By Patrick Dele Cole

60  years ago, there was a handful of good secondary schools – Igbobi College; Methodist Boys High School; Kings College; Government College, Ughelli; Government College, Ibadan; Ibadan Grammar School; Christ School, Ado Ekiti; St. Gregory’s, Government Collage, Umuahia, Denis Memorial Grammar School, C.K. C, Hope Waddell etc.

Dr Dele-Cole

A few of us emerged from these schools and have been friends since. We call ourselves the head quarters.“Most of us went to boarding School where the age difference was considerable but in form one we were all small, bathing, sharing- school activities: sports – cricket, football, volleyball, softball, Tennis.

“We had white dormitory school masters who tested us for Student Clubs: debating, etc.“Ballroom dancing – the senior boys taught us how to dance; we took the part of the female and they the male. If you have ever learnt dancing, you know immediately that you can never dance with a girl if you learnt to dance as a girl while learning. It takes a complete revolution in thinking and maneuver to switch to dance as the mode entails.“Once in a month the principal would invite the girls to our hall for dancing.

Our palms were wet with sweat. We were as nervous as hell: in the hall the girls sat at one long row along the wall and the boys sat opposite. The longest distance any boy has ever walked, longer than going to the moon, was to walk across that hall and ask a girl to dance. If she says no, you die a million times in the haze of finding your place. Why should she say no? She came to dance.

You have spent good two days starching and getting your trouser gatters as sharp as knife. Your pimple mercifully was not showing that week. As you turn to walk back you hear this pearly of laughter but you dare not turn back. Your prefect, who has been through this before, walks up to you, smiles and begins to teach you again how to dance, his expertise is enthralling and some bold girl breaks you up, takes the prefect and hands you a girl she had come up with.

The ice is broken but so has your confidence.“Bathing: This number of schools nearly throws all kinds together. The ritual is as follows the youngest – form1 go to bath first and produce water for the senior boys – form 5. But some of your own form1 class mates insist you bath early and get out. You are a scrawny 11, 12 or 13 years old boy. Your classmate is probably shorter or no taller than yourself. But looking at his biceps tells you not to mess with him and if you continue looking a knock on the head with plenty of power soon dazzles your head. You quickly soap yourself, pour water on yourself and run out.

There are about 250 students who have to have to have their baths between 5:45 – 6:30. Breakfast as at 7am, what we did not know about our classmates – the muscular ones – was that they were much older than ourselves, many of them shaved and we never suspected this. We were small and our manhood was proportionate but not so with many of our classmates who always turned to the wall to make sure you only saw their backs!!“It was much later in life that we found out that some of our classmates were 6 – 8 years older than ourselves and had good reason to face the wall.“At school you had to play at least three sports – football, cricket, volleyball, softball, or rounders, lawn tennis, boxing, etc.

We all come from different backgrounds but met during the holidays at Warri, Sapele, Port Harcourt, Benin, Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna, etc. During the holidays we were the toast of the town. Our parents were almost hopelessly disciplinarians and they devised us many ways round the inexhaustible punishments they devised – pick pin, stand on one foot, bend down (followed by cane) jump like a frog, etc none of those punishments were undeserved especially as we had been warned of the consequences of misbehaving.

A favorite past time as to go to the cinema. It started at 8:30pm and out at 10pm or so by then the house was tightly locked up. Of course we made arrangement with someone down stairs to keep his (our brother) or her (our sister), windows so we can climb in. Sometimes it worked. Other times it didn’t. If the weather was inconsolably warm you might find a room with a window open, you jump in only to step on your sister or auntie who would scream – and the game was up. “Sometimes you did not step on anybody but if you happen to enter the girl’s room in the heat, I am unable to describe the scene before you. Just run off to the door, open up and fly to your own room! But if it rains, then no window is open.

You might now have to climb up the stairs of your father’s  house to meet the man your father waiting for you with his favorite inevitable cane! Koboko  “As we grew up in school many of us took to singing, others to musical instruments (most schools had full bands) the good ones tended to play at the weekend at various joint in the town where they were sure not to be recognized by the friends of there fathers. Thus, one of our best singers is today an imposing general of the army over six feet tall whose voice could charm the nightingale: another was a 6.2ft lawyer who eventually had his own band a very warfarian bonsue – totally uncopiable and inimitable.

“Our result must have been good- many ended up as federal permanent secretaries, Captains of industry (oil) Chemical Engineers, Doctors Dentists etc. Fast forward 60 years.  We had all visited one another homes for marriages, Christianity had helped each other, and some of our wives had come and gone and come back again. We were much older and that group had been reduced to a core group of 12- 14 people¬, including judges, senate presidents, MD’s of TV, Radio, Newspapers, Chief Executives of International building conglomerates, Admirals, Air vice marshals, Insurance Tycoons. Others are accountants, Estate Agents, Radio Personalities, SGFs, and Governors.

