HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SON
Michael Femi Ewetuga
The cold November weather was biting really hard, it was impossible to sleep without
covering yourself with two sheets and even then you still feel the cold, especially early
in the morning. All the other students had vacated, on campus were just the law and
medical students taking their second semester examinations; I was a member of the
first group.
The examination went well, I was sure I did pretty well in the courses except Law of
Evidence, I wasn’t sure I was going to pass the course. It was time to get the result
and we were back on campus. There was rumor that the results were going to be
released the following evening. We were at the faculty of law the following evening
awaiting the results but they were not released nor were they released the following
day.
My friends and I soon pushed the results to the back of our minds and decided to
make a bad situation a little bit better; the tension was getting to a feverish stage. We
would gather in one of the rooms and play all sorts of board games and cards. There
was a particular cassette of one of the fuji musicians that a friend of mine LEKAN
AKINTOLA loved to play and which we played year before when Law of Contract was
our nemesis, I particularly liked it and won’t let anyone play anything else. Sports hall,
which was one of the most populated halls, was like ghost town.
Eventually, just when we thought something must have gone wrong with the grading
system or the graders or the answers, guys rushed into the hall from God knows
where and were shouting “the results have been released”. This was like seven in the
evening. We rushed to the Law faculty, it was dark and you could not see the board
even if your eyes were infra red, seas of head ahead of us. Fortunately some people
who got there before us had gone to get candles and it was a thug of war as people
grabbed the candles to check the results.
If you went to Ife you will understand the tension that examination results generates
especially that of Faculty of Law. In my second year, the course that dropped most of
the students in their quests to gain promotions was the law of contract. There was
rumor that the questions had leaked and so they had to go back and print another set
of questions. We waited for more than an hour beyond the time set for the examination
before the questions were brought into the examination halls and subsequent
distribution to students. The question papers were warm on contact giving credence to
the fact that they just came out of press.
The law of evidence was suspected and actually became the course to fear in part 3.
The questions did not leak but evidence was so technical you had to pay close
attention to understand it. Even in practice, I have seen many lawyers lose cases
because of their poor understanding and handling of evidence rules, and not
surprisingly, even judges find it difficult to rule on questions of law involving Evidence,
many decisions get overturned because of error of judgment on evidential issues.
Nwabueze tried his best in his text book to make students understand the rudiments of
evidence and our Evidence lecturer, Mrs. Boparie, hopefully that is the spelling of her
name, an Indian, tried her best to make us understand it but evidence is just by nature
difficult at least for me. On this basis I was not expecting a favorable result from
evidence.
Examination results were never detailed on the board; rather, the names of successful
students were displayed, if yours was not there then of course you failed the
examination. I couldn’t see my name at first but then one of my friends said he saw it, I
took a closer look and there it was, I was so overjoyed and somehow believed God did
it so I said when I have my first child, male or female, his/her name will be Oluwaseyi
which means God did this.
On the 12th of March 1998, it was a Thursday, I was going to court, fortunately my mom
came over and that was a blessing in disguise because my son, unknown to us, was
on his way. His mom started acting funny that morning but I was comfortable leaving
her with my mom on my way to Olounibe’s court at Ikeja, I believe it was court 8 maybe
6. The judge was retiring and was determined to conclude as many cases as he could
on his cause list. Mine was adjourned from day to day but the opposing counsel was
trying all the tricks in the books and outside them to make sure the case didn’t get
concluded by that judge, all sort of frivolous applications were brought to frustrate the
case including the mother of them all, that the judge was biased. The lawyer from the
other side’s chambers Kayode Oseni later became my very good friend. We knotted
our friendship during the case because we got to see each other everyday and were
both getting tired of seeing the inside of the same court room on a daily basis.
I did not get home on the 12th of March until about 6 pm because I had to check on a
client and a friend “Remi Olapade at Oworonshoki area. I got off the commercial
motorcycle that took me from Ile-Iwe to Oja, soon as I walked through the gate Clean
cut, a barber in the compound informed me of the arrival of my boy, we already knew
he was a boy, thanks to scan.
I took off my clothes and was in jeans and T-shirt in no time and on my way to the
hospital with his aunt Anita. We got to Subol hospital, Egbe and there was my boy in
his baby cot sleeping with baby Ewetuga tagged to his tiny wrist. He was the darkest,
most hairy and cutest baby I have ever seen. I picked him up and I can tell you now,
that was the greatest feeling I ever had, I understood then why they call babies
“bundles of joy”
He was a very active boy growing up; we knew that from when he was in the belly. His
mom developed a kind of complications 6 months or so during the pregnancy and the
doctors wanted to know if the baby was still ok, she was asked to mark his movement
on a piece of paper. When the doctor came back to view the result, he couldn’t believe
it. He looked at the paper and looked up in surprise “is he an acrobat?” he asked
rhetorically.
