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All Posts || SUBJECT :: Campus Rumpus Part 1

INTRODUCTION

When Pyrates, the first student cult group was founded in 1952 at the then University College, Ibadan by professors Wale Soyinka, Muyiwa Awe, Frank Aig-lmoukhuede, Ben Egbuchelam, Pius Olegbe, Nathaniel Oyelola and the late Ralph Opara, it was not without a purpose; but unleashing terror on fellow students was never a part of it.
       Pyrates was formed in the style and structure of fraternities in the American College System. But while they are called fraternities in the U.S., they answer to confraternities in Nigeria. Fraternities are communities of male students who come together to promote common social and intellectual interests, and are identified by, amongst other things, the use of identification symbols and colours. The first fraternity in the U.S was the Phi Beta Kappa, founded in 1776 at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg. Its birth was a response to a problem. The regimented curriculum of early American college restricted discussions on certain issues, and five students of William and Mary College found this unacceptable. With the American Revolution ravaging the country, they believed for a new and better nation to emerge from the war, strong cultural and political institutions must equally emerge, and that members of the intelligentsia ought to discuss and debate that. And so they would meet in secret and discuss and debate with freedom any topic they chose, no matter how controversial. They engaged in philosophical debates, poetry, fiction as well as political discussions. They also provided mentorship and leadership examples to members and served as springboards for social and justice movements. This was why, for instance, subsequent fraternity like the Alpha Phi Alpha produced activists like Marin Luther King Jr., WEB Du Bois, Fredrick Douglas etc. Today, Phi Beta Kappa that began as a secret debating society in the midst of war has grown to become the most prestigious honour society known for its value that fosters scientific inquiry, liberty of conscience, critical thinking and creative endeavour. And these were the ideals the Pyrates had sought to implant in the Nigerian University System.  
      At birth, Pyrates, like its U.S counterpart, had academic excellence, social justice and the freedom to be culturally Nigerian embedded in the core of its activities. And this was why the seven that founded it were some of the finest minds the university, and by extension, Nigeria could boast of. Like Phi Beta Kappa, the emergence of Pyrates was a response to a problem within the university community and the country at large. The University Authority had engaged in elitist policies that made life difficult for the Nigerian student and university education inaccessible to the average Nigerian. Pyrates was established to fight this challenge. Pursuing justice and fairness on the principles of egalitarianism and democracy, Pyrates spoke truth to power and, to a large extent, restored sanity to the Nigerian educational system. Yet there was no concern about the safety of life on campus until in 1971, when, in a confrontation with the University Authority, Kunle Adepeju became the first student to lose his life to police bullet. 
       Then came 1972 when the Buccaneer Confraternity leapt onto the stage and changed things. Unlike Phi Beta Kappa, whose future members had stayed faithful to its core values and had gone on to blossom in noble ideals, the Pyrates did not enjoy that loyalty and continuity from its future members. And in 1972, Dr. Bolaji Carew, having been expelled by Pyrates, founded the Buccaneer Confraternity and soon, splinter groups began to emerge. Their emergence and constant fights for superiority soon redefined the objectives and operations of confraternities in our universities, and violence, cult wars, banditry and racketeering became a uniform characteristic of confraternities in Nigerian universities. 
One factor that facilitated the radicalization of confraternities was the political conditions of the 70s, 80s and 90s. The Military regimes of those periods and their civilian collaborators had found the confraternity members to be cheap and willing political tools to use against personal and state enemies. From there, the smallest value confraternities had for human life tumbled down South, and it was at this point that the public came to know them as secret societies or cult groups. 
      These groups now organize themselves in gangster-like fashion with innocent students as primary target of their evil intentions. Presently, the menace of cultism has assumed a frightening dimension. It's no longer a university affair; polytechnics, colleges of Education and even secondary schools are almost practically turned into death traps by cultists! Students are maimed, hacked down in broad day light or scared away from school by cultists with school authorities watching helplessly. It's so sad to observe that this has gotten to a point where situations such as one student cutting off the head of another no longer constitute an emergency, obviously due to the increasing frequency of occurrence, strengthening the forces of evil which have continued to unleash terror on staff and students and threatening the very foundations of our educational system. No one can correctly count the number of academically sound minds who've directly or indirectly met their untimely death at the hands of blood-thirsty cultists.
One such victim was my friend, Nenyil, a young man of intellectual promise; a first class candidate in his academically-challenging department; and the only surviving male child of his aged parent, who'd built their hope of a better tomorrow around his promising academic performance. It was therefore, with shame and disbelief that they received the news of his expulsion from the university in his final year for cultism. I visited him months after his expulsion and met him a pitiable sight; his mother a vegetable, having suffered a stroke, possibly out of shock and shame. His own side of the story, by my understanding, established him a cultist, but on the excuse that deception it was that successfully played upon his innocence as a fresh undergraduate. 
      Two weeks after my visit, a mail from his elder sister reached me in school: Nenyil could not manage the shame, pain and disappointment of a shattered dream and had committed suicide by hanging himself two days after my visit. It's a piece of news I may never forget in my life, and each time memories of his living days come to consciousness, I cry, not just for Nenyil... not just for his aged parents who immediately lost hope in life...not just for the helpless Nigerian student whose life has been shackled to cultism, but for a beloved country that may never have a future until it offers more than lip service to the fight against the evil that is cultism.
      This is meant to give you the background to the novel so that you can appreciate the experience that inspired the writing of 'Campus Rumpus'. Therefore, 'Campus Rumpus' is fiction based on the reality in our campuses, and I have tried to make the factual parts of this story as correct as I can. Having stressed that, I wish to emphasize that the names, characters and locations in this story are purely fictional.
      See you on Friday for  PART 2--THE BEGINNING OF THE REAL DEAL. CHEERS!
	                                                          JEFFREY WANDARA
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