If you ever attended a boys only school then you will resonate with this short story. Testing your fighting prowess is never in short supply. Either between classmates, inter class or crossing territory to another year - inter-year. Aquinas college. Every now and then there must be a fight of the day or the week. Dont get me wrong, we were taught morals and encouraged to report all wrongdoing. But as boys, some are better settled with our fist.
Ifeoluwa balogun was a proud owner of a nice farm like Naboth and we all envied the praise showered on him by the Agric master. The farm is right beside the uncompleted library. Musa Gbenga, whose father shared the same history as Ifeoluwa‘s dad as proud bankers in the defunct National bank of old, had his ridge right beside Ifeoluwa, followed by Ifedayo “lebelebe“ Ojo and Damilola Posho Oni, then Ogunlusi and Ogunkorode, directly opposite to Muyiwa Adeliyi and myself. Taiwo Omilabu was a couple of ridges away. On Ifeoluwa’s ridge were beautifully sprouting tomatoes and groundnut.
We were all on the farm during Agric practicals but the teacher would did not show up. While chatting away, we didn’t notice the intruders who ended up stepping on one of the beautiful ridges we had made.
Boom boom, Omilabu rose to the challenge against the leader of this intruding gang from a senior class(If i recall properly). He said a few things arrogantly and then it happened!! Bang bang bang, Omilabu was on top of him on the ground, i think he wasn’t expecting Omilabu’s tactics and lost his footing; crashing near Ifeoluwa Balogun’s beautiful orchard. By the time we would realise it was a fight, omilabu had started burying the head of the senior in Ifeoluwas ridge 😱 and in a twinkle of an eye, the man had been buried up to his nose with Ifeoluwa’s fresh green tomatoe stems going up in flame of consumption 😂.
Omilabus was feeding the guy with the tomatoes whlist burying his head in the ridge. Peace makers were trampling all over the place to separate them, Musa was in shock 😳 and lfeoluwa kept shouting my ridge, my tomatoes 🤦🏾♂️. People like me cheered🙎🏾♂️, damilola was afraid murder was about to be committed 🙅🏾♂️. 😂
By the time the peace keeping force was able to separate the gladiators, crops and farm worth hundreds of naira in 1989 currency were already destroyed. Ifeoluwa kept lamenting his orchard destruction. Damilola had to caution him that the farm cannot be more important than human life.
Omilabu sure scored a technical knockout over his opponent and was declared winner, but the vanquished wil not accept. It was a thorough humiliatiin for him and he won’t let go. He arranged an after the school onslaught with his gang at Aburi on the way home that afternoon. But wisdom prevailed. Omilabu took to prostration to atone for the victory he had in the morning but he lived to tell us the story the next day.
I have been wondering what the gang would have done to him should the prostration sense had not come to him. 34years on and i still cannot but salute the master of local kick boxing. Omilabu Taiwo.
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