PRINCIPAL KING'S COLLEGE LAGOS

EXCERPTS FROM 'I FOUND MY VOICE' - NOMINATED FOR BEST WRITER

The Principal, King’s College was by custom abbreviated to PKC.  Mr. Augustine. A. Ibegbulam, aka ‘Bingo’ had been a diplomat at UNESCO in Paris, he was very sophisticated and suave. He was an Old Boy and had been a teacher at the school.  In maintaining control over the school, he deployed psychology rather than the brute force of the cane, to drive fear and obedience into the student populace.  With the VPKC, Mr. ’Tayo Sofoluwe aka ‘Ishano’, the strokes and lashings of the cane came as routine expectation when you caused offence, but with the PKC you were never really certain of what awaited you. ‘Bingo’ bestrode the school grounds like a colossus with the weight of traditions thrust upon his diminutive frame.   You crossed him at your own peril; many scampered at the rumours of his approach.  Some thought I was playing a dangerous and improbable game when I took on ‘Bingo’.   But I was re-assured by Jacks aka ‘Jakaba’, a previous Vice School Captain and at the time a student in the University of Lagos, that I was on the right path.

My earlier run-ins with the PKC were instructive; he once stopped me whilst I was out in the city of Lagos on an exeat from the boarding house.   He beckoned to me as I strode along Tafawa Balewa Square summoning me to his parked chauffeur driven car, a cream coloured Mercedes-Benz 200 with leather seats, to interrogate me.  He asked me where I had been and then questioned the legitimacy of my green coloured exeat card.  I assured him the exeat was legitimate, pointing to the signature of the Master, but rather than let the matter rest he referred me to Mr. Ibaru aka ‘James Bond 007’, the Senior Boarding House Master for further investigation.  I was racked with nerves because the exeat’s legitimacy was masked by a sinister fact; I had obtained it under some false pretenses to attend the dentist but instead had gone for my GCSE Examinations.  These were unofficial examinations, which a few adventurous Fifth Former, entered for discretely and took ahead of the official examinations as some sort of practice run for the real thing, the West African School Certificate Examinations.  I had visions of Mr. Ibaru, the quintessential ‘spymaster’ inspecting my dentition to establish whether I had received any dental treatment.  I made strenuous efforts to re-open a previous gap between my teeth to create the right appearance but failed.   In any case, I was cleared of any breach of school rules but I wondered if he was out to get me.  Apart from that incident, I was scrupulous in my obedience to the school regulations because I reasoned that once I decided to take on the PKC I had to dwell above board.  I resolved never to break any school rules or provide the authorities an excuse to ‘hang’ me. 

Another run in with the PKC occurred when I had the privilege of compering the lecture delivered by Justice Victor Ovie-Whiskey (the father of Anthony my old classmate), then Chairman of the Federal Electoral Commission, during the King’s College Fifth Form Week.  I had visited the Justice at his Onikan office and he had received me with great courtesy and bent over backwards to accommodate my requests.  He had served as the Chief Judge of Bendel State before his current appointment.  He was as robust in his stature as he was in his courtesy and he wore a thick-rimmed pair of glasses and bore a thick moustache.

One of the privileges of attaining the Fifth Form was the opportunity to organise a week of celebrations, which included religious services, games, lectures which climaxed with a dinner open to invited secondary school girls.  I had arranged the lecture, contacted and invited the speakers, and in my view compered it rather well.   I was very pleased with myself and was euphoric after the event.  It was after school hours, I had my shirt untucked, ‘flying’ as we called it, as I glided around the school celebrating my ‘mastery’ and ‘triumph’.  Suddenly the PKC’s voice bellowed out in my direction:

‘Speaker of truth, speaker of liberty …. breaking School Rules.’ 

Apparently, though it was outside school hours I was still incorrectly dressed.  I suspected that his reaction and rebuke was in response to my extra-curricular activities, which included reporting him to various King’s College Old Boys.  All of a sudden, the euphoria was sucked out of me and I fell down to earth from my moment of gliding around the school grounds with a big and painful bump. 

