As I have said before, I lived at a very early age in a house close to a school. As a result, the school’s activities attracted my attention. The songs that were rendered for opening activities in the morning and those that went on as part of the lessons in the school, as well as the story telling to young children, caught my fancy and attention as I quite often wandered into the school.
Thus, my urge to attend a school had been stimulated at a very early age, and it was, therefore, not difficult for my parents to lead me to one when I became old enough to be admitted. In those days, you were regarded as being old enough to go to school when your arm passed over your head and touched the ear on the opposite side of the arm. I believe by the time I was seven years old, I must have passed the test since that was the age when I enrolled at an infant school called Saint John’s Infant School, Iloro-Ilesha. It was a joy for me to commence school, bearing in mind my background as earlier mentioned. I enjoyed meeting new boys and girls and making friends with them.
I enjoyed school activities, most especially singing and playing games, and as for school work, I had little or no difficulty in understanding what was being taught. I remember now that at my first promotion examination, I won a prize, and what was unique about this was that the prize was a little handkerchief with the picture of angels painted around the edge. The colouring of the angels and the thoughts of the goodness of angels which I developed on that occasion have remained indelible in my memory till today. I made friends with whom I exchanged visits and roamed round the town whenever we had spare time. Sometimes, our activities created anxiety for our parents, particularly on occasions when we did not get back to the house at the expected time.
Ilesha was a quiet town, peaceful and free from kidnappers. Evil deeds there might have been, but these must have been few and far between, such that children of my age were not tormented by these occurrences. Teachers were held in awe and highly respected. Children of my age at that time knew nothing else but absolute respect for those who taught them. You had to do three years to cover school work at the infant stage to enable you get promoted to the primary section of the school. In a few cases, bright and clever children spent only two years, and I was fortunate to be one of those who had this luck in my time. For the primary stage of my education, I had to change schools because I had to join my parents at their new location at Osu, a village nine miles to Ilesha in early 1929. In this village, my father operated a shop and sold general goods which were obtained from as far as Lagos and retailed them to interested buyers. The village was dominated by Christians, mostly of the Methodist Mission. The mission had a school which ran infant classes, preparing pupils for the upper primary classes located at Ilesha.
The upper primary classes at Ilesha catered for all the Methodist Schools in the villages and towns within the Methodist Circuit of the Ilesha Zone. The selection of boys and girls admitted to these upper primary school classes had to be preceded by the passing of a prescribed entrance examination. This was a rather early introduction to such competition among young boys and girls.
School life in Osu was also exciting but a little strenuous as I lived in a house overlooking the one occupied by the school’s headmaster. You were in trouble at school if you ever gave him the impression that you spent time out of school doing other things apart from school work. This meant that I had to make sure that he was not anywhere near where he could see me if I decided to go out after school hours. School hours were interesting, and discipline was strictly enforced. You had to know your subjects fairly well if you did not want to stir up the wrath of your teachers. School boys and girls were kept very busy in all sorts of ways. Apart from school work, there was gardening, physical training, handiwork, and singing. This particular headmaster, Mr E. Ayoola, to whom I have referred, was very interested in music. He played the harmonium. He was an excellent choir master, reputable for singing songs arising from the musical repertoire of the Wesley Brothers, who founded a church mission that later became the Methodist Church.
I made a lot of friends at Osu, and I still remember most of them. In fact, I see their faces in my mind’s eye. You never know what you are passing through in your early years on earth. The beauty and excitement of it all is only realised and appreciated at a later stage, particularly at an age when one’s activity is restricted by age and a lot of time is available to reflect on the past. If you were as lucky as I was to have sincere and faithful friends, the remembrance of them will keep recurring in your mind, more so when you compare the situation with the present adult behaviours and tendencies.
