This madam has a phobia for Naija and it’s good cos Naija must have shagged her really well
Before you guys start thinking to the left, shag in this context is the psychedelic naming of the Federal Girls College Shagamu where she is said to have attended
The alumni of the great school refer to it as Shaggy or shag in their beautiful attempt at eulogising the school
Everyone who attended any of these FEDCOL schools like they used to call them and any of their cousin schools, the Command Schools will relate to her description of life in those boarding houses
In her British accent, she described her experience at Shag as being in prison
She talked about the toilet and using a machete on the grass amongst others describing the experience as horrendous to say the least
We attended one of these schools and its true life there was exactly how she painted it but our take out and that of a vast majority of us is markedly different
For me and I am sure for most of us, we didn’t feel like prisoners, very far from it
It was the best years of our formative lives. We cut the grass with our ‘langalanga’, squatted on the ‘shalanga’ and placed bets on who targets the hole better
Those who couldn’t target the holes and dumped on the floor beside and around the holes were laughed at.
We loved the Shalanga, loved fetching green water from the reservoir where frogs lived and croaked all night.
We loved doing manual labour with our khakis and rain boots and would laugh when a lizard crawls into someone’s boots and he steps into it and gets tickled and he runs around the field screaming and we chase him and wrestle him to the ground to free the lizard who by now would have been weak from the stomping
I swear, this Kemi missed it. Boarding school in those days was fun
We loved the austere nature, the cold food, the days for socials where our girls would tie a wrapper and dance for us
We gave ourselves nicknames – 007, Bufo, Stone, Obo and I got Edgar Joe and we loved it
We who went to Command suffered rounds of beating from Commandants Koboko and that made us men
Everybody was beaten, both boys and girls, and they didn’t see it as abuse, as Kemi will say.
Instead, we saw it as correctional and embracing
In those days, if you took the koboko without flinching, you would be hailed a champion and u would be crowned .
In command, you will get the best girls and u would be called a ‘maye’
It was far from prison in our formative minds, it was adventure, I swear
The flogging, cold food, frog jump, khaki, day wear, sports wear, prep, classes and our funny teachers all combine to make our shaggy experience extremely valuable and I thank my parents for giving me the opportunity.
Today, those things have imbued in us strong values that continue to guide us in this truly herculean environment
The beauty of human relations is that people go through the same process and come out with different outcomes
So we all went through the boarding systems of the 80s and 90s and came out with different outcomes
Some of us like me came out strengthened and she came out shagged
Like the female MD of one of the biggest Discos in the country who went to the same Shagamu and came out brilliantly well, a lot of us will very voluntarily stand up to defend that experience
The British huge schools like Eton and the rest also have the same outcomes
Some go and come out as British PMs and others go and come out drug addicted
It’s all about how one approaches life and its challenges.
We went through the same experiences with the same machetes and the same toilet system, and we came out strong, but she came out shagged, and that is on her.
What a lady
Duke of Shomolu