This is the group we call the headquarters. No one is below 70yrs. The total age of that core group of 14 is 960yrs if you add up all their ages. We have other association which we are tied to -the Sapele Burma Boys, Warri Burma Boys, and Port Harcourt Boys and then the myriad schools we all attended.“We were young, liked music, frequented Bobby Benson’s, Kakadu, Gondola Clubs. We had discos. The master record spinner, disco chief, was then a major, handsome as hell.

He did not drink but loved dauang and his memory was legendary, he knew everybody, kind of music we liked, and what would turn us on. He could change the mood of party from somber to ecstatic, to romantic, to jitterbug etc. no wonder he ended up being the Head of State after one of the coups.“We meet, if possible every day and our wives know better not to disturb such meeting. Those of us who smoke, smoke Cuban (cigars), those who drink enjoys the best.

We all have roving Eyes for the beauties of this world but there is a long distance between the eye and other essential instruments which age have ravaged with grace if not tenderness.“We had white housemasters who examined us as we came back from holidays. We never suspected they may have been homosexuals but they probably were.

The examination consisted of yanking your penis and pulling it back and forth to see if you have any sexually transmitted diseases where the tell take sign will be a discharge. Imagine doing this to an eleven or twelve years old boy!!“We travelled  together –London, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, US, Caribbean.“Sunny’s Goat and its sad demise: Sunny was the permanent secretary and solicitor general of the federation. His favorite term of address of everybody was “scallywag”.

Many of us lived in Ikoyi. There was a tree in the middle of a round drive away in his house, and a tree in the middle of the grass verge demarcating the drive way. Sunny had invited us to eat goat pepper soup on Saturday. We normally congregated at Sunny’s veranda or a nearby garden on the other side of the drive way. Sunny and others could not always make it to the toilet, bathroom so many resorted to using the garden outside. On the arrival of the goat we told Sunny to get his Mallam to cut fresh grass for the goat.

On Friday night, i.e. the eve of the feast, we saw the goat eating grass from the circular verge around the tree to which the goat was tattered. We told Sunny that his urine was so toxic he should not use that patch of green. He called us all scallywags and we went home. On Saturday we assembled only to hear the goat died that afternoon!!“We watched each others back from our various vantage points. Not one of us was even visited by the slightest scandal and this was perhaps due to the stringency of abuse we rained on one another.  It kept us on the straights and narrows.“Conversation in such a setting is boisterous, congenitally rude, loud, inspired in no small way by the effects of Bacchus.

There is no respect for persons and no subject is taboo.  If you are not used to it the heated arguments seem to be at the point of boiling over.  Insults are feely thrown about and no ox escapes being gored. “Issues range on all sorts of subjects – religion – Catholicism, Baptist, Methodist, Redeemed, Anglican, Grail, our respective ages etc.  We all have children who live with their spouses and children overseas; there is usually great comaderie at reunions which were frequent.  Nearly all of us went to University abroad, knew each other at very personal level which even the hostility of wives have been unable to break.“In politics we are all different, show little respect for the opinions of others.

“None of us comes from a nuclear family, all of us having to deal with the problems of half sisters and inconvenient relatives.  As the conversation flows the expertise of those around begin to shine.“Kenny was claiming to be younger than Sunny who graduated from Methodist Boys High School in 1956, Kenny used to have a Christian name as was foolishly and unnecessarily required of all Moslem. Suddenly one day, Sunny jumped up and with fingers pointing, voice quivering, he slowly moved towards Kenny, I know you. We were at school together. Your name was Larry. You failed class two and I caught up with you. You failed class 4 again and I left you.

That was why you left in 1957. How dare you say I am older than you, you scallywag and numskull”!!“Stories of what really happened when a particular event took place, the foibles of our so called bosses at that time; the regrets then flow from the failure to have followed simple good advice.  You will hear the views of the economists, the civil servant desk officer whose task it was to deal with the issues, the general who failed to corral his troops  time with unpleasant results, the pain of being stepped over, especially in one specific case where a general had been made and unmade chief of Army Staff three times in as many hours.

Though painful, headquarters will find a way through jibes, mockery, jokes, etc to make a painful subject funny and bearable.  The repartee is fast and furious.  So should it be when nearly 1000 years of experience are in one room describing one thing or another.  There is no sickness one of us has not been through so we are all medical experts!

At 70 you know something about PSAs, prostrates, Sigismund tests, serum test, cilium test, one part or the other of your body no longer functions but friends will rather die than admit a demuniation of certain faculties including the robustness of our memories. We could be a tiresome lot, flying off the handle at the slightest provocation: but we soon calm down, thanking God for his blessings.