'Good Wives, Good Mothers, Leading Lights - Biography' by Reuben Abati
Joshua Meisler
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'Good Wives, Good Mothers, Leading Lights - Biography'
by Reuben Abati
November 1998
Christine Bullock and Kemi Morgan, [The Making of Good Wives, Good
Mothers... dull Leading Lights of Society: The Story of St. Anne's
School, Ibadan] (Ibadan: Y-Books, 1998), 208pp.
The 'concept' of single-sex schools has not always been popular. It has
been criticized both by professional educators and the same children for
whom such schools are established on the ground that they represent a
convenient departure from the natural, given, mixture of the sexes in
society. Hence, they violate a certain rhythm of social growth and
togetherness. Girls-only schools are particularly problematic. The girls
are robbed of the magnetic presence and value of males, and the
aesthetic interaction that this entails. They miss something that is
vital to their being. Such girls are bound to develop rather incomplete
personalities. The clearest problem with this argument is that it is so
easy to deconstruct. It is derived from a chauvinistic notion that women
cannot grow properly except in the company of males. The gender
hegemonists in this school of thought often fail to consider the other
side of the coin: whether boys-only schools suffer the same fate, nor
are they willing to subject their thesis to the test of concrete
evidence. But the questions are worth evaluating all the same: how do
special schools for girls fare? Do the graduates become repressed, and
thereby pass through life later as psychological wrecks, victims of an
earlier forced denial of ''the other?'' Are such schools dull, and to be
discouraged?
What this book achieves is to demonstrate that this supposition is no
more than a myth. It tells the story of St. Anne's School, Ibadan, a
girls only school which at 146 years of age is without controversy, one
of the oldest schools in Nigeria. The Making of Good Wives, Good
Mothers...Leading Lights of Society is full of joy, fun, intrigues, as
well as strong memories, characters and moments. The girls that leap out
of its pages build a bridge for us between the past and the present,
they regale us with stories about a school where life was memorable and
learning was enjoyable. They are special girls, top girls, good citizens
for whom later life has turned out to be as fulfilling as their early
days at St. Anne's and as they look back and forward, we are forced to
share the story of their lives too. The book is divided into three parts
comprising a narration of the history of St. Anne's School, Ibadan from
its beginnings in 1853 till 1973, reminiscences by Christine Bullock
(nee Groves) who was associated with the school as Science teacher,
House Mistress, and Principal for over two decades (1946 -1973), and
reminiscences by other old teachers and the alumnae.
Reading this book turns out invariably to be an encounter with the
history of Girls Secondary education in Nigeria, with in fact, and
perhaps more importantly, the changing tides and fortunes of school
education in this country from the 19th Century to the present. The
various testimonies and descriptions compel a comparison with the
present, and it is at such moments that the story that is narrated
acquires a twist of irony and regret. St. Anne's owes its earliest
origins to the goodwill and kindness of two Anglican missionaries, David
and Anna Hinderer, who arrived in Ibadan in 1853. Anna established a
Home School where she trained and groomed the children of the local
Christians, and in good time her boarding house had become popular with
the various families. Mrs. Hinderer however died suddenly, but she had
created a need, and encouraged what would later become a major school
and tradition. Her students at the time included Susanah Daley, the
grandmother of Rev. I. O. Ransome Kuti, famous organist and educationist
and father of the late Afro-beat maestro, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and
Akinyele and Yejide Olunloyo. The school continued to grow and by 1899,
Miss Grover (later Mrs. Mackay), one of Anna Hinderer's successors
established the Kudeti Girls' School in Ibadan.
Meanwhile, in Lagos, there was about the same period, a lot of agitation
in the press and among the local elite for a special school for the
education of girls. Abigail Crowther, daughter of Bishop Ajayi Crowther
and wife of Rev. Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose mother Sarah Crowther
had established a girls school in Abeokuta, was in the forefront of this
demand. She had studied in England like most girls of the Victorian era,
but she wanted her own daughters to school in Nigeria. Eagle and Critic,
the local newspaper which had taken up the campaign even argued that
such a school should help to produce ladies who would become ''good
wives, good mothers, and good ornaments of society.'' In 1869, the CMS
Female Institution was established. Its name was changed to CMS Girls
Seminary in 1891, and later when it became a full-fledged secondary
school, it was referred to as CMS Girls' School.