Being interested in singing, I learnt a lot of songs, mainly church hymns, in Osu. My three years of schooling there were quite pleasurable and enjoyable. Of course, all the time, I realised I would soon have to face a competitive examination for the purpose of getting a place in the upper classes for my primary school education at Otapete Ilesha. Osu was a typical village at that time, but now, it has graduated to the level of a modern town and a local government headquarters. Then, social life was compact, everybody knew one another. Agriculture was the main source of employment, with a few cocoa purchasing stations established at the centre of the town. Farmers brought food crops for sale to the village market and economic crops like cocoa and palm kernels for sale to the produce stores. Apart from these economic activities, other workers in the town included teachers and priests serving in schools and churches, native authority clerks, tax collectors, and road maintenance workers. I still remember quite vividly that whenever my father went to Lagos to purchase stocks for replenishing the wares in the shop, and I was free from school engagements, I served as the relief salesman.
In those days, whatever money that was made from sales of goods was kept in the shop until Daddy came back, without the fear of the money being stolen. Even when he returned, the money and other monies were kept in the house. In those days, there was not the horror of armed robbers and hoodlums. Households extended hospitality to travellers who wished to be accommodated; doors were open widely, and fences were unknown except to demarcate possessed land. People were generally honest, accommodating, and friendly. This was one of the several parting impressions I took away from Osu, from where I passed my entrance examination into the upper primary classes at the Wesley School, Otapete, Ilesha.
In January 1932, I resumed my upper classes primary education at Otapete Ilesha in the company of many new faces. Otapete was like any other school, bringing up children and teaching them with bias towards Christian norms and principles. The school opened with devotional hymns and prayers at an Assembly Centre. From the Assembly Centre, on completion of devotional worship, every boy and girl went into his or her own class.
Every school child submitted to Christian opening worship. There was no problem getting Muslim children to join the devotional worship. The subjects taught covered a wide area. There were the three ‘Rs’ (reading, arithmetic, and writing) which were very highly emphasised. Social subjects like history and geography tended to emphasise knowledge external to the country. This was understandable as Nigeria was then a colonized country. At school, colonial government policies were directed at getting the pupils to be loyal to the King or Queen of Britain. Annually, on the 24th of May, an Empire Day Celebration was held all over the country. This celebration took the form of an assemblage of school children in a central place. In the case of Ilesha, it was an open space in front of the Palace of the Owa. Here, the school children would march past with the Colonial District Officer, the Owa and his Chiefs, as well as the general public usually in attendance. The salute was usually taken by the District Officer or the most senior colonial administrative officer. Some games, mainly athletics, were organised among the school children, and prizes given to the winners of the various events. This was generally concluded with the feasting of all the school children selected to attend the Empire Day celebration. School work proceeded well throughout the year.
By the year 1932, Daddy had closed the shop in Osu and decided to go into full-scale farming at Iponda. My sister, who had before then lived with Mummy in Ora, had to come home to Ilesha and begin to attend the same school as I. Daddy always spent the weekend at Ilesha and weekdays on the farm. Occasionally, Daddy’s cousin, who was then in government employment at Ibadan, visited Ilesha at weekends. On such visits, he resided with us. He was very fond of me, and I also liked him. Very often, I slept by his side in his room and discussed various subjects, including my preference as to whether I would love to stay at home or come and stay with him. Of course, it also meant that my schooling would be continued wherever I lived. It was at one of these discussions that I agreed to go and live with him at Ibadan.
The year went by, and I was successful at my promotion examination. True to my earlier promise, I decided to go to my Daddy’s cousin at Ibadan. When I told my father about this, he was surprised and agitated. He indicated that the decision being mine, I would have to face whatever happened since he would not condone any disagreement within the family arising from my action. That warning from my father influenced me throughout my sojourn at Ibadan and Oshogbo in the company of Daddy’s cousin.
In January 1933, armed with my transfer certificate from Methodist School, Otapete-Ilesha, I enrolled at the Methodist School, Agbeni, Ibadan. The school was headed by my former headmaster at Osu. He knew me quite well and was fully conversant with my school performance, academically and morally.
My new guardian, in an attempt to ensure giving me a good training, adopted, ab initio, a very strict stance; he frowned at my putting my hands on the dining table when talking to him. I was naturally shocked at this type of reception, bearing in mind his past friendly postures which, in the first instance, encouraged me to agree to live with him. I immediately remembered the warning I received from my father and then decided that I would have to accept the situation and make the best out of it. This type of relationship was normal as it was believed that any other approach was likely to weaken discipline and endanger the good up-bringing of children.
