During my time at St. Margaret’s School for Girls, I always felt that all our teachers wanted the best for us. We needed them as lifeboats in the sometimes-confusing sea of intellectual knowledge.  

Yet, in my first year, there was one notable exception. 

Mr. Iloba. 

The mathematics teacher. 

Due to no fault of ours, my class had started on the wrong footing with him. The period for his class came just after integrated science, which we had in the science labs on the side of the school, which was at least a ten-minute walk from our classroom building. 

Our integrated science teacher was a nice, avuncular man Indian named Mr. Bartholomew Gupta, who had a distinct way of bobbing his head diagonally whenever he made a point. It was something some of the mischievous girls in the class would mimic when he was not looking. Mr. Gupta also tended to go off on a tangent while teaching. This made his class go on longer than it needed to. He liked to tell us personal anecdotes about his life as an Indian in Nigeria. He was particularly proud of the ten years he spent teaching in Wusasa, Zaria, where he had learned to speak fluent Hausa. 

On the first day of class, he deliberately called out the Hausa girls, identifiable by their names on the attendance list. He engaged them in a long one-sided conversation in Hausa which was more for his benefit than for anyone else’s. 

Mr. Gupta’s long-winded, off-topic narratives took us way beyond the time allotted for his class, and the mathematics teacher was waiting for us when we arrived in our classroom. 

Mr. Iloba carried himself with an arrogance that announced itself with the condescending look he gave each girl as we walked into the class. When we had all returned to the classroom and settled in our seats, a look of profound disgust was planted on his angular face. He took a handkerchief out of his trousers pocket and wiped the sweat from his high forehead, and then he cleared his throat and asked in that dreadfully hoarse yet well-modulated voice that we would all become familiar with and learn to loathe, “Who is your class captain?”

Ojingwa Ajuluchukwu had been appointed the class captain a few days earlier. She stood up enthusiastically, exuding the energy of someone eager to do what was needed of her with ecumenical diligence.

Mr. Iloba spoke slowly, in a low voice. He wanted to ensure that what he said was heard and understood.

“The next time any one of you is late for my class, you, the class captain, will get an automatic zero on any future test or assignment,” he paused and then continued, “I hope I have made myself clear.”

Until that moment, I and all the other first-formers had been riding on the wave of the high energy of being in a prestigious girls’ school where no limitations had been placed on us. For the most part, we were surrounded with positive energy from our strong awareness that we were walking down a path lit with the glowing examples of the bright luminaries who had passed through the school. 

So, what Mr. Iloba said next was not just unexpected. It baffled me. His voice rose with incredible intensity as he bellowed, “It is bad enough that I am being asked to teach some useless girls who are not good for anything than to be in the kitchen cooking or the backyard washing clothes. But you have the temerity to come late to my class.”

As he said the last few words, he slammed his open palm on the desk in front of him. It made a loud and violent noise, startling all of us. I can’t remember who was seated at that desk, but I could not imagine they would have enjoyed their proximity to Mr. Iloba at that moment. No one uttered a word. Finally, the cocoon of silence that embraced us was broken by Ojingwa, who started to respectfully respond, “We are sorry, sir, we had….” 

This only generated more of Mr. Iloba’s ire.

“Will you keep quiet,” his voice thundered over Ojingwa’s as he continued his tirade in a blaze of animosity, “Did I ask you for an explanation? You brainless nincompoop. You don’t even know how to behave. Just imagine. I am talking, and you are talking.” 

Ojingwa kept quiet and lowered herself into her seat. The beleaguered expression on her face was mirrored on all our faces. 

It was true that we had been late for his class, but surely that did not warrant this raw display of contemptuous anger. Moreover, the consequences he proposed for future lateness seemed excessive and unfair. I felt sorry for Ojingwa. The coveted position of class captain elevated you above your classmates by giving you certain privileges. You were the liaison between the teachers and the class – the one who got to distribute classroom materials, test papers, and things like that. And even though those responsibilities could technically include ensuring that classmates arrived for class on time, it seemed unjust for you to risk academic failure if the fifty girls in the class did not do what they were supposed to do. 

