Corals Of Youth

CORALS OF

YOUTH

Margaret Obiageli Olele

Copyright © 2024 by Margaret Obiageli Olele.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 07/01/2024

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CONTENTS

Foreword

About the Author

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

FOREWORD

Corals of Youth is not merely a recounting of a childhood, but a deeply personal journey. It is the life story of Margaret Olele, a woman who not only witnessed but also became an integral part of the turbulence of Nigerian history, a history she would later come to shape and be shaped by.

Margaret’s story is a fusion of personal experiences and the socio-political changes unfolding in Nigeria. It’s a vibrant depiction of a Nigerian family’s dynamics set against the canvas of a nation striving to find its feet after independence from British colonial rule, a cultural tapestry that is sure to captivate readers.

Whether it’s the warmth of extended family, the thrill of childhood adventures, or the resilience in the face of adversity, ‘Corals of Youth’ is a narrative that transcends borders. It’s a story of family, childhood, and personal growth that resonates with readers, illuminating the universal challenges and joys of growing up. The author takes readers on a nostalgic journey of Nigerian cultural, social, and political customs, underscoring how these experiences have shaped her into the person she is today. I believe that these themes will strike a chord with readers from all walks of life.

If you’re a history enthusiast, ‘Corals of Youth’ is a goldmine of information about Nigeria. The author meticulously chronicles the events that shaped the country’s trajectory, providing a comprehensive timeline that will undoubtedly enhance your understanding of Nigerian history and culture.

Paul Olele.

Freelance Journalist and Founder, 703 W.F. LLC

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Debut author, Margaret Obiageli Olele (BA Literature, MA English) brings a fresh voice to literature with her memoir, The Corals of Youth. An advocacy expert, skilled storyteller, and passionate historian, she weaves Nigerian cultural influences into a shared experience. CEO, podcaster, and knowledge-sharer, Margaret’s writing inspires and educates.

PREFACE

Six years ago, I joined the Empty Nesters’ club. When I told my daughter how lonely the house would be as she planned to leave for school, she just advised me in her usual matter-of-fact, off-hand way, Mummy, keep very busy; write a book. I started thinking of one, and in the middle of things, a childhood friend sent me his book I Found My Voice, which chronicled some aspects of our lives in Abule–Oja, Yaba. This area and its environs in Nigeria’s most populous city, Lagos, boast and still boast of legacy missionary secondary schools and higher institutions – Yaba College of Technology, Trade Center, now called the Technical College, University of Lagos, College of Education, and the list goes on. It is no wonder that Yaba has become the Digital hub in Nigeria. Corals of Youth captures the essence of school life and other forms of education through interactions and relationships.

The book goes beyond Yaba and drills into the mind of those who grew up around the Seventies, Eighties, and early Nineties in Lagos, irrespective of ethnic affiliation. It brings out the lives of people impacted by different cultures and, in my case, the Enuhani Culture of the Igbo-speaking people of Delta State, the northern influence from Kano paper-wrapped with the urbane city life in a state that has become a melting point of several cultures.

Someone once asked me, Which state are you from? This was ahead of a meeting with the US Ambassador. She was putting together briefing notes for this conversation and thought it would help in the direction and flow of the conversation. I laughed and told her that my state or hometown, Ibusa, does not define who I am as I am a product of several cultures; it would be too simplistic to straight jacket me in this manner. Do not get me wrong. This is not a book preaching unity in diversity, and if by the design of fate, it achieves this, if the depiction of who I am through this book sweeps this out, then so be it.

Six years later, I am still writing the book. Not here, in my head. As coral beads are held together by string or like rosary beads, the experiences of youth growing up in Yaba become an endless story, almost like the start of the Arabian Nights tales. Each bead of memory takes you to another and another. Each memory triggers more. A picture, a face from the past, voice, jokes, music, dance, and even politics take you into a run-on writing that I had to stop.

The Corals of Youth is what I will describe as a collective memoir. It is a metaphor for a girl growing up in a middle-class family through a missionary school. Through her eyes and memories, you see others.

