Exceptional Educationists: Mrs. U.M. Balogun: A Principal Like No Other

(Principal, Molusi College, Ijebu Igbo, Ogun State,1983-1995)
By Osigbesan Sultan Luqman

I find it amusing, without fail, when anyone says African women are weak, primitively oppressed by Patriarchy, unable to defend themselves and in need of some firebrand, messianic, American-European Feminists to liberate them from the oppression of African men.
Many times I let such heretics (that is who they are for they know nothing about us, we Africans and the progressive impulses driving many (not all, one must admit) of traditional cultures, especially if the speakers are non-Africans) proceed in their profound ignorance, after all “ignorance is bliss; knowledge is hell.”
For the educated African who parrots such heresy, I usually shake my head and view him or her as a man or woman most to be pitied! In my silent, ceaseless conversation with the Inner Being, I usually say:
‘Here goes the educated African neither in touch with his or her indigenous culture not at home with the culture of his or her coloniser; a fragmented persona neither here nor there, in his or her Essence, mimic men and mimic women of V.S. Naipaul’s fiction, Homi Bhabha’s conception of Mimicry and Edward Said’s treatise in Orientalism. This one has not met the strong African women who raised me…from my biological mother, Abike, to my other Mothers, Iya Aye (my Earth Mothers, lettered and unlettered, spiritual and temporal)… in my formal and informal educational careers – Iye, Bantale, the unofficial Poetess-Laureate of my Compound Family, unlettered Earth Mother who rendered our primordial, filial history in flowing Yoruba Oriki, knew each strand of the family’s personal poetry, who I usually cornered as a child to prostrate before her and linger eternally on the ground so that I could enjoy my family Oriki and history in pristine Yoruba Poetry.
‘To Iye Bantale and my biological Mother – a fan of Waka music, especially the Waka of the late Batili Alake from my hometown, Ijebu Igbo, the Waka Moderniser, Alhaja Salawa Abeni (they are also my Earth-Mothers), and Apala Music, of Haruna Ishola, renown inventor of Apala Music) and Y.K. Ajadi (both also from my hometown); and the Egun Mogaji himself, Ayila Omowura, I owe my primal sparks in interest in Oral Tradition and Yoruba, African and World Cultures as a whole.
‘This one knows not Dr. (now Prof.) Mrs. Ogungbesan of the Department of Russian, University of Lagos (UNILAG)… or Mrs. Zoya NIkolaevna Ogundowole, my Russian Lecturer in the same Department, or Dr Mrs. Balasova who taught my class at the Russian Cultural Centre, Ikoyi Lagos… or my Class Teacher in Form 3 at Molusi College, Ijebu Igbo, Miss. Kehinde, later Mrs Olajide; or the renown Womanist, award-winning Writer Dr. (now Prof.) Akachi Adimorah Ezeigbo of the Department of English, UNILAG…or the also famous British-Guyanese-Nigerian university don and writer Dr. (now Prof.) Karen King-Aribisala of the same UNILAG… or my secondary school Principal, Mrs. Umo M. Balogun, the subject matter of this piece…’
According to the Aroba (retold history) my set of Molusians met in mid 80s when we gained admission into the prestigious Molusi College, Ijebu Igbo, Mrs. U.M. Balogun, petit, ebony black young woman of old Cross River origin, came to our school as a “corper”, that is a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) for the mandatory one-year national service, and caught the eyes of a Molusiani Primus (a member of the 1949 first intake of our College), and Principal of Molusi College (if I remember correctly the first Old Molusian to head the College, Mr. Olatunde Balogun, now of blessed memory…And that’s how the young corper did not leave Ijebu Igbo again as she became Mrs. Balogun and a mother of four (or five?) children, of whom Biodun Balogun, a former newscaster on Channels Television, Lagos, was this writer’s set-mate at Molusi College.
How does one begin to pay tribute to this extraordinarily strong woman who was Principal in my time at Molusi College? On the whole, I can say without any fear of contradiction that the Molusi College traditional knack for “Only the Best is good enough for Africa” established through such highly accomplished educators as the very first Principal of Molusi College, the erudite Chief Oluwole Awokoya – who was head-hunted from Molusi College by no other than the only mortal elevated to the status of an Orisa, divinity in the mould of the Greek gods under the headship of Zeus at Olympia – Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to implement the famous Free Education Programme of Western Region in the 50s; his successor as second Principal of Molusi College, the late Dr. Tai Solarin, who needs no introduction in this country and beyond, was well ingrained in us nearly 40 years after under U.M. Balogun as Principal.
Thus as Molusians under Mrs. Balogun, we all received a formal and informal education steeped in the bedrock of “Only the Best is good enough” and the “Can Do” Spirit you can’t fail to see in any Molusian who passed through the College, and allowed the College to pass through him or her.
