Who Stole My Milk?

Anyone who went to Boarding school in Nigeria will tell you how much fun it was. Thats after they have forgotten the hell they went through as junior students. FGC Kaduna was no different, a lot of things happened there and you could never stop telling stories about your experiences.

Theft was always a problems at my school. Whenever a thief was caught, it was swift justice. People just produced their belts, make you leap frog until your knees give out. Anyhow the problem was always when the thief was your classmate especially as a Senior. One time, the headboy was wrongly accused of Stealing someone's radio (it was a big deal then). They beat him up beyond recognition and I have never seen a swollen human head till that day. Needless to say, the school put an end to swift justice as we knew it then.

Thats when students resorted to Atangwari. You see, Atangwari was a native doctor/witchdoctor in Malali Village which was the area bodering FGCK. Students figured that if they could not go the direct way, they would go indirectly via Atangwari.

So Tope's Provisions got stolen one school day, actually during exam period. I think I had English Paper 1 that day. Tope was our house captain and who would dare steal from the house captain himself. They shut down the whole dorm that afternoon and began a box to box search of JSS1 to SSS1 students (as if the idiot who stole it would keep it in his box) To Tope, he did not really care about his garri (garri-G2SO4 qualifies as provision) that was stolen but his NIDO (milk)was important to him and woe betide the thief.

Anyway, Tope and two other classmates went to Malali to see Atangwari. Back in the dorm, we were all anxious to know who Atangwari exposed as the thief. Tope and his men came back almost two hours later with a smile of vengeance on their faces.

"Omo wetin e talk"
"We go catch am tomorrow"
"Why tomorrow, why una no fit go catch am now"
"Atangwari said, he who stole my milk shall get up in the exam hall while he is on question 25" "huh?????"


Apparently, Atangwari had concocted something that would make the guy stang up in the middle of his exam, how he came about question 25 is beyond me but I suppose 25 is the halfway mark in the exam since we normally had 50 questions on our multiple choice exams.

The physics exam started at 8am. Everyone was excited. You could hear the teachers wondering why the usually bored students were hyped up about physics. Even Wilfred was on top of the world. He had slept through a whole term of physics and here he was excited. The teachers had a right to be surprised. Meanwhile, you could hear students whispering "Atangwari said...." It became a slogan.

"Now that I have read out the instructions, I just want to say one thing, You may look up for inspiration, you may look down in desperation, but you may not look sideways for information, you may pick your pencils and start." Invigilators were such a pain.

The whole hall was quite, not a peep from anyone. You could see eyes shifting left and right but it was not to steal answers from anyone. Not long into the Exam, Aminu Yaro stood up. Till today, we are not quite sure what number he was on but he was nonetheless labeled guilty. His standing most probably halted the exam cos as soon as he did, the whole hall was abuzz.

"What is happening?" an invigilator asked. "Ehn, Atangwari said..."
"Ata who???"


The guy kept quite. Tope stood up and proceeded to explain to the invigilator what this was all about. Meanwhile, the exam had stopped. They ended up in the principals office, the physics paper was resheduled and Atangwari was summoned (he probably thot he was getting paid). The principal asked for the logic behind his conclusion. If you ask me, that was stupid of our principal. How can you ask a witchdoctor for logic. Anyway, he berated Atangwari, Tope and the rest of our classmates and he banned us from going to Atangwari to solve any of our problems.

"Atangwari said......!!!!!!!!"

Keep up the faith.