Six years is a long time, and some who were alive when I began writing have passed on, including my late brother Emmanuel Abiagom and some of my cousins.

I would like to thank those who have made this book happen. First, my mother, Mrs. Josephine Ndidi Abiagom, provided me with a lot of information about the early stages of my life. How could I have known what happened when I was born? My daughter Margaret Chinedu Olele challenged me to write a book and sent me this note a few months ago asking me how my book was going. ‘Did you finish writing it already? What’s left to do? It is hiatus for now.." My son, Paul Onyinye Olele, took me as an early client for his young company, 703 W.F. LLC, editing and translating, and reaching out to as many people as possible for appropriate referencing. My husband, Paul Omeogor Olele, provided some cultural context and support. My sisters and nephew J.D Abiagom read the work’s first fifty pages and considered it good to go.

Margaret Obiageli Olele

CHAPTER 1

I

READ ALMOST GREEN WITH ENVY

what I struggled to put down over the years: My childhood stories, in the near rustic setting of Abule -Oja etched in the writing of a childhood friend. The organization and time I craved to write, stolen by over 25 years of hard labor in the corporate world. Hands itched to write, but words refused to form. I decided it was best to put down whatever came in snatches, whatever tickled my thoughts. And I always lived in my thoughts.

Did not have a full sense of the peculiar circumstances of my birth, whether it rained heavily or if there was a portentous happening that heralded it. How can it be anyway- this is me - very simple ... Perhaps I will ask Amama¹, but what I am sure about is that I was not a breech birth like my immediate elder Sister who my mother would playfully tell us she was sure she had the intention to kill her or born like my only brother who made her experience prolonged labor and she was in that tortuous agony for three days. Did they not hear of Cesarean then?? Of course, at that time and perhaps even now, CS was abnormal, an aberration and curse on womanhood. Why would the child not come through the vagina, why should a woman not feel the real pangs of pain destined for her at the beginning of creation, the curse of our mother Eve, trickling down to generations of women.

I often have heard my mother and her friends say she had a normal birth, as if there is anything abnormal about children born any other way other than that which they have come to accept as the norm? The story of Mrs. Opanuobi, whose mother –in –law refused to ine Omugo² for her twins because she had them through the Surgeon’s cut across her lower abdomen, was a story we heard several times as children. She cried that this was a sign of bad omen for her family, the twins being her first grandchildren. She promptly returned to her home with the white cockerel, dry fish and yams she had brought with her, leaving poor Rita Opanuobi, her daughter in law, whose mother had died a long time ago with no motherly care and ofe nsala with Uda³*, not to mention hot water massage on her stomach necessary to soothe the disturbed entrails.

Anyway, my father told me he thought I was going to be a boy and I came out looking very stout and strong. Compared to my elder sister who was frail looking with a big head and who they thought was going to die after the first few days of birth, I was clearly the Jam blocker. They nicknamed me Oropoto Soja, a name which stuck and which some aunties and uncles called me for a very long time…

Picture of my first year on earth is interesting to behold. It showed me either giving a very confident toothy smile holding my knife with a sense of purpose or in other pictures eating my cake instead of cutting it. And yes, I was sturdy, almost in a manly way.

My mother told me that we spent the next three years of my life in Ibadan, my elder siblings attending Sacred Heart, Convent school, Onireke Ibadan (And they chanted the name of their school in a sing- song manner when asked). I am always proud to tell anyone who cared to listen that I was born in Ibadan. Ibadan is an ancient Yoruba city in the west of Nigeria, one considered to be one of the largest cities in Africa. I will not bore you with the details of history, but Ibadan soldiers stopped the aggressive advance of marauders into the west after the sell-out of Afonja⁴ in Ilorin. It became the first African city with a Television station and for a long time, the capital of the western Nigeria. It was also the city where the first military Head of State Aguiyi Ironsi was murdered alongside his host Lt. Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, the military governor of the Western Region, who refused to play Judas to his guest (These were glorious years of integrity). It is the home of the First University in Nigeria, initially called the University College. More importantly, that is where my umbilical cord was buried to use the words of a Nigerian politician⁵ on his return to Nigeria after escaping through some ingenious means the usually proficient British police when under house arrest for alleged money laundering. An exploit that would make James Hardley Chase or the writer of James Bond green with envy. His boast at the Nigeria airport now I have returned to the land of my Umbilical cord… still stuck.

