With Mrs Christie Achebe,Chinuwa Achebes vivacious wife our English language teacher at MBHS, Mrs Anne Akpofure,Mrs Latunde Dada and a Young Miss Olowu ( Later Mrs Olagbemi ) looking out for the 2 of us outspoken students, we were set to make the best of our opportunities at MBHS Lagos.
In that year, something happened in school that should never have happened witnessed by one of those 4 Matriarchal Teachers . One of our 5 th form Prefects physically assaulted John Edet and John headbutted the prefect in the melee that unfolded smack on the mouth 👄. The Prefect became irrationally irate and increased his assault….
The Problem was that Auntie Ann Mrs Akpofure was going to a class and witnessed the whole incident from beginning and she initiated the end by calling the prefect.
After giving him a piece of her mind she matched him to Mr David Famoroti’s office . Now Mr David Famoroti was not the typical Nigerian British trained School Principal/ School Headmaster. He was trained at Fourah Bay College of the University of Durham and Michigan State University where he earned a Master’s Degree in Mathematics and Secondary School Education.The man had no time for the British and their prosaic pomposities … he had zero tolerance for rudeness , lying or cheating others. John Edet came back to our class 2 B all roughed up with his head high. That Prefect avoided Edet and I until he left at the end of the year. John and I shared a lot in common.
Our mothers were Educated Matriarchal Women who went the extra mile to see that their sons were well raised in a nurturing Educational Environment and they were both disciplinarians.John Edet’s mother was a Senior Civil Servant , tough as nails in her frock , Western head wear, a scarf and Leather Hand Bag, speaking perfect Queen’s English and formal shoes 👠. She had an Enterpreneural Spirit with a shop in the Yaba area where John Edit stopped by on his way home from School. John Edet and I were members of a class club called “ the Bus Gigan Club “ and we never got on a stationary bus… to is our leader a classmate of ours Odupitan was a semi God.We were like the Brooklyn Tram Dodgers and we got thrown off the buses at Oyingbo or Iddo, and from Oyingbo we would often walk to Yaba,taking short cuts which he and the others knew from his Primary School days at Yaba Methodist School .
It was John Edet who took me to the Hughes Avenue and Herbert Macauley Road compound where Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson and his band lived and Rehearsed in the late Afternoons and evenings , from there we would head north wards to a Hotel on the Right before the Total Petrol Station where Victor Uwaifo practiced in the Back area . Every once in a while, diagonally from Rex Jim Lawson’s compound on the Queens Street side of Hughes Avenue was Kakadu where Fela and his “ Koola Lobitos “ rehearsed a few times a week. We would hang out there and head home .
We were Scholars and our priority was Scholarship at School while we had fun after school Hours, hopping onto Moving Buses. This was what 13 and 14 year Old children did and John Edet was one of my companions in that hidden lifestyle of our idea of Fun.
John Edet was sought out by my father and he allayed my Fathers mind after what ever was planted in his mind by Uncle Rex Akpofure’s crowd.John Edet was a visitor to my Father’s office at the General Hospital and Medical Council, and by the time of second term exams in 1966, my Father never worried about me anymore. That was the influence John Edet had on me and I only found out many years later.
Academically he was an excellent Arts Student. He excelled in English Language and Literature as well as French , History and Latin where he was right up there with his the best students in the Class. Other than refusing to be oppressed by Seniors and the Older Students in the same class, John Edet and I were concerned about intellectual debate,over current issues like the Middle East Crisis, Contemporary Nigerian Politics and History and John was so widely read. I had problems with Latin , Music and Yoruba, while he had issues with Mathematics , Physics , Chemistry and science. Mathematics and English were 200 marks per subject if you fell short of the 100 mark pass in one of them , at MBHS , you had a problem.
In form 4 John Edet fell short overall, but when the Adjustment was made he was above the promotion cut off. His strict mother would have no part of it and she put her foot down to his spending another year in class 4.We resumed in January 1969 without John Edet in 5 B . We were all shocked but John Edet took it with equanimity. It was his Mothers decision and that was the end of the issue . After MBHS Lagos he attended LABGS Bariga Akoka to do his HSC for 2 Years . From there he Matriculated at the University of Lagos in French and Linguistics .
At Unilag, he chose to stay at the celebrated Bamgbopa Street Hostel off Campus where he met Ray Kester “ bros Goke’s “. Unilag was where he spent years and consolidated his relationship with his future life partner Lydia.After Unilag and his year abroad , he served at Fiditi 20 miles from Ibadan as an English and French teacher at the celebrated Fiditi Grammar School founded in 1952 by the Late Chief A O Adeyi who later became Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Minister of Local Government in 1955.
It was also where the great Nigerian Poet Chris Okigbo taught English until 1967 when he went to Biafra where he became an early War Casualty. He took his NYSC very seriously and took time of at weekends and holidays to visit his fiance Lydia serving in Kaura Namoda present Zamfara State .
Soon after the NYSC year he was appointed a Special Assistant for Press Affairs to Senator Joseph Wayas the Senate President of the Second Republic where he gained a front seat experience about Governance Nigerian style . After that stint ended, he returned to his private life and his commitment to the Nigerian Project . He and Lydia welcomed and raised 5 beautiful children . John Edet remained commited to fighting for the rights of the disadvantaged and downtrodden while balancing his conservative views .
He was well travelled over several continents . A sucessful Agro Enterpreneur , he will be missed by a lot of people who knew him.
For me his death at the hands of perpetrators of targeted Violence is a sad testimony to how intolerant to dissention we have become as a society. Especially when such a dastardly act was carried out in Asokoro in the Federal Capital of Abuja.
John Edet died leaving his wife Lydia ,5 Children and Grandchildren.
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