For starters, all Molusians under U.M. Balogun had a considerable farm portion on the school premises which you must touch every morning before Assembly, apart from your other morning duty, or else face some serious lashes of the cane from our Agric teachers (Mr. Akinyele and Mr. Osinbajo a.k.a. Dodo or F’oka (Finger Breaker, from Dodo’s penchant to target the tip of your longest finger ONLY as he gives you six strokes of the cane or more, beating himself as he misses under swift velocity! Another famous F’oka Beater was our Fine Arts teacher and my Class Teacher in Form Two, Mr. Femi Adeoti, who once beat the tip of my left-hand finger – always your left hand in Molusi College, so that you still have your right hand to attend to your studies! – for playing a truancy with my morning duty in the Fine Arts Studio, which I and Bamidele, my classmate, left rascally to Rosemary Okeke, to sweep for weeks only by herself, in preference for taking our F’oka lashes of the cane!)
Under Mrs. U.M Balogun, the Boarding School System was revived with my set at Molusi College, and every Wednesday afternoon after school closes was “Labour Day” for all Molusians except the infirm at the school’s sick bay. Our hand-tilled farms were large on the vast expanse of our school, we planted a variety of food crops, ran a piggery, a poultry and fishery farm, all under the supervision of our agric teachers mentioned above. Woe betides you if you took Aburi – secret bush paths that take you out of school – on a Labour Day. Of course your name would be conspicuously absent on the list of attendees scrupulously drawn up by your class captain who would take no bribe. Your full recompense is the whip at the Thursday morning assembly, lacerated buttocks and sitting difficulties through classes for the rest of the week!
Rather than being brutes, however, most teachers at Molusi College in my time under U.M. Balogun were fair and just, even in the face of the most provocative rascality from us, students. I remember that one Labour Day, the whole of my truant class skipped the exercise when our task was to go and cut the class at the off campus home of our Vice Principal, the elderly sage, Chief Olukoya! We simply took the opportunity of this off campus Labour Day to go home and damn the consequences; we were that rascally, I must confess!
We all came to the morning assembly on Thursday, braced up to receiving our canes! To our utter surprise, however, Chief Olukoya, who has a son in the same class – Wole Olukoya, who also skipped the grass-cutting in his own house alongside us! – spoke to us in one of most memorable moral musing I have ever received in my over four decades of life. Not a single one of us in a class of over 30 pupils did not feel ashamed over our conduct of the previous day. When Chief Olukoya left us without any instruction on what he expected of us, his Abo oro (half counsel) matured in us to Odindi (fullness). There and then at that morning assembly, we decided as a class to go and cut the grass at our vice principal’s home after school that same Thursday! This, I believe, is also a reflection of the sense of balanced morality, fairness and justice the Molusi College under U.M. Balogun instilled in us even at that tender age!
When a few teachers couldn’t just take our brazen rascality anymore and met us with serious beating and punishments bordering on abuse, Mrs. U.M. Balogun stepped in, to check them, insisting on commensurate justice for ‘Crime and Punishment’. As our own Dostoevsky, she charted a fresh grundnorm to address the situation. One of the rules I remembered clearly was that no teacher should beat or punish a student who says he or she is sick; the strokes of the cane or punishment should be deferred until when the culprit became hale and hearty!
For what we smart ‘rascals-Molusians’ made of U.M. Balogun’s humanitarian clause, permit me to refer you to Prof. Wole Soyinka’s childhood memoir, Ake, the part of that beautiful nostalgia about a real trial of pupils of Abeokuta Grammar School (AGS) at a moot court before the school Principal, the one and only Rev. I.O Ransome-Kuti, for stealing chickens from the school poultry, and the ‘legal’ defence put up by a student-lawyer of AGS..!
But U.M. Balogun did not condone indiscipline. She drove this fine principle home in many instances during my time at Molusi College. Permit me to relate one incident.
For their own self-imposed rites of passage out of secondary school, some Form Five Students in one particular year decided to go and drink themselves to stupor in the sacred confines of the school’s chapel! It was some weeks to their final WASC exams. The boys were given up by their rancorous songs in drunken mirth: “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest/Yo, yo, yo, yo/And a bottle of rum” they sang on the chapel’s altar at “full throated ease.”
They were the cream of Molusi College’s valiant football team, including the son of an Anglican Reverend in one of the biggest church in Ijebu Igbo. I remember most names involved, but please permit me to withhold them; the boys of then are now men today with wives, and children who they would instruct to avoid such youthful follies; let’s allow bygone to be bygone…and so on, and so on….
