4 Tales from Command

Snippets from Last Man! -- The unpublished memoirs of my Command Secondary School experiences

1: “RSM, Go and Sleep…”

The rowdier students of the senior-most class at Command Secondary School, Lagos, were doing a crude rendition of WWF’s Royal Rumble on the front pavement of Tiger House. As senior after senior got tossed from the pavement, more and more found their way unto it, so that it was quite impossible to achieve the objective of the sport: the elimination of all but one contestant.

It was roughly past dinner time, and all students, if they were to obey school rules and regulations, would be in their respective classrooms for what we affectionately called “prep”. Prep referred to two one-hour periods; one in the afternoon after lunch and siesta, and another at night, after dinner. Each of those time periods were mandated by the powers-that-be for completing assignments, studying texts and notes, and engaging in general academic pursuit.

These particular seniors though—the very ones engaging each other in sheer physical exertion—thought very little of school rules and regulations. In fact, for them, the real fun rested in flouting as many of those rules and regulations as possible. Ah, those were the days when real “hardness” meant “breaking bounds” and stealing into the Girls’ Dormitory. [See footnotes].

Anyway, the pavement that served as stage for the general buffoonery was directly behind the Regimental Sergeant Major’s house, and it was inevitable that he would eventually hear the raucous.

As the RSM approached Tiger house, wielding the long piece of wood that doubled as a staff of office and whipping stick, the seniors dispersed. However, some of the more ingenious ones quickly saw the potential for another sport: tag, where the RSM was “it.”

As the RSM alternately threatened and coaxed and urged them to go for prep, the seniors, who had by now swapped house wears, and pulled them over their heads, ran around the RSM bawling expletives.

“RSM go and sleep,” they howled, “Your wife is waiting for you, go and sleep…”

There was nothing the man could do in the circumstance but lash his stick at any student who dared come within his reach (he usually missed), and threaten to expel all final year Tiger House students. The seniors refused to relent in their humiliation of the old man. For them, the joys of frustrating the RSM today far surpassed the agonies of being expelled from school tomorrow.

Of course, more than a few people got into trouble the next day, but that should form the basis for another story.

2: Haba, SP!

Senior Prefect Ini Akpan, had instructed all junior students to report to the auditorium for labor immediately after breakfast that Saturday morning. Frankly, I didn’t care for labor, and I was not especially keen on being slave-driven by Ini Akpan. At any rate, I didn’t go for labor as directed by the Senior Prefect of Command Secondary School (who by virtue of his prefectship was a veritable god), and unbeknownst to each other, most of the other juniors did not comply with the SP’s directive either.

And then at 2:00 p.m., we all foolishly went to the dinning hall for lunch.

“Bless this food, O Lord, for Christ Sake,” prayed the Food Prefect.

“Amen,” we chorused and immediately started to work on our meal of beans and garri.

Halfway into our meal, a loud pounding on the table at the middle of the dinning hall caused a wave of silence to sweep across the dinning hall. I looked up, and there stood the SP at what seemed like eleven feet.

“I told you guys to report to the auditorium after breakfast, and you all gave me koro*, you’re all bastards!” he roared.

“Let us pray,” he continued. Whatever he was going to do to us, he still had to honor the ritual of praying before and after school meals.

“We thank thee, O Lord, for the food we’ve just eaten.”

Our “amen” was a bit less than enthusiastic.

The SP’s resolution, as we were to find out, was to flog each one of the close to three hundred students in the dinning hall six stokes each!

He’s bluffing, I thought, not even superman can churn out eighteen hundred stokes of the belt. But he wasn’t bluffing. He started at the table adjacent to the door, and lashed his first victim like a frenzied maniac.

Footnotes

Haba. An exclamation, much like, Gosh!

To give koro. To escape or run away from. In this instance, to evade (i.e. run away from) labor. Origin: To say that something happened before my very eyes in Nigerian pidgin English, it is common to say, I see am with my koro koro eyes. The worst form of evasion at Command would be to run away from a senior student that was calling you. You would have run away from him, before his koro koro eyes—you would have given him, as it were, the koro koro treatment.

Labor. Organized and supervised chores ranging from cleaning toilets, bathrooms, and gutters, to sweeping floors, and cutting grass. It turns out the term labor is quite appropriate: every single chore required brute effort. We fetched water from a central storage tank to flush and wash the toilets; we used hoes to clear gutters and mound ridges, we swept floors using brooms made of palm fronds (which you did, bent over), we cut grass using cutlasses... And, boy, did the supervising student, the supervisor, flog the laborers ever-so-brutally!