Life in Agbeni (we lived opposite the school) was different from life as I knew it before that time. I was the eldest child of my closely knitted family, having been preceded by a few siblings who had died. My father was the eldest son of my grandfather, and he enjoyed the confidence, loyalty, and love of his brother and sisters, and of course, the extended family members. This relationship was lavishly extended to me by everybody, including my new guardian. In short, the environment for being a spoilt child was fully set. What, therefore, happened to me at Ibadan was difficult to comprehend, but somehow, I had the good fortune of being able to develop the ability to adapt to every situation and live happily with it. ‘Brother’, as I called my guardian, was fully involved in the social life of Ibadan and the country at large. He joined in all the pleasures social life offered. Of course, this situation created a serious problem of negligence in focusing on the welfare of those in the household. Essential things were not done on time, and educational processes were adversely affected. So also was physical development, and school results were no longer good. Failures at examinations were recorded, whereas, in the past, such never happened. I had a change of school at Ibadan; from Methodist School, Agbeni to Saint Augustine’s Catholic School, Oke-Padre. It was there I took my First School Leaving Certificate, then known as ‘Standard Six’ examination, and failed.
My memory of Saint Augustine’s Catholic School, Oke-Padre is quite a sobering one. I lived in a house which was about 100 yards from the school, but I was late every morning. This was because I could not leave the house before my guardian departed for work, and this was generally a few minutes before the opening of school. On nearly every occasion, I ran into the Assembly Ground when other pupils were already assembled, and there was always waiting, an Irish Reverend Father by name Donoghou with a horse whip. He was ready to cane anyone who was late to the Assembly. I was his daily victim and never took kindly, even till today, to the situation because the Reverend Father was never ready to accept whatever explanations I had for being late. I just thought then that he was a sadist.
Primary schools were varied in their standards, and this depended on their emphasis. There were those, and this must be true of all of them, who worked to meet only the minimum standard requirement of the Department of Education, whereas there were others who worked to achieve excellence as evidenced by the number of boys and girls they groomed to gain admission into prestigious secondary or grammar schools. You found that the latter group employed very dedicated and committed teachers whose desire was to produce excellent scholars. I must say that my educational pursuits in the primary school at Ibadan were a wasted one. This was made more manifest because a childhood friend of mine, Olu (later Professor Olu Mabayoje), with whom I started infant classes and who, by 1932 as a standard four pupil, was at the CMS School, Iloro-Ilesha while I was in a similar class at Otapete, had gained admission into Government College, Ibadan in January 1933. I visited him periodically while I lived at Ibadan, and he continued to encourage me to join him at Government College, Ibadan.
My attempt to gain admission between 1933 and 1935 increased my sense of disappointment at the standard of school I attended and the lack of enthusiasm to teach at a level that would facilitate admission into such a secondary school. As luck would have it, my guardian was transferred to Oshogbo in early 1935. It therefore turned out that I spent that year at home, doing domestic chores. I was the cook and cleaner and was so happy with my standard of cooking that I thought in my future life, I would end up establishing a School of Cookery. Of course, the year rolled into 1936 when I enrolled as a Standard Six pupil at Saint Benedict Catholic School, Oshogbo. Saint Benedict was a more seriously managed school which aimed at very high standards. It was one of those schools that set itself up to train pupils to pass entrance examinations to those prestigious schools to which I had earlier referred. At home, my guardian’s attitude to education became more profound. Maybe he felt guilty that I had lost too much time, as he had to arrange for extra lessons for me and his children to prepare us for our future academic endeavours.
In fairness to ‘Brother’, he was a mentor to very many people like me, paying school fees for them and maintaining them as his househelps. There must have been as many as nine of us who were favoured with his generous treatment. It was the belief at that time that you were better trained if you left the indulgent living of your parents and served other relations and, in some cases, non-relatives.
Brother Ladipo Ibidapo Obe was one of the early ones who lived with ‘Brother’ at Ifosan, my father’s home. I also lived there at that time. Brother Ladipo and I attended Saint John’s School, Iloro-Ilesha, he in the middle primary class and I at the very bottom infant class.