Everyone was rounded up and the “emergency bell” summoned the whole school to the emergency assembly ground on Kola Fashina Road (name after my uncle, the first Molusian, if I’m not mistaken, to bag a doctorate degree in Chemistry, and later board member of the PPPRA, now of blessed memory). In a firm, yet emotive voice, U.M. Balogun addressed a shocked assemblage of us, her children.
I can’t recall her exact words but they left no one in doubt that this ‘rascality’ has crossed the red line beyond the point of no return. Each culprit received 24 strokes of the cane from the best beater at Molusi College, Mr. Adekoya, a.k.a. Pa K, a football fan to the core who could not hide his emotions as he applied the very best of his staple swings to the near naked buttocks of the very boys who had made him and us proud Molusians on the football pitch of our eternal rivals, Abusi Odumare Academy, in many a keenly contested soccer games.
The Bacchanalian Spirit indeed escaped from the cavity of all culprits, thanks to Pa K’s deft deployment of nearly 50 Etunrun (a specie of strong canes), and U.M. Balogun watched proceedings with Thatcherite detachment.
When it ended, she dropped the final bombshell: All culprits – final year students, remember who were about to write their final exams, stand expelled from Molusi College and their names would be entered into the school’s “Black Book”.
But U.M. Balogun also tempered justice with mercy; she deployed the right hand to scold us, her children, and send her left hand to scoop us back into her warm, maternal embrace: All culprits, though expelled from our school, were allowed to write WASC as ‘Conti’ students, that is as external candidates of the School of Basic and Continuous Studies also on the premises of Molusi College, which we all regarded as the destination of failures who could not pass WAEC at first attempt in order to proceed to higher institutions.
U.M. Balogun’s influence in my life continues to this day. I owe my interest in the English Language, Literature and the trajectory of my media consultancy, publishing and journalistic career to her initial seed-planting at Molusi College in my crucial formative years under her principal direction.
A graduate of English from the University of Ibadan, U.M. Balogun made it a point of duty to give us a new English word at the morning assembly in person at Molusi College, with detailed explanation of spelling, usage, etc. I recall that I picked the correct spelling of “Salon” and not “Saloon” for the hairdressers’ shop from one of these “new word sessions”, among several English words.
Also, Mrs. U.M. Balogun kindled the journalistic fire in this writer by establishing the Molusi College Press Club, which I joined. The press club published “MoluVoice” on whose cyclostyled pages I earned my first by-line in journalism and wrote my first poems.
Talking about poems brings back the memory of my most embarrassing day till date. It was one sunny afternoon shortly after the Orkar Coup of April 22, 1990. We had just returned from break when the emergency bell went and the whole school poured out on the emergency assembly. A deeply happy U.M. Balogun was beaming. She delivered a short talk on how we would all fair very well in life if we take our studies seriously, harping on the excellent training we were receiving at Molusi College. She then went on to the reason for the assembly, stressing that this is what happens when we are less rascally and more studious and hardworking.
“What was the reason for this emergency assembly?” we asked ourselves in hushed tones, even as we were relieved that this was not about one or some of going to get some lashes of cane again for another serious infraction.
U.M Balogun then announced very proudly: “I’m happy to announce that Osigbesan Luqman of SS1 Arts has won the first prize in the poetry competition organised by the students of the Department of English, Ogun State University as part of their activities to mark the Departmental Week…”
An applause that could wake up the dead erupted around yours truly on the assembly ground…but it was one day I wanted the assembly ground to open up and swallow me… I knew what would follow: I would be ushered out to face the whole school for more eulogies and several rounds of applause and the prize presentation, a wrapped book which U.M. Balogun was caressing very affectionately in her hands…
Trouble is on this particular day, I was wearing the only khaki short knicker sown for me, alongside two shirts, by my uncle, Mr. James, Olunlade Osigbesan, also a school principal-disciplinarian of the highest order, an ex-Molusian, professional and personal friend to U.M. Balogun. Though a very hard khaki, this knicker has been in use for about four years, that is about 12 school terms, five days a week, and had no fewer than four big, gaping holes clearing putting my buttocks – if I’m not wearing a pant, which I sometimes don’t while a pupil – or my pant itself on display behind me! To stave of pranksters – and you can be sure that we had too many at Molusi College, especially in my class – dipping their hands in my buttocks from behind, which they did many times, I took to breaking a cardinal dress etiquette at Molusi College – flying my shirt over my ripped short knickers. This offence is punishable by at least six strokes of the cane on the spot; no questions asked…
The reader can then imagine my dilemma. I had only two choices: quickly tuck in my shirt and stroll out to the front of the whole school, beside U.M. Balogun on the assembly ground, and expose my buttocks to both teachers – male and female who are facing us – and the entire population of Molusians, boys and girls OR: Fly the shirt, get U.M. Balogun angry and get flogged right there in front of the whole school at an emergency assembly convened to honour me for bring honour to Molusi College.