This school and the Kudeti Girls school in Ibadan had one thing in
common. Both were initially designed to train girls who will become good
wives and may be teachers, seam mistresses and nurses. Many of the
graduates subsequently attended the United Missionary College which had
been established to provide formal teacher training and award Grade
Three Teachers Certificates. But both schools grew rapidly. The Kudeti
Girls School had to be moved from Kudeti to a new site at Molete which
could accommodate 30 teachers, over 100 boarders and a chapel. The Broad
Street site of the CMS Girls' School in Lagos also became inadequate.
This was when the decision was taken by the mission to merge the
secondary school segment of the CMS Girls School with Kudeti Girls
School, where there was more than adequate space for a large population
of students. In 1950, students from Lagos travelled to Ibadan to
complete their education in another school. The product of this merger
is the new school named St. Anne's with the CMS-inspired motto: Courage,
Modesty and Sincerity.
Former students and teachers remember this school with infectious
delight, turning this book of reminiscences into a rite of celebration.
Three things stand out. The first is the structure of missionary school
education. It seems to have been designed to produce excellent human
beings, well-rounded personalities, and although the missionaries had
set out to train teachers and housewives, the curriculum was soon
expanded to cover HSC and the students began to excel in Cambridge
examinations. Many won scholarships to travel abroad, and when the
University College, Ibadan, was opened in 1949, St. Anne's girls were
among the first set of Nigerian girls to be admitted to the school. The
teachers, both the expatriates and the former students and Nigerians who
later taught in the school were all committed. Teachers and students
shared great empathy, a fact that was helped in no small measure by the
distribution of the students into ''Houses'' with specific
responsibilities as members of a community where hardwork and discipline
were major pillars.
The second point to be remarked is the comprehensive nature of the
education that the students received. There was the St. Anne's way of
doing things which one alumna after another recalls with appreciation.
Sports, dancing, physical exercises, cooking were all part of the fare
and the St. Anne's girls staged plays regularly often in collaboration
with the boys from a boys-only school, Government College, Ibadan. This
turned out to be a fruitful collaboration. Some of the teachers
including Christine Bullocks and Firinne Ni Chreachain met their
husbands in the process, a number of the girls too started relationships
which became life-long affairs. Perhaps this in part explains why St.
Anne's girls are so special.
But thirdly, what makes them truly special is the richness of their
experience and education. The merger of the Ibadan and Lagos schools
brought greater cultural diversity. Non-Yoruba girls had to study and
grow up with girls from other parts of the country, and although the
Yoruba girls are accused of always speaking their language, the Urhobo,
Ibo, Kalabari, Edo and Itsekiri girls soon began to feel at home as they
ate ''ewedu'' and ''amala'' and got used to being called ''kobokobo''.
Some of these non-Yoruba girls included Flora Nwakuche, who would later
become a leading novelist known as Flora Nwapa, others were Julie
Imoukhuede, Flora Ukoli, Anne Iyo, Grace Ugah, Emuobo Urhiafe (now Mrs.
Ibru), Clara Ukpoma (later Mrs. Ighodaro), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Dorothy
Miller, Gladys Odigie, Betty Okotie, Beatrice Epie and Victoria Odia.
Their reminiscences are hilarious. For example, Mrs. Kemi Morgan,
co-author of this book, and teacher and later Chairperson of the St.
Anne's School Board of Governors, tells the story of how a certain
strange woman carrying a calabash on her head haunted the girls at
night, trying to get into their dormitories: "The Matron, Mrs. Aribisala
would come out of her room with a lighted lantern in her hand, and a
Bible to visit the dormitories, to say prayer with boarders, read Psalm
91 to them and assure them that they were safe and that the woman would
not come back and that they should all go back to sleep… The woman was
given the nickname of Mama Calabash."