He got more names than me, his mom and his brothers put together, about 11 names
or more. I gave him a couple of those names but officially his name is MALCOLM
OLUWASEYI FEMI-EWETUGA. I love to call him oluwaseyifunmitan (God has done all
these for me). Malcolm because I read and watched the movie of that great activist
Malcolm X who himself got a Nigerian name Omowale, when he stopped over on his
way from Mecca. AKANI, because I love the way Sunny Ade sang about Eng. Abiola
whom I neither know nor ever met. NNGOZIKA a name my friends from the Youth
Corps day in Anambra gave him and OGENNEKEWE, hopefully I got that right,
because his mom is Urhobo (wayo.) lol. I couldn’t remember the names my mom
gave him plus some other names. I was always rushing home to be with him when he
was growing up.
After his birth it was tough taking care of him but whenever I get down to my last kobo
as a struggling young lawyer in Lagos, someone will need my services and at least we
will make enough money to buy his food. A pathetic one was when I went all the way
from Egbe to Ajah so I could get some money to buy his food. I met my clients at Ajah
and was able to retrieve 500 Naira out of what they were owing me, I saw my sister on
the Island, took a soft drink from her refrigerator without paying because I was saving
the money for my son’s baby food. I got home, paid the bike man went in and settled
down for some Eba and cold water. I told his mom to take money from my pants to get
his food. I should have waited till I finished eating. She didn’t find any money in my
pocket, I got up, in annoyance, because of course the money was there, checked the
pants’ pockets, they were empty and the baby was down to his last tin!
I was wondering whether to go to my friend, a pharmacist who had a chemist in the
compound to get some food for him on credit, something that I am not used to or …,
no other option at the time. I hate to hear him cry and it will break my heart if his tears
come from hunger. He pauses when crying and his cries go “ta co ta co” which earned
him the nick name “ Tacoma”
I went to the guy’s store to ask for the loan, didn’t know how to present it. I was still
there rehearsing how I will present my case when his mom came to call me that one
of my clients was there to see me, turned out to be Mama Jadesola Oshodi, the
woman whose case I was attending to when he was born, She saved the day when
she gave me 300 Naira. That was the closest he was to going hungry.
When he was 8 months, he started practicing walking, which to me was quite fast but
then he fell sick, defecating like it was going out of fashion. He was so sick and so
lean I thought he was going to die. He was also trying to talk then and was always
humming Busta rhymes’ beatings and will sing along with the music in his baby
language but his “1998 yo” was audible. He will end it with “yo yo, ho ho” . we were
worried but he will laugh and sing and try to walk only to fall back down and then
struggle up. That boy was a miracle.
He survived his sickness, went on to jump a class in school and at 9 taking the high
school entrance examination. Fearless and not afraid of any of his peers and those
older in some instances, I remember him telling an older boy just beside the window
when he went outside to play “I know I’m 4 and you’re 6 but I will still beat you” that was
6 years ago.
He loved to play on my stomach, back and all, something he did till he was too big for
me to accommodate. He loves music, just like his dad and thinks a little too deep for
his age. He loves to play games on the computer and was doing really good on one of
the software I had on the computer before I left for USA. I wish I could see him play on
his playstation2 now.
Happy Birthday boy and I hope I get to see you before you are 10. I remember asking
him sometime ago what he wanted me to get for him and he said, “Nothing, I want to
see you”.
Michael Femi Ewetuga
The cold November weather was biting really hard, it was impossible to sleep without
covering yourself with two sheets and even then you still feel the cold, especially early
in the morning. All the other students had vacated, on campus were just the law and
medical students taking their second semester examinations; I was a member of the
first group.
The examination went well, I was sure I did pretty well in the courses except Law of
Evidence, I wasn’t sure I was going to pass the course. It was time to get the result
and we were back on campus. There was rumor that the results were going to be
released the following evening. We were at the faculty of law the following evening
awaiting the results but they were not released nor were they released the following
day.
My friends and I soon pushed the results to the back of our minds and decided to
make a bad situation a little bit better; the tension was getting to a feverish stage. We
would gather in one of the rooms and play all sorts of board games and cards. There
was a particular cassette of one of the fuji musicians that a friend of mine LEKAN
AKINTOLA loved to play and which we played year before when Law of Contract was
our nemesis, I particularly liked it and won’t let anyone play anything else. Sports hall,
which was one of the most populated halls, was like ghost town.