More than anything, his remarks had shattered an idyll that I had built on the fact that I thought everyone in the school community supported our collective dreams, whatever they may be. Knowing what to make of Mr. Iloba’s offensive remarks was hard. It was not typical of St. Margaret’s and the concentric circles of support that surrounded us. 

When his anger dissipated, a wicked smile formed on Mr. Iloba’s face. Then he did that thing which, through his words, we now knew he found despicable. He started to teach us girls. 

It is hard to say whether Mr. Iloba was a good teacher. The oppressive energy he released into the class on that first day deflated my zeal for learning. The one thing I got from that first class was the word “temerity,” which I may have heard before but which I made a mental note to look up once I got a chance to and try to use in one of my sentences. 

My tenuous grasp of numbers meant that thus far, I had relied on the kindness and patience of my previous mathematics teachers in primary school, who would walk me through problems until I could get them. I did not see Mr. Iloba doing this, and this realization was of apocalyptic significance. I contemplated a future that would see me stumbling into an abyss of poor grades and eventually failing so badly that I would be asked to leave the school because I was not up to scratch. The minuscule feeling of inadequacy that had lightly hovered over me when I had read my acceptance letter into St. Margaret’s now appeared grander and threatened to calcify into my bones. 

Mr. Iloba’s abrasive attitude was guaranteed to pose a pernicious problem. 

Our PE teacher had decided that rather than play games inside the school gym like we usually would, we would run a relay race in the large track and field area behind the gym. It was a hot sunny day, yet a cool gentle breeze caressed my skin as I joined the throng of girls who walked out of the gym and onto the track and field area. Two classes were merged for this PE period, so my friends Morire, Yeside, and I were together and, unsurprisingly, formed our relay team. I was not particularly good at sports but I knew how to run fast. 

We decided I would start with the other girls further down the oval-shaped track. I held the baton tightly in my right hand and listened ardently as the PE teacher shouted, “On your marks! Set! Go!” and blew her whistle. I prepared to propel myself forward. I was in the middle lane and flanked on either side by two other girls who dashed off immediately. But I found myself rooted to the spot. 

For some reason, I could not move. No matter how hard I tried, I could not bring myself to move forward. I felt my feet were encased in cement and nailed to the ground. I stretched and wriggled, trying to move forward without success. By this time, everyone in the class was privy to what was happening with me, and my classmates and friends surrounded me. I felt humiliation sear and simmer through me. 

“Why aren’t you moving?” someone asked impatiently.

“I don’t know,” I responded helplessly.

“Maybe you are not trying hard enough,” another voice said in a condescending tone.

I tried to move again, but I could not. Finally, I found myself on the verge of tears. The PE teacher pushed through the crowd of girls surrounding me and demanded, “What do you think you are doing?”

I wanted to explain my dilemma to her, but suddenly, I lost my speaking ability. I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. I started to gesticulate in exasperation. The PE teacher was flummoxed as a frown of frustration formed on her face. All my classmates began to laugh at me, even my friends. 

And to further exacerbate my abasement, Mr. Iloba appeared on the track gnawing on an ear of corn. His teeth were as sharp as incisors. His eyes were piercing and unkind as he declared, “What do you expect from someone like that? She is nothing but a brainless nincompoop.” Everyone laughed even more while I looked down at my feet in exasperation. I did not know what to do. I had lost my voice and ability to move and was utterly helpless.

On television shows or in the movies, when a character wakes up from a bad dream, someone like a parent, a sibling, or a friend has shaken them awake with a concerned look and comforting words. Unfortunately, I did not have that benefit, as I woke up from the nightmare. The gossamer fabric of the mosquito net over my bed had caught the incandescent glow of the mellow moonlight that shone through the window of my ordinarily dark dorm room. The room was filled with an ominous silence that gave me a sense of contentment as I sat in my bed. My lips were dry, and my eyes were wet with tears that had accompanied me from my bad dream into the real world. I was relieved that I had not woken any dorm mates up and was held captive by my thoughts.

This was the second night in a row that I had had a bad dream, and like the previous night, I was reminded of something that my nanny, Adjoa, had once told me. “Wami, having a dream is like looking in a mirror. You see the opposite of what is there.”