I will say I was the child of the Nigerian civil war⁶, born in the year when the war began and I hold very passionate views about the happenings.. on both sides. Don’t ask me. Years later, my mother narrated painful stories of how they heard gunshots from the cemetery, perhaps saluting dead Nigerian soldiers brought back from the frontline of war.

We lived in the beautiful government quarters in Jericho, Ibadan in the western region with a lot of greenery and manicured plants. My father was a senior civil servant working first with the Ministry of Statistics and later the Ministry of Agriculture. My mother was an employee of the pioneer retail chain Leventis Stores owned by a Greek man, Anastasios George Leventis. With the transfer of my Father to Lagos in 1970, we moved from GRA to a less comfortable home in Mokola because my mother refused to relocate to Lagos until my Father completed our house he was building in Lagos. Amama, is one of those few women who believe that living in a "meihire⁷ as she called it is not responsible and the litmus test of a good wife is the one who supports her husband to complete their family home after at most five years of marriage. She also shared often that living in a government owned house is an illusory existence and that she had an unpleasant taste of this when we moved out of the comfortable home in Jericho and had to buy the most basic things: bedsheets, cutleries et. al. provided at the government quarters. It is almost as if you had been completely stripped naked and you had to quickly buy new clothes, not necessarily the best when ordinarily you could have taken your time and bought the very best…Starting from scratch comes with a lot of pain No more government houses, mama said.

Papa bought land in Abule Oja and in Yoruba Abule means – Village. Abule -Oja was an interesting mix of Upper Middle, middle- and lower-income families. Mud house bungalows coated with cement and rusty roof tops, sometimes in a face me I face you fashion interspersed sturdy story buildings and duplex houses sometimes on the same street.

My Father completed our home in Lagos in 1970 with a caretaker managing the construction called Mr. Sadiku. As the first house on that lane, the local government will naturally name the street or lane after the first landlord. My father opted for the name of his caretaker and the lane became Sadiku Lane. Coming out of Sadiku Lane on the left is Ayodele street and the house of Baba Sadiku, the caretaker of our house and by the connection of Ayodele street to Mosuro was the corner shop of Baba Sunday, the local electrician. Baba Sunday was a dark wily long faced man from Ondo State who hardly smiled. He had a lot of apprentices as some parents who lived in the face me I face you houses could not afford to send their children to school - even at that time. Mama Sunday his wife was a bit buxom, wore white trousers often and people rumoured that she even pumelled her husband into the dust whenever they fought. Before his shop was a beer parlour that constantly played Ebenezer Obey’s song Olowo ma jaiye enyi le mo awo to jaiye lano da won ti kun wan ti lo. As a child I wondered if the shop owner hated the rich. Ayodele Street flowed past one intersection and almost into Davis Street, which flowed into University Road. Two turnings on the right is Ebun Street/Close. Beautiful houses adorned Ebun Street and close. On the left of Ebun Street was the path that would eventually take you almost 500 metres to Balogun Square before the Palace of Eletu Odibo. This path narrowed at the point where a very huge Agbalumo⁸ or Udala⁹ tree grew. There were lots of stories about the tree, including that this was the get-together point for witches and wizards. Parents warned their children never to pass there at night; To eat the juicy fruits of the tree was a taboo for us. The Udala tree has strong roots in folklore. The fruit- a juicy orange-colored berry has seeds coated in cream film and jellylike matter. Each part of the fruit has its own salivating joy and unique taste. The outer back becomes chewing gum long after the taste