First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly
After the great excitement of the pharmacology year, it was time to cross over to the pathology year of 1984/85 session. While people from all other faculties went home for the holidays our class stayed back for the “clinical postings”. Campus was empty and one felt like one robbed of something precious or perhaps cheated. I imagined friends in Lagos visiting each other, listening to music and eating ice cream while we walked to the teaching hospital in our white coats. It hit me particularly hard as I always moved with my group of friends who were not medical students.
It was tough at home. My dad has been suffering from glaucoma for a while and his vision was deteriorating. As vision went so did his ability to earn a livelihood. The first six months in 1984 had been spent in the UK undergoing surgery on both eyes which did not help. My mum had become the sole breadwinner and had left him in the UK with my Uncle Peter before returning to work in Lagos. As would be expected money was tight. There were contradictions in my life. I was not one to shrink into myself and was considered among the ajebuta boys from Lagos. A senior sister and brother both studying in the US further cemented the image that all was well but there was no TV at home and the settee had its inner bowels herniating through the torn upholstery fabric. It was a strange kind of affluent poverty that confused the mind. A middle-class mind but lower working class finance.
Being Mr Kave was a big deal then as I got recognised by many people. Everyone thought I was a ladies’ man but I was a still a Virgin and somewhat embarrassed about this especially when teased by friends. Wilson neva blend bifor was how the yabbis went.
The boys in class bonded and became brothers. Some of the friendships formed have lasted many years. The clinical postings involved learning how to take a medical history from patients on the ward and attending clinics in a form of an apprenticeship. The ‘chief’ might ask you a question from time to time but nothing great was expected from you at this stage.
The evenings were a bit boring at times and I decided to learn the “windmill” which was a difficult break dance move to master. I started going upstairs at the main cafeteria where there was a large judo mat and practiced to Ollie and Jerry’s Breakin’ ‘There’s No Stopping Us’
I was there every day till I could spin like a top on the mat. A bit obsessive but it helped dispel energy. Some in class turned to running to burning away that restless youthful energy. We had a physiology teacher, Prof DP Phothiades, who used to amaze me with his long distance running around campus. Privately I thought he was a mad oyinbo man. He was a role model of sorts. Many in class played football and lawn tennis. A few of us frequented the sports complex swimming pool where we had the time of our lives.
The arrival of the French students who had camped in Hall 1 prior to travelling to Togo for their practical language sessions brought a welcomed distraction. They were a predominantly female class and had a few send-off parties if my memory serves me right.
The re-sit students were soon with us and life became more tolerable. Soon the classes in pathology started. The study of diseases and their causes is foundational to the training of doctors. The textbook of choice was the Muir’s Textbook of Pathology. A big impressive book that afforded one “med cred” when placed on the table in the common room prior to reading (or posing). Bacteriology, virology and parasitology lectures were interesting and also personally instructive to me. I knew for sure that I would never be a pathologist. We attended a life-changing postmortem that had some in class running out close to vomiting. It was a patient that had been dead for a long while and most of us had never smelt the like before. The pathologist kept on his commentary as he did his work unmoved by the stench.
Pathology was everywhere. Glaucoma at the family home ending my dad’s career and heartache for me as a relationship ended. Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ (No 3. UK Charts August 1984) had a line, “who needs a heart when a heart could be broken?”
It sounds good when you are singing the lyrics but at the end of the song the heart remains where it was before; broken.
My friends and I had planned our action for the year. Wilson for socials!
I was to run for the students’ union social secretary position and of course I would win. All my prize money from the Mr. Kave contest had been saved for this. I was shaking hands all day and there is not one room I did not enter in Hall 1, 2, 3 and 4.
I had contested for Hall 4 social secretary and lost in 1981 and had been on the successful campaign team for Ashigbogu for Socials in 1983 and went on to the student union senate and the medical union (Ubemsa) senate in the same year so I knew the drill.
Manifesto night had me sweating all week and when the day came to face my fellow students at the Sports complex I was crippled with fear as I screamed the rallying cry of “Great Uniben!!!!!”
I lied about foreign artistes queuing up to come and perform for the great students of Uniben etc. etc. etc.
Voting night was like the Second MB result night all over again. Friends were waiting to see if I won, lost or lost my deposit. I was extremely nervous and visited a classmate Ifueko who asked how I was feeling. I heard a song in the distance and it was ‘Mickey for socials!’ they were chanting.
I don lose
How do you know?
They are singing.
At least I didn’t lose my deposit as the margins of victory were not big. It was a lonely walk back to my room.
Soon it was Mr. Kave night. I attended and enjoyed the attention as I was still the first and only Mr. Uniben in the packed main auditorium. A potential date had refused to come with me and I felt alone. Dele won and I was called upon to crown him. As soon as I put the crown on his head, I ceased to exist and his jubilant crew almost knocked me out of the way.
When your time is up, it is up. It was a long lonely walk back to my room that night. This was a pathological academic year.
By December 1985 an abortive military coup had taken place attempting to oust General Ibrahim Babangida. A poet, General Maman Vatsa, was subsequently executed along with other fingered coup plotters.
The routine was soon back to classes, reading, dancing and even more classes on a campus that had become my heartbreak hotel.
Epilogue
Following a “student uprising”, the whole student union executive was suspended and I was glad I lost the Wilson for Socials election.