A bit of a background to my ‘predicament’ on this day. You see, I had just moved to Form 4 and was saving up towards buying new material to sew as trousers as a senior students, which was compulsory and I had been flogged one or twice for not wearing trousers as a senior by a teacher or two in the term. What they did not know, and I refused to tell, was that I had lost my father way back on May 12, 1983, my mother was poor and could not afford to buy me trousers materials, which cost a whopping N15, yes, Fifteen Naira then, (compare to our school fee of N35 per term, then the reader would know how big N15 was); my uncle, J.O. Osigbesan mentioned above, had five children he was also raising, apart from myself, and money was hard to come by. My teachers did not also know that I was working at weekends as labour hands on construction sites or farms to raise the N15 and another N5 (Five Naira) to pay the tailor, N20 (Twenty Naira) in all, which was four full working days wages for a labourer at the time!
To cut this long story short, I chose to fly my shirt over my bare buttocks…
U.M. Balogun’s mood changed. She turned to face me in front of everybody. She had that Thatcherite look again, which, we reckon, had set many scurrying for safety from her magisterial, even regal, presence. Her look told me and everybody present what the problem was and what she expected me to do right there, at least to redeem myself. “Will you tuck in that Goddamn shirt of yours?” her look says. A dead hush descended on the Assembly.
When U.M. Balogun waited a bit; she adjusted her standing and hardened her look the more. The nearest teacher to me was Mr. Alausa, our Physics teacher; a jolly good fellow who can cane you well even as he can crank you up with jokes in or outside class. I had my light bulb moment when Mr. Alausa shouted at me to tuck in my shirt.
Putting up the best Alawada (jester) mien I could muster under the excruciating circumstance, I took a step or two towards Mr. Alausa and whispered into his left ear. Drama! He went doubly over in restrained mirth, took two steps towards U.M. Balogun and whispered into her left ear.
This Earth-Mother of mine understood immediately.
She broke into a very wide grin, made a feigned move to see things for herself by lifting up my shirt, and Mr. Alausa, clinched up the comics by feigning to slap her hands away from my buttocks… The whole assembly grounds erupted into rancorous laughter…to yours truly’s utter oembarrassment, which was only mitigated by the grand show of honour U.M Balogun made of the Prize Presentation and how my teachers rallied around poor me! You can imagine what my pranksters-classmate to me for the rest of the day and beyond until I was able to buy and sew the trousers for myself! May be that’s why I lost a girl or two in school to some less brilliant but well-heeled chap at the time..!
And U.M. Balogun bestowed on me one of the most benevolent acts any true teacher can give his or her student. It is an act I would hold dear to my grave. It was a gesture I think influenced my course in life for the better, from which I picked the principle of helping anyone I come across in life if it is within my powers, even if the recipient turns out an ungrateful Brutus who stabs me at the back after helping him or her.
You would probably not been reading this piece from me or even hold this newspaper – The Dream Daily in your hands – if not because my ‘Mother’, Mrs. U.M. Balogun allowed me to write WASC on CREDIT – Yes, you read correctly. Mrs. U.M. Balogun allowed me to write the 1991 SSCE exams without paying for it BEFORE the exams!
My hard-pressed uncle gave me a note to her (which I saw in my school file in February 2016, 25 years after, when I went to collect my original WAEC Certificate!), to give his words that he would pay my WAEC fee later, which he did, if I recall correctly, after I finished writing the WASC exams! How U.M. Balogun did it, I don’t know, but she did it! I wrote WASC exams without paying for it, courtesy of the ‘Mother’ and Principal, Mrs. U.M. Balogun.
The readers can therefore imagine my deep shock whenever I hear or get news copies from my reporters at The Dream Daily that some secondary principals have embezzled the WASC fees of their students! I tell anyone who cares to listen that my own Principal. Mrs. U.M. Balogun somehow allowed me to write WASC before paying for it! In fact when my best friend and classmate at Molusi College who is today a Senior Lecturer at the Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun, Ijebu Ode, desires to get me sober during our banters, he jocularly threatens to report me to WAEC for writing WASC “on credit” so that they can confiscate my WASC qualification!
It is to U.M. Balogun’s benevolent credit that I was able to graduate from Molusi College with flying colours at my first and single sitting for WASC. I am eternally grateful, Ma, and I hope this son of yours is not doing badly in life by your high expectation!
Thank you, Ma’am, e pe fun wa ma, and May Allah continue to bless you, all your biological children and we your children by our tutelage under your charge, amen!
You are appreciated, Ma’am!
NB
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