I had instruction from Brother Ladipo to go at break time to his grandmother, who lived not far away from the school, to bring some food for him. This, I did promptly and regularly. He grew to like me as a result and was still offering his service to ‘Brother’, who was his first cousin, at Ibadan when I joined them. His presence was, undoubtedly, a good influence and morale booster, which strengthened me to weather the tide.
He finished his studies at the famous Ibadan Grammar School under the revered Bishop Akinyele as the Principal of the school. He was still a member of the household of ‘Brother’ when we moved to Oshogbo, where he got a job as a Clerk in the United Africa Company (UAC). Of course, he rose fairly rapidly to a good position in that company. Brother Ladipo was the father of Professor Oyewusi Ibidapo Obe, a one-time Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Akoka, Yaba.
The friendliness that developed between me and Brother Ladipo brought about a very interesting and rewarding event. A year before I left Government College, Ibadan, I met a young Kayode Ibidapo Obe, quite undecided as to what to do as regards his schooling. He did not complain to me, but I had this notion that if I sent him over to Brother Ladipo, his educational pursuits would be better served living with his brother. Kayode, in this instance, is a true brother of Brother Ladipo. I told him that he should hurry to Oshogbo and tell his brother that I had sent him so that he can continue his schooling under his supervision. This he did, and he was received with open arms. Kayode Ibidapo Obe ended up first as a Registrar of a Lagos High Court and later as a Justice of the High Court of the old Oyo State during the governorship of the late Chief Bola Ige, a one-time Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation.
Schooling at Oshogbo was quite interesting. I met a few friends who offered stiff competition in academic work, thereby enhancing my determination to perform well. I was also lucky to meet someone who has now become a long-standing friend of the family at Saint Benedict Catholic School, Oshogbo. He had served this nation meritoriously in the field of education, having pioneered the setting up of many grammar schools in the old Western Region. After many years of glorious service to his fatherland, Mr Phillip Orunmuyi has since retired quietly with his beautiful wife to Ijebu Ijesha.
My educational endeavours at Saint Benedict, Oshogbo, bore good fruits as I passed my Standard Six Examination with good grades. I subsequently gained admission into the famous Government College, Ibadan.
In January 1937, I commenced schooling at Government College, Apata Ganga at Ibadan. Government College, Ibadan started as a teacher training institution but was later converted into a secondary school. It is situated in a very serene surrounding with a striking topography. It is in a hilly rocky environment dominated by a granitic outcropping from which it derived the name Apata Ganga. Literally, this means ‘High Rock’. Set behind this rock were the administrative blocks, classrooms, the school chapel, and the science laboratory. Not too far away were the two ‘Houses’ with dormitories providing accommodation for the students. It was in front of this block that His Royal Majesty Oba Akenzua II, the then Oba of Benin, met and spoke to me when he brought his son, Prince Solomon Akenzua, to start life as a student in the college in 1940. Oba Akenzua requested me to take care of his son. I was the only person His Royal Majesty met, and that his son, formerly Prince Solomon Akenzua, now occupies the throne of his forefathers as Oba Erediauwa Uku Akpolokpolo. Oba Erediauwa might most likely remember that it was that royal encounter with his father that made me take a very keen interest in his activities while at school and till now. On his part, the Oba of Benin has responded graciously towards me. On many occasions, he extended invitations to my family. During his coronation, as one of the invited guests, the Palace Authorities at Benin made sitting reservations for me. Government College, Ibadan was a boarding school fashioned after the English public school system. There were two houses with accommodation for all the students, located at the lower level of the hilly slope.
Accommodation was also provided for the various teaching staff who were then known as ‘Masters’. These were dotted in various demarcated compounds surrounded by beautiful gardens. Government College, Ibadan was a unique institution. It had a very large orchard of grape fruits. A piece of land was allocated to the students for growing crops, and the crops so produced were generally sold by the students to the school authority. It also had a very large expanse of land which provided relaxation and plant observation areas for those with interest in such vocations. Of course, there were ‘unowned’ pawpaw trees, the fruits of which the students cherished to devour.
To be continued..
Culled from the Book: Reflections on events of My Life- Education (1) by late Chief SO Fadahunsi FNSE OFR, CON