My school life experience

Some years back, when I just got admitted into JSS1, Aka Community Secondary School, Aka Ofot. (Had to add the name for people who attended then too). It was a free government school and we were very much, I mean those days when a lot people wanted to go to school not now many feel discouraged and all.

So, as a newbie into secondary school since I just finished my primary years at Police children school. I was still getting to know around and how things were done and all. It was a very big school in land mass and facilities but the quickest thing I realized was the fact the school had so many senior bullies.

The newly promoted seniors used to bully we JSS1 since we were the “Jonny just come”. Then, when they come, they first thing they say while standing at the door was “EVERYBODY, UNDER YOUR LOCKER, AND MAKE SURE ALL YOUR BODY IS INSIDE” 🥲

And I always struggle to do that because I’m a tall guy plus the yeye carpenter my mom gave the contract to construct my locker made it very small for even a 5 year old to fit in. They’ll move around looking for who seems not to do what their command was.

They’ll beat the hell out of me, kick me, bruise me and all alongside other classmates. I became their regular customer because of that struggle of fitting inside my locker from different seniors.

The bully was too much even to the point a senior collected a red watch my uncle bought for me when he travelled to Cotonou. I could remember him saying “Hey, give me that watch! Idiot boy, what are you using time for, do you even know time?” Lol.

He dragged my hand and unclipped the watch from my hand, the next day, I saw one fair girl wearing my watch, I did little findings and I was told the girl was his girlfriend. Meaning he gave it to her and the girl will think he bought it with his own money.

This is where it gets serious, I was fed with the bully, punishment and extortions and had to come up with a plan. The plan came through one SUV car like that.

There’s this car called “Nissan Xterra”. I used to love the car because one of my dad’s friend used to own it then and he was a regular visitor before my dad passed away. It was on Sunday, I took a red pen from my mom’s bag, she used to have enough due to her job. I brought out my school uniform (the shirt) it was orange in colour because our school, we wore black down and orange up.

I drew a skull on the collar, under the skull diagram, I wrote “X-TERROR” 😂 remember, the idea came from the car, NISSAN XTERRA” I just changed the “A” to “O”

I did this in a bid to look more like what the writing says so seniors will think I was some sort bad boy to be scared of or one senior cult leader errand boy or just anything so they won’t terrorize me and all😭😂

Hang on with me,

So, Monday came and I was ready to go to school and see what changes my idea could pull. That day, I didn’t know why my mom decided to say we will use same bike because she works close to my school. I had no option than to raise my shirt collar up, we boarded same bike, I sat inside and she sat at my back, not long enough, my mom noticed my collar was up.

She asked me why, and I told her cold was catching me because of the bike speed but it was a lie, typical Nigerian mom, she yelled,”my friend, will you bring that down? Look responsible”. Me that knew what she was going to see was very nervous. She didn’t even wait for me to bring it down myself, she did it herself and the whole skull “💀 and X-Terror” in red pen showed.

Damn! My mom shouted and almost fell off the bike because of the shock . “My friend! What is this!?” “So you joined cult in your JS1?” “Oh my God! who initiated this boy?” All these yelling came with heavy slaps while on bike o. She nearly cried but I was telling her I did that as to escape bully and extortion.

She was still fuming and told me to go back home immediately and change to another one. She told the bike man to stop and told me to go home. I had to use the 70 naira pocket money she gave me, I reached home and lost all the zeal to go back to school. So I didn’t go back and had to go the next day.

That was how that plan failed without me seeing the result it could’ve pulled. The bully kept on happening since these were newly elected seniors who were desperate for power and to exercise their wickedness. One girl like that named Mary who was in my class that used to stare at me at intervals and whenever I made eye contact with her, she’ll look away.

This girl started coming close to me, she liked me but she had a very wild mind even at that age when I barely knew all those bad bad boyfriend and girlfriend things. She told me that her brother is a cultist by name “Cross and die” and one of the newly elected, feared and most respected seniors.

And it was true because I remember when the seniors will come and they’ll be like, “Na cross and die sister be that o, no touch am o”. She doesn’t even use to follow us to get under our lockers and most times, she’s not in class when the seniors come.

This girl was asking me out and because of how I noticed they don’t touch her, I didn’t give her a strong “NO” answer. Not like I said yes either, (the case of staying in-between) because I know I’ll benefit from her brother’s influence.

I was just gatekeeping her proposal because i knew if i say no, she might stop talking to me and also the fact i wasn’t expose to the kind of things she wanted us to do like when she would say we should go to the toilet together and have some fun after some weeks we started talking.

So that’s how Mary saved me from all those occurrences till those set of seniors graduated and the school authorities realized what was going on and decided not to give seniors posts anymore and banned all the bullying and extortions. I wish to see that Mary once again. (Community Secondary School, Aka Ofot). This is what the diagram looked like.