When The Bugger Was Bugged

There was a soft-sell College Magazine in those days called the �College Gossip'. This was a magazine specially published to checkmate students who generally misbehaved or exhibited acts of misdemeanour or, in GCI colloquial parlance, "Ibara". Now "ibara" was the shortened form of "ibara eni je and was aptly applied to any act of misbehaviour that was deemed uncivilised or against the norms of the society and ethos of the school. The interesting thing was that this magazine was supposed to be circulated strictly locally, i.e. only within GCI, but every student knew that as soon as the publication came out, you would find the magazine in some of the well known Girls Schools like St Anne's School, Yejide Girls Grammar School, both in Molete, St Theresa's College in Oke-Ado, St Louis in Mokola, Our Lady of Apostles (O.L.A.) in Odo-Ona, not to talk of Queen's School beside us in Apata Ganga, before we saw it ourselves. Many boys had sisters or girlfriends in one or the other of those girls' schools. For this reason boys tried hard to make sure that any act of "Ibara" was either kept from public view or suppressed so it did not make it to the gossip magazine. This magazine was therefore pretty effective in checking bad behaviour or the excesses of the well known rascals in the school. Also most boys tended to befriend members of the editorial board so that they could influence them to suppress any stories that might make headlines, even if they had messed up and also if they were interested in putting somebody else on the spot.

People who had stories written about them or who were the subject of a cartoon strip were said to have been "bugged". Of course, it was painful to be bugged, as the story made rounds for the whole term or more, and could be the source of a nickname. "BB" was the editor this particular year, while I was a member of the editorial board and more importantly the cartoonist. I wielded some kind of power at this period and people tended to avoid misbehaving around me, especially after I had cartooned classmate, who was in the same room with me.

It happened that I felt the editor had committed an act of "Ibara" that would make an interesting read for our target readers but how would you put this in a magazine that had to be edited by him. So before the editorial board meeting 1 had told some members that we were going to bug the editor and they agreed. At the meeting we allowed the editor to preside over the selection of the articles and cartoons that would be published and 1, with another member, took them to the school's main office, where the articles were typed, the cartoons transferred to stencils before being cyclostyled.

Usually when the magazine came out (don't remember now whether Thursday of Friday) there was a flurry of activities as boys ran helter-skelter all over the compound making fun of those who had been bugged. You can now imagine the outburst when boys found out that the editor himself had been bugged. This was tantamount to a coup de tat and of course there was no denying the fact that the editor knew the source because the said article was accompanied by a cartoon which could only have been drawn by me. How l escaped being lynched by this guy was a mystery. I guess if the situation were to repeat itself, I wouldn't try it again, ever.

Source: Oshinyimika John