My Dear Teacher, Anna Okojevoh, @ 70 By Sunny Awhefeada

Eni Grammar School, Evwreni, remains for many of us, who schooled there in the 1980s, one of the best secondary schools in Nigeria in terms of the quality of teachers, teaching and learning at the time of our sojourn there. Located at the far end of Evwreni, the school was just three years old when my class was admitted in 1983. Its setting at that time was primordial having been tucked into a space in the dense rain forest which was thick and perennially lush green. As the third set, we ranked among the pioneers and our hands felled trees of different species and sizes. Far removed from the community, and surrounded by tall trees with heavy leafy boughs that served as natural umbrellas, the school’s ambience was so serene and quiet it could have passed for a resort. The classrooms were uncompleted and almost bare while the floor was sandy. The windows were wide with neither lintels nor coverings. The school had a field that was always neatly cut and attractive like a premier league venue due to our twice in a week labour hours. We imbibed an eco-friendly practice that made the school environment looked beautiful. Lateness to school was rare and the few that did tasted the biting harshness of the teachers’ cane. The students, lads and lasses, had a great sense of self-worth and discipline. No junior ever called a senior by name no matter how familiar. That was the first lesson I learnt on my first day at school. I was out during break when a friend I knew in primary school, just a year my senior, but much smaller, called out to me saying “run down here!” I walked towards him not knowing that I had disobeyed a command, and to make matters worse I called him by his name. He instructed me to walk back and run down and then jump through a window without touching the lintel. Still not knowing what was in the offing, I told him only thieves jump through windows. I was still talking when a bigger boy gave me the most painful knock I ever had on my head. It was then I realized that I was in “hot soup” as they said in those days. My lot was to cry and obey! Thus I was toughened on my first day at school. From what we gathered, that was not just the character of Eni Grammar School, but the vogue in all secondary schools in the old Bendel State.

Eni Grammar School gave us great knowledge and discipline, the kind that provided a lifelong guide. The school’s motto was “only the best is good enough”. And we had great teachers who taught and left their imprints in our young souls. Those teachers were knowledgeable in a sublime way and were also highly disciplined. They saw teaching as a calling that demanded passion and commitment. They toiled to burnish us and despite the rascality that came with adolescence, they ensured that we were put on the path of rectitude. One of those great teachers, Ms. Anna Okojevoh, turned seventy, the biblical three score and ten a few days ago! And knowing what teachers go through in retirement and the depressing socio-economic condition in which we are trapped, it was therapeutic for me to see her danced with her children and grandchildren during a surprise birthday party they put together for her last Sunday. Although, none of her old students was invited, ubiquitous Facebook brought the event to me in motion pictures. The video’s sequence depicted her alighting from a silver coloured saloon car and screaming “see my children”. The surprise element worked. Other relations and friends showed up from their hiding corners and began singing “happy birthday to you…”, hugs and tears of joy followed and then dance, dance, dance…!!! Another scene showed her carrying her grandchildren one after the other. She was sprightly and radiated joy, the kind of joy that is capable of making her live beyond one hundred years!

Ms. Anna Okojevoh taught my class and generations of students Bible Knowledge which we called BK. If my memory served me right, she joined the school when I was in Class Two and didn’t teach my class until the next year. She was young, comely and very light in complexion. Uniquely calm and deliberate, she was always neatly dressed and punctual to school. She taught BK in a manner that made it looked like a hybrid of history and literature. She reeled out names of biblical characters, incidents, places and dates and offered rich interpretative insights that endowed our young minds with creative and critical thinking capacities. Her diligence paid off when some of us had A1 and A2 in BK in the young school. The irony of that feat was that the A1 was clinched by a chap whose mother was a priestess of Igbe (an Urhobo traditional mode of worship) and who never went to church at that time! Ms. Okojevoh did the miracle! She was a great counselor who corrected and influenced students with words. She held the cane occasionally, but I can’t remember a single instance when she flogged a student despite the antics of the rascally boys among us. She would rather talk sense into erring students with examples which abide in good and bad.

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I lost contact with her after leaving secondary school and going in pursuit of tertiary education in the bustling city of Benin and later sprawling Ibadan, J. P. Clark’s abode of “seven hills”. Those years, after Eni Grammar School, were those of quest, self-discovery and academic affirmation that what Ms. Okojevoh and her colleagues taught us could make us stand the test of time and compete with our mates and we did. As I write, my class alone has given the world formidable men and women not to talk about the other generations of students she taught. I ran into her at a ceremony in a community near Ughelli around 2004. She was very delighted to know that I had become university don! I was so excited seeing her and we exchanged phone numbers. She was her usual warm self and full of advice for a young man. A year or two later, I counted it a privilege when she called me over an admission issue for two of her children. It was good payback time. Knowing that Ms. Okojevoh has reached the seventh floor in good health and happiness enlivened me and it took me back to the years she taught us at Eni Grammar School. As things are, those years were beautiful and reinforced with beautiful memories that have become enduring. Ms. Okojevoh remains a protagonist of the drama of bliss which that era turned out to be. And we continue to wistfully look back to that era smiling and drawing strength. In view of the sacrifice she and our other teachers made to make us turn out to be what we are today, they deserve gold medals for garlands and should be clothed with apparels of honour. But how did Nigeria treat them? Nigeria left them with nothing!

But those of us whom they taught will forever carry them in our hearts and appreciate them and in different ways redeem our mountainous indebtedness to them. I join Ms. Okojevoh and her family and friends in counting her blessings at seventy. God has been kind to her and I join her in thanking God! We pray for her to live much longer in good health and happiness and surrounded by love. Although, we had no intimation of the birthday celebration at seventy, we hope to be with her when she turns eighty, ninety and hundred and join her in singing, “if I dey count all the tins wey God dey do for my life….number one, number two, number three, number four, number five….plenty, plenty ooo,,,eke se ke rai reee uncountable….”.

Happy birthday Ma, my dear teacher! Miguooo…..!!!