The memory of Adjoa’s counsel buoyed my spirit into believing that perhaps I should interpret the feeling of helplessness that I had felt in the dream as one of empowerment. 

Still, I knew why I was having these bad dreams. 

I failed my first homework assignment in Mr. Iloba’s class. I had taken him seriously when he had said he would take marks off for lateness. Still, I did not think he would take points off for mundane oversights like a failure to include a date at the top of the answer sheet or to follow the school convention of putting your last name before your first name. These had counted against me, shattering my confidence into tiny pieces. I had worked hard on that assignment and put in the extra effort. But that had not counted for much. 

On the day we got our assignments back, we rushed to class from the integrated science laboratory. I was relieved to be among those who returned to class before Mr. Iloba arrived, but there were a few stragglers, like the ones who had decided to stop at the lavatory before returning to the classroom. Unfortunately, these girls arrived just as Mr. Iloba was taking attendance, and he marked them as absent and took five points off their assignment for missing class even though they were right there. And, of course, the cruelest outcome of this was that Ojingwa, our class captain, got an automatic zero. Mr. Iloba did not even bother to hand her back her paper. 

It was hard to understand how someone who had decided to pursue the noble teaching profession could be so determined to make students fail. None of our other teachers was this unreasonable. Mr. Iloba seemed to derive some warped pleasure in making us miserable. Although Ojingwa took her predicament well, some of the other girls in the class were inconsolable as they wept openly, pleading with Mr. Iloba to be merciful. Eno Akpan, the most brilliant girl in our class, had done everything right and miraculously got a ten out of ten on the assignment. This was now reduced to a five out of ten because she had answered the call of nature by going to the lavatory before coming to class. I wondered then if Mr. Iloba would have been satisfied if she had urinated on herself simply because she did not want to be late for his class and lose marks for doing so.

It was almost inhumane to watch Mr. Iloba continue to teach the class with the girls around him in various states of distress. There was something sinister about how he offered no words of comfort or a way out. So what was the lesson to be learned here? Do what Mr. Iloba wanted even at risk to yourself or prepare to endure academic annihilation?

It turned out that ours was not the only class where Mr. Iloba wielded his authority with an irrational fervor. Before long, the entire first form was failing at mathematics. It was not because of anything we were doing wrong but because we were not living up to Mr. Iloba’s expectations. And if his actions were not enough to persecute us, there were the horrible remarks he made about the inevitability of our role as subservient housewives and his constant affirmation that we were brainless.

It happened week after week to the point where a nameless fear came to shroud the entire cohort of first formers. What surprised many of us was that the other teachers, who could do something about this, did not take any complaints against Mr. Iloba seriously. Instead, our discontentment was met with a chorus of similar refrains, “You girls need to be more flexible. Not all teachers are alike.” “Study him and do what he wants.” As if we were the ones deliberately punishing ourselves. Even the seniors who were ahead of us parroted similar words. Perhaps they considered our aggravations too spurious to be taken seriously. Our situation was further complicated because Mr. Iloba was new to the school. No one had had to deal with him before, and no one knew just how cruel he could be. 

There is something empowering that accompanies the realization that one one may be too young to have any power but one does not require an abundance of power to resolve an extreme injustice. So it did not take us long to mobilize ourselves and begin to see how we would take matters into our own hands. 

Girls who did not ordinarily speak to one another were now finding solidarity in the complexity of our shared issue. We were all being tormented by Mr. Iloba and most of us found comfort in sharing our pain. But there was another kind of energy that was being generated from this ordeal. 

One evening, on my way back from prep, I fell in step with a couple of first formers walking back to the boarding house area. We had traded the formality of our school uniforms for the casualness of our house wears, and our rubber slippers slip-slapped on the asphalt road that led to the boarding house area.  A large, big-boned girl with a gravelly voice was chatting with a few other girls. Her eyes darted from side to side as she spoke, and I caught the tail end of a conversation when she announced that her mother worked for the Ministry of Education, “I am going to tell her, and she can have them deal with him.” No one responded. We all continued to walk in silence. Finally, just as we approached the buildings that housed our dormitories, a meek first former replied softly, “I don’t know if it is a good idea to report him to the Ministry. Besides, do we want him to lose his job or change his ways? He might have a family to feed.” She had picked her words carefully as if she was testing them for their ripeness to exit her mouth. The girl who had proposed the idea barked aggressively, “Who cares if he has a family or not? “Does he care about us when he is doing what he is doing?” She lunged at the girl who had disagreed with her, but for the intervention of the other girls in our midst, she might have physically attacked her. 