My mind wanders through to my only experience of the Fifth Form Dance, which occurred during the 1982 academic session. I had declined to take part in the Fifth Form Dance of 1984 simply because in my arrogance I reckoned I was past it, I simply felt mixing it up at that stage was not a priority.  I was originally of the 1982 set but was now two years behind having succumbed to the loss of two academic years in 1979 and 1981.  In fact, I could have been entitled to attend three Fifth Form Dances if I so chose but I was not susceptible to greed of that kind.   In 1982, I was in Form Three but that did not debar me from participating since they were all my former classmates.  I attended the Dance not because I had desires to fraternise with the girls or gyrate to the rhythms of the music, but because I was determined to act as a spoiler preventing my mates from indulgence and exuberance of the sinful variety.  I was bedecked in my 1979 check suit, made in America, purchased for me by my Uncle Ojedele, the only suit I owned.  It had passed its fashion date, the bottom of the trousers flared, sweeping all the dust and dirt in its path but I cared less at that stage.  Others were more suitably attired with the fashion of the age and this appealed more to the girls.   I remember incurring the wrath of ’Niran Fatunla aka ‘Lakubu’.  He had secreted a girl away from the Assembly Hall, the venue of the Dance into one of the deserted classrooms near the basketball court availing him of the darkness of the night to engage in a particular manner of fraternity.  I had had my eyes on him all night and I trailed him to the rendezvous point then at the top of my voice like a latter day John the Baptist, I announced my presence by screaming:

“It is a sin, leave her alone, it is a sin!”

My intervention put paid to Lakubu’s intentions and desires but he was sure to repay me with a merciless beating after the weekend was over.  I am not sure ‘Lakia’ with whom I later re-united with at the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University ever forgave me for the incident.

I was due to preach at the Fifth Former service organised for the Sunday preceding the Dance and had received a lot of advanced billing.  I had prepared my message and looked forward to preaching a message sprinkled with some brimstone and fire.  However, it seems the planning committee had developed cold feet and decided that the PKC might consider it inappropriate for a ‘serial repeater’ to take to the rostrum.  The only problem was no one remembered to advise me about the change.  The change of plan hit me like a thunderbolt when I saw S.K. Anguwa raise himself from his seat and stroll down from the Assembly Hall stage where we were seated towards the rostrum to deliver his prepared message.  I sat there with my classmates, stony faced, seething throughout the service feeling very betrayed!

In the morning after the dissolution of the Cabinet, the PKC invited me into his office to provide an account of the events from the previous day.  It was apparent that he had been well briefed and I was expecting the worst.  Armed with what had become my constant companion, the constitution of the Students’ Council and the minutes recording details of the momentous event, I explained to him that my role had been that of an impartial Chairman who gave the casting vote on a motion put before the house after it was deadlocked.   The concealment of my true motives continued, assuring him that I had neither instigated nor mobilised anyone and could not be blamed for the negligence of the Cabinet in failing to fulfill its constitutional duties.  He listened intently and was very reflective, he advised me that he would arrive at a decision after making further enquiries.  Later in the day, he confirmed that the constitution had been followed and that the Cabinet remained dissolved.  

On this occasion, the PKC had impressed me as a fair-minded man and it seemed that his perception of me was slowly being transformed and vice versa.  I sensed he began to see me as a ‘radical reformer’ rather than a ‘rabid radical’ and he appreciated the clear mandate I had to deliver lasting changes to the Council.  The dissolution was confirmed and the scene was now set for the election of a new Cabinet and my ‘dominance’ of the Students’ Council.   I now thought that at last I could ‘form’ a Cabinet in my ‘own image’.  Immediately a Council meeting was conveyed and Cllrs. Akufo, Akinla, Britus and Oyewunmi were elected and constituted into the new Cabinet.  At the first meeting of the newly constituted Cabinet, I advised them that my time was limited; I meant business and was determined to deliver.  Cllr. Dawuda Britus my fellow Panes House member and previous Ikoyi Run winner was elected the new Head of Cabinet.

It seemed I was at the height of my powers and it felt intoxicating to be adored by many and sundry.  The unrelenting chants of ‘Panafism’ and the usual chorus of ‘You are Carried!’ were never distant from me trailing me all around the school.  In all the adulation, I sensed I could do no wrong and that ‘my people loved me’.  The complete and utter ‘domination’ of the Council by the ‘Panafism Orientation Committee’ was now complete; at least that is what I reckoned.  But this reckoning was to be brought down to reality with a serious incident.  The incident led to my arrest and detention at the Lion Building, Lagos, the zonal Police Headquarters.