep in! My subsequent doctoral research, focusing on ‘Speaking Truth to Power’ confirmed what was an inconvenient
truth about me in those very early stages of my political life.
Post tenebras spero lucem means, ‘After
darkness a hope for light’, Spero
Lucem: ‘A hope for light’ was the motto that the founding
fathers bequeathed King’s College, Lagos. All of us who were privileged to have
sauntered through the gates into King’s College, were drilled with the
idea, that no matter the hopelessness of our circumstance, the barriers we
faced, no matter what path we had trod before, that at the end of it all lay
hope.
On my first day in King’s College, Lagos I arrived in my mother’s
cream coloured iconic Volkswagen Beetle and stepped out into a morning air
filled with clouds of dust created by the Harmattan breeze. The Harmattan has
sometimes been described as something that comes with terror and menace with a
strong naked touch of nature poisoning the cold morning. The morning of that
day certainly felt like that. Earlier in 1974, my mother had sold the K70
Volkswagen sedan my father bought because of the incessant mechanical problems
it caused her.
The imported version of the Beetle she acquired was one of the
most iconic cars ever produced, it was a classic and it had so many myths woven
around it. I remember the rattle of its air-cooled four-cylinder engine and the
feeling of having my ankles cooled by the floor-level heating vent. The seats
were covered in black mock patterned leather. We called it ‘Ijapa’ a Yoruba word for tortoise. This
reflected the strength of its bodywork but also the ponderous but assured manner
in which it moved when driven on the roads of Lagos. There were rumours that it
could leap over the ditches but for my mother it was simply a workhorse, a
utility vehicle. The car was almost always filled up with cartons of beverages
and provisions she purchased for the buttery she ran and managed.
With my mother in tow, we were confronted with the brooding
presence of Mr. Njoku the head security man who prised the gates open. He was a
very serious character, spotting some wildly growing whiskers, had pronounced
‘K’ shaped legs that seemed to constantly knock against each other as he
walked. He always carried a menacing black coloured baton. I paced myself and
walked through the gates on 5th December 1977. On that day, I was oblivious to
its immaculately kept lawns, its neatly arranged classrooms and its
well-stocked library. What beguiled me was not its long and chequered history,
what excited me was not the first class facilities it possessed, what amazed me
was certainly not its record of academic excellence. It was the exercise of
power exhibited by the prefects, the charisma of the School Captain Obineche,
the tall light complexioned boy with Afro cut, and the opportunity to
appropriate one’s democratic right from an early age. At a stage when the military
rule was still a feature of the Nigerian life and we could not vote for our own
government, in King’s College we had that right. It was much later that I
appreciated the diversity of the varied origins of its students was what really
made the school truly unique.
I was happy to be re-united with all former University of Lagos
Staff School pupils, Afolabi Omidiji aka ‘Wheezee’, Oluyinka Olutoye aka ‘Toy’,
Dolapo Ogunmekan, Akintayo Ojo, Ayodele Onafeko, ’Segun Alawaiye, ’Folarin
Ososami, Ayorinde Oyewole, Omotayo Johnson, Joel Ugborogho, 'Tola Durojaiye, 'Tony Uduebo aka 'Ebo' and Joseph
Ownwuchekwa aka ‘JAMO’. It would now seem that my earlier natural shyness
and awkwardness only masked a deep hunger and thirst for power. At age eleven,
I was moody, introverted and needy, and then only sketching and drawing
pictures and cartoons would suffice. As years wore on, deep down in my
subconscious, this became inadequate and I concluded that only the
acquisition of power could offer me the perfect antidote. I was an average
artist and liked to scribble on every desk I owned, it was a way of rebuffing
any invasions and claiming my own personal space. I would draw a portrait of
myself with the inscriptions: ‘Oje
The Power’ and ‘Oje The Pirate’. In my dream world, power is what
seemed to matter. It was this that seduced me to position myself for election
as vice-class captain in my First Form, winning and going on to ably assist the
captain, ‘Wale Goodluck.
No comments:
Post a Comment