I watched this scene unfold in amazement. Mr. Iloba was a potent poison, and we needed to find an antidote sooner rather than later.

I do not remember whose idea it was for us to carry out a silent treatment for Mr. Iloba. However, I know that it came from a place where we did not have many other options available, so that became the autocatalytic plan. It was a dignified way to combat Mr. Iloba’s desire for us to become shrinking violets in the face of his antediluvian remarks about our future and his harsh, illogical behavior.

It was a simple yet profound plan. We would not speak in his class. We would remain silent. It was not as if we had much to lose. A month into the first term and the entire first form was failing math, and Mr. Iloba seemed to hunger for our failure as one hungered for bread. We were also aware of something that one of my classmates articulately pointed out, “It is not as if he would go into a classroom full of boys and tell them that they are all going to become househusbands one day.” 

So, we all remained silent the next time Mr. Iloba came into our classroom. He read out the first name on the attendance sheet, and when he did not receive a response, he marked that person absent. He seemed to think this was business as usual, and nothing prepared him for what lay ahead. 

He was halfway through the last names that began with the letter A when he reached Ojingwa Ajuluchukwu’s name. All the girls that he had called so far were in the class, but he did not care to notice. He looked up from the attendance sheet he was holding as he called out Ojingwa’s name. She did not respond. 

“Ajuluchukwu, did you not hear me call your name?” his gruff, unpleasant voice thundered through the classroom.

Ojingwa sat with her shoulders high, looking straight ahead as if she had been caught in a deep ecclesiastical spell. Mr. Iloba walked up to her with a belligerent force, and for a moment, it appeared as if he was going to strike her, given the weight of his anger.

A few years before, one of the teachers had used a long cane to beat one of the students for some minor recalcitrance. The girl had collapsed and fallen into a coma because of the severity of the beating. It was all over the national news and threatened to besmirch the school’s stellar reputation. However, the girl eventually recovered, and a panel of parents and teachers that was set up to investigate the situation found that her punishment was too cruel compared to her misbehavior. Since then, a rule was put in place at St. Margaret’s that forbade the teachers from laying a finger on students. This rule most especially applies to male teachers. 

Mr. Iloba knew this. He bent over and demanded to a taciturn Ojingwa, “I am talking to you. Will you look at me?” 

She remained silent and looked straight ahead; he could not do anything but yell at the top of his voice. The more she remained quiet, the louder he became. Finally, he straightened up, narrowed his eyes, and looked around the classroom. Every girl in the class had the same posture as Ojingwa. Our eyes glowed with purposeful energy and firm determination. I sat extremely still, my heart beating so fast and loud that I could hear its throb radiate in my ears.

Mr. Iloba called out another girl’s name in the class, but no one answered. For several seconds, the entire classroom was shrouded in an eerie silence. 

“What is going on here?” Mr. Iloba asked, his voice a frothy confection of bewilderment and anger. 

Like a volcano of entitlement, Mr. Iloba erupted with a massive rage further intensified by our refusal to recognize that he was speaking with us. He huffed and puffed, but nothing that he said would sway us. We had grown accustomed to his vile ways, and our collective willpower had inoculated us from his ability to hurt our feelings. 

At one point, I was concerned that the noise he was making might alert the teachers from the other class next door to ours, and then I remembered that they were all in the art room and that class was empty. Some part of me felt sorry for Mr. Iloba. He had probably never found himself in this position before and was even more enraged at us for, and to borrow his words here, having the temerity to stand up to him in such a gracious and dignified way. Instead, he found himself helpless to do anything but walk out of the classroom, which he did, but not before calling us a “bunch of useless girls.”