Mrs. Laide Soyinka (nee Idowu) who was a pupil from 1951 - 1955 writes
about how the school Principal, Miss Wedmore whom the students
nicknamed "Iya Weddy" always insisted that the girls should maintain a
good posture. The other teachers also stressed the same thing during
Physical Education sessions except that their idea of posture was mainly
European and matters really came to a head on one occasion. As Miss
Groves reports it: "The whole school took Physical Education at 7 am,
simultaneously both Form V and I somewhat unwillingly. One day, 1 was
working at posture and said "heads up, shoulders back, behind tucked in"
when yejide (later the Principal of Yejide Girls' School herself) said:
"You may like yours tucked in - we prefer ours sticking out" and indeed
a hollow back was a sign of beauty in Yorubaland" (pp.145-146).
On page 164, Emuobo Ibru (nee Urhiafe) writes: "Two years after my
arrival at school the head gardener (Baba Ibeji left). He was replaced
by a rather officious young man. Asked why a job was not completed in
time, he answered: "Monu (man) to wa ni charge re o tii de!" (The man in
charge is not yet here). Until he left the school, the man's name became
"Monu"...I found Yoruba more precise than my native Urhobo. In my native
tongue, you "killed" a drinking glass rather than "broke it." The first
time I "killed" a plate as a washer at school was quite unnerving. What
a laugh the others had." Ms. Olufunmilayo Olagbaiye (1964 -1970) reports
that on one occasion, as a new student, she made the mistake of
referring to a Senior Fourth form girl, Funke Tobun as Sister Funke
Obun. "Obun means dirty. There was an uproar." (p. 180). Olagbaiye
promptly earned the reputation of being a trouble-maker.
The Making of Good Wives, Good Mothers...Leading Lights of Society is
full of scenes such as this. It is a book about innocence and the coming
of age. It tells the stories also of Tejumade Alakija (nee Aderemi),
Roseline Omotoso (nee Sonola-Soyinka), Bolanle Awe, Anike
Agbaje-Williams, Yetunde Omisade (nee Esan), Jadesola Akande (nee Esan),
Deborah Fasan (later Lady Jibowu), Mabel Segun, Oyinade Olurin (nee
Odutola), Ibukunade Sijuwola (nee Fagunwa), Ime Udom, all old girls of
St. Anne's who have since gone ahead to become leading lights of
society. It is amusing to read about their early beginnings.
Younger persons are bound to read this book and not just the present
students of St. Anne's but boys and girls in all schools, and those who
schooled during the same period it covers, and be touched by the drama
and the immediacy of the experiences. The story is told as far as 1973
when the Nigerian government decided to take over missionary schools. It
is regrettable that since then, the traditions established by these
schools have been destroyed.
For many families, St. Anne's became the family school, attended by one
generation after the other. Jadesola Akande and her sister, Yetunde
Omisesan attended the school. Their mother, Wuraola Esan, had also
schooled at the CMS Seminary in Lagos. Remi Fawole (later Dr. Remi
Sonaiya) has disclosed that four generations of her family passed
through St. Anne's. But now, those shiny moments, those reports of
devotion, sound like tales from the past. Sending a child through a
Nigerian school today has become a nightmare. Teachers are poorly paid,
the schools are poorly equipped, school inspectors have lost
concentration, standards have disappeared.
The students are not just poor, they are distracted, their parents do
not care. Teenage female pregnancy, adolescent sexuality, abortion, cult
activities, rape: these are the kind of stories the present generation
of students are constructing for their future children. That is if they
live long enough to tell their stories. The militarisation of our
society, and poverty and ethnicity have robbed schools of the kind of
warmth that Urhobo children shared with their Itsekiri colleagues at St.
Anne's. The year 1973 is only 25 years away, and yet it looks like a
century has passed. - Making of Good Wives... shows us how our schools
can be re-organised, it reminds us of lost ideals, and of the laughter
that died in our throats.
The St. Anne's school song states that - "Here in this place, where
others have built for us/We who are singing remember the past/Praising
our founders and those who in faithfulness/Built for the future
traditions to last" -(p. 201). Alas, future traditions are threatened.
Painfully so. Dr. Remi Sonaiya who visited the school in 1993, wrote to
Mrs. Bullock: "St. Anne's School is no longer what it used to be, and I
know that most old students of St. Anne's do not think of sending their
children there at all.'' Ah! Pity.
© 1998 Reuben Abati and The Guardian Newspapers (Lagos, Nigeria)