3: Reflexes, Schreflexes

For reasons unfathomable, girls always screamed whenever the light went out in the Dinning Hall. Yes, some uncouth boys have been known to grope in the darkness for the more tender parts of the girls’ anatomy; still, the girls seemed to scream more out of some sort of reflex than out of any real fear of unwanted grubby fingers fondle them.

And it was, during Captain Obasa’s earlier years that NEPA, the electricity company, took the light during prep one night (which was a pretty frequent occurrence), and the girls, in their pseudo-natural reflex, started screaming. Things happened so quickly, that everything might well have happened in a flash. No sooner had the girly screams enveloped the SS 3 block, than did NEPA bring back the light, and Captain Obasa emerge from his Mercedes Benz, parked in front of the SS 3 Ruby.

He marched into SS 3 Opal, ordered the boys to fall out of the classroom, and issued the same order to the boys in Ruby, Diamond, and Silver. (The boys in Emerald and Gold were lucky. Their classrooms were not on our block).

Naturally, we formed four lines according to our classes.

“You guys are animals! You guys are crabs! Lousy crabs!” roared the Captain.

“Sir, we didn’t do anything,” some of us protested.

“That is how they scream when NEPA takes the light,” some others ventured.

“Shut up,” Obasa thundered, “Strip!”

We took our shirts off and were thoroughly thrashed with the koboko* on our bare backs. Naturally, we were quite pissed. If we had actually smooched the girls in the less-than-one-minute darkness (and admittedly, that wasn’t beneath our primal selves), we would have taken the thrashings as deserved retribution for our transgression. But because we did not even dream of touching the girls, we were quite frustrated at being flogged for nothing.

Each of us got six strokes of the four-pronged koboko—some of us even managed to get a few slaps and some extra lashes for standing up while we were being flogged, for running about the place, or for just howling unnecessarily.

That day, there was an unspoken resolution among the boys to the effect that any girl who overstepped her boundaries would be beaten—no matter decorum, civility, or gentleness to the fair sex.

After that day, whenever the lights went out, no girl uttered one single scream. So much for reflexes.

Footnotes

Koboko. Leather whip, some having multiple prongs.

NEPA. Nigerian Electric Power Authority. Or, Never Ever Power At all.

SS3. Senior Secondary [School] 3—the highest class at the secondary school level in the Nigerian educational system (which calls for 6 years of primary education, 3 years of junior secondary education, 3 years of senior secondary education, and 4 years of tertiary education: 6-3-3-4).

At Command, each class (JS1 through SS3) was divided into six sections: Silver, Diamond, Gold, Opal, Ruby, and Emerald. Each of those sections bore a distinct characteristic: you could almost tell a JS3 Gold student by his mere smell.

4: Of Size, Strength and the Impetus for Intellectualism

Perhaps the incident that impressed upon my high-school consciousness the advantage of being big and strong, was one in which, as a Cadet, I was thoroughly subjugated by a higher-ranking Cadet.

In retrospect, size and sheer aggressiveness were unspoken prerequisites for forging ahead in the ranks of the Cadet Corp at Command, Lagos; the former criterion being almost indispensable to achieving the later.

I was one of the smaller boys in high school, and while that did not preclude aggressiveness, it sufficiently detracted from it. And so it was that I was once subjected to demeaning frog-jumps by a classmate, who, albeit being the General Squadron Leader—the highest ranking Cadet, was substantially bigger and stronger. Succinctly, if we were both to be stripped of Cadet ranking, he could conveniently beat the be-jesus out of me.

I resolved, subconsciously as it were, to do whatever it took to be big and strong. Subconsciously too, I resolved to be the best in every other endeavor I were to undertake. While genetics, it seemed, had predisposed me to be of a small stature, I sought to compensate by striving for intellectual heights.

This, upon pseudo-psychoanalysis would be the base impetus (at least in those years) for my quest for the intellectual. The desire to be “big and strong” intellectually, since it appeared physically infeasible, would be the primal drive that initially impelled my thirst for knowledge.

On a final note, it would be unfair to give the impression that I have given up on attaining my ideal of physical build and strength. I have, as I had wanted to since those defining moments, adopted a regimen of weight training, and have, I think, made some impressive gains.

I’d like to come across that General Squadron Leader of a specimen again, so that I could tell him where I think he ranks in the present scheme of things. Hopefully my candor would incite him to spoil for a fight, whereupon I would dutifully repay him for subjecting me to those condescending frog-jumps, years ago.

Thereafter, I would be gratified, the appropriate retribution having being visited upon that factoid that, quite coincidentally, called itself Nemesis.