As soon as he stepped out of the classroom, a spontaneous outburst of applause rang. Through the classroom window, we could see where Mr. Iloba stood with his jaw slackened and a look of disbelief. 

The silent treatment which was triggered in our class spread like little conflagrations throughout the entire first form. Every first form class Mr. Iloba taught that week gave him the silent treatment. It was not long before news of our collective civil disobedience had reached the school authorities. 

Mrs. Durojaiye, the vice-principal of academics, was designated to handle the situation. At first, she had come to us raging and pontificating about how we should be ashamed of ourselves for being insubordinate. Then, she threatened us with a barrel load of punishments that would have been impossible to implement since it would have ground the teaching plan for the entire first form to a halt. 

Then, the school administration took a step back and re-examined the situation. It became clear that the silent treatment carried out by the first formers had one common denominator: Mr. Iloba. How could only one teacher receive such benign hostility from an entire form when the rest of the teachers seemed to be okay with the same group of girls? Our action had now stripped the privilege of ignorance from those in the school community who had been blithely unaffected by our descriptions of Mr. Iloba’s cruel behavior. Whispers became louder as other teachers remembered the plaintive assertions of the first formers who had come to them when this had first started. There was an abundance of shame as many realized that in ignoring this, they had inadvertently offered tacit approval of the abuse we had to endure. However, there was also the critical reality that the school had a reputation to uphold, and if news of this got out, it would be damaging. 

Suddenly, inaction transmogrified into a profusion of action. Teachers were dispatched to counsel the first formers. Little forums were organized to get a better understanding of what the problem was. All of us were unanimous in our rejection of Mr. Iloba. Not one single first former wanted him as a math teacher. 

A special assembly was called for the entire school. While the issue of the silent treatment was not directly addressed, our principal, Mrs. Ben Sofola, reminded the whole school community that the school existed to nurture future women leaders. She told all those gathered that her six years as a student at St. Margaret’s had changed her life tremendously. She ended by stating, “Our community is a supportive one. One in which we all support each other to attain our goals. And this applies to everyone, whether you are a teacher, a parent, a prefect, a senior or a junior,” she paused before she said the next part of her speech, “And if you feel you are unable to be part of that, then it will make sense for you to leave the community.”

A hush fell over the entire hall, and then Mrs. Ben Sofola called on the whole school community to sing the rousing school song, which included the words, 

Hand on the beacon, with a selfless heart

It is what unites our tireless hopes and dreams,

Building an unbreakable alliance that will last forever.

We go onward and look back only to learn;

From the lessons of the past

Knowing that we are creating a better future.

Shortly after, the first form was assigned to a new mathematics teacher. Mrs. Aremu was unobtrusively competent and infinitely patient. She reinvigorated our zeal for learning numbers and figures and always entered the classroom with a radiant smile. Her first action was to erase the academic records that we had received from Mr. Iloba and start on a clean slate. Even though it meant we had to double down on our work to catch up properly, we did not complain because we knew we were being treated fairly. 

Mr. Iloba was reassigned to teach a handful of sixth-form classes, but apparently, that did not work out for him because he left the school shortly after that. 

Years later, a few weeks after I had graduated from St. Margaret’s, I had gone to have my hair braided at a place someone had recommended in Surulere. I met another customer, a genial young girl probably a couple of years older than me. She told me that she lived in Port Harcourt and was visiting family in Lagos. When she heard that I had attended St. Margaret’s, she excitedly shared with me that the pastor of her church was a former teacher at the school. 

“He is always saying that God arrested him, and he gave his life to Christ when he was teaching at St. Margaret’s School in Lagos, and he decided to go and set up his own church,” she chirped delightedly. 

She reached into her bag and brought a church flyer announcing an upcoming revival program. When she handed it to me, I looked at Mr. Iloba’s face, radiantly beaming at me from the glossy page.

I smiled inwardly and returned the flyer to her, saying, “I don’t recognize him. He must have been there before my time.”

Later that day, and for years to come, in remembering that encounter, I would always laugh at the fact that Mr. Iloba’s church was named Divine Silence in Christ International Ministries.