Eventually, just when we thought something must have gone wrong with the grading
system or the graders or the answers, guys rushed into the hall from God knows
where and were shouting “the results have been released”. This was like seven in the
evening. We rushed to the Law faculty, it was dark and you could not see the board
even if your eyes were infra red, seas of head ahead of us. Fortunately some people
who got there before us had gone to get candles and it was a thug of war as people
grabbed the candles to check the results.
If you went to Ife you will understand the tension that examination results generates
especially that of Faculty of Law. In my second year, the course that dropped most of
the students in their quests to gain promotions was the law of contract. There was
rumor that the questions had leaked and so they had to go back and print another set
of questions. We waited for more than an hour beyond the time set for the examination
before the questions were brought into the examination halls and subsequent
distribution to students. The question papers were warm on contact giving credence to
the fact that they just came out of press.
The law of evidence was suspected and actually became the course to fear in part 3.
The questions did not leak but evidence was so technical you had to pay close
attention to understand it. Even in practice, I have seen many lawyers lose cases
because of their poor understanding and handling of evidence rules, and not
surprisingly, even judges find it difficult to rule on questions of law involving Evidence,
many decisions get overturned because of error of judgment on evidential issues.
Nwabueze tried his best in his text book to make students understand the rudiments of
evidence and our Evidence lecturer, Mrs. Boparie, hopefully that is the spelling of her
name, an Indian, tried her best to make us understand it but evidence is just by nature
difficult at least for me. On this basis I was not expecting a favorable result from
evidence.
Examination results were never detailed on the board; rather, the names of successful
students were displayed, if yours was not there then of course you failed the
examination. I couldn’t see my name at first but then one of my friends said he saw it, I
took a closer look and there it was, I was so overjoyed and somehow believed God did
it so I said when I have my first child, male or female, his/her name will be Oluwaseyi
which means God did this.
On the 12th of March 1998, it was a Thursday, I was going to court, fortunately my mom
came over and that was a blessing in disguise because my son, unknown to us, was
on his way. His mom started acting funny that morning but I was comfortable leaving
her with my mom on my way to Olounibe’s court at Ikeja, I believe it was court 8 maybe
6. The judge was retiring and was determined to conclude as many cases as he could
on his cause list. Mine was adjourned from day to day but the opposing counsel was
trying all the tricks in the books and outside them to make sure the case didn’t get
concluded by that judge, all sort of frivolous applications were brought to frustrate the
case including the mother of them all, that the judge was biased. The lawyer from the
other side’s chambers Kayode Oseni later became my very good friend. We knotted
our friendship during the case because we got to see each other everyday and were
both getting tired of seeing the inside of the same court room on a daily basis.
I did not get home on the 12th of March until about 6 pm because I had to check on a
client and a friend “Remi Olapade at Oworonshoki area. I got off the commercial
motorcycle that took me from Ile-Iwe to Oja, soon as I walked through the gate Clean
cut, a barber in the compound informed me of the arrival of my boy, we already knew
he was a boy, thanks to scan.
I took off my clothes and was in jeans and T-shirt in no time and on my way to the
hospital with his aunt Anita. We got to Subol hospital, Egbe and there was my boy in
his baby cot sleeping with baby Ewetuga tagged to his tiny wrist. He was the darkest,
most hairy and cutest baby I have ever seen. I picked him up and I can tell you now,
that was the greatest feeling I ever had, I understood then why they call babies
“bundles of joy”
He was a very active boy growing up; we knew that from when he was in the belly. His
mom developed a kind of complications 6 months or so during the pregnancy and the
doctors wanted to know if the baby was still ok, she was asked to mark his movement
on a piece of paper. When the doctor came back to view the result, he couldn’t believe
it. He looked at the paper and looked up in surprise “is he an acrobat?” he asked
rhetorically.
He got more names than me, his mom and his brothers put together, about 11 names
or more. I gave him a couple of those names but officially his name is MALCOLM
OLUWASEYI FEMI-EWETUGA. I love to call him oluwaseyifunmitan (God has done all
these for me). Malcolm because I read and watched the movie of that great activist
Malcolm X who himself got a Nigerian name Omowale, when he stopped over on his
way from Mecca. AKANI, because I love the way Sunny Ade sang about Eng. Abiola
whom I neither know nor ever met. NNGOZIKA a name my friends from the Youth
Corps day in Anambra gave him and OGENNEKEWE, hopefully I got that right,
because his mom is Urhobo (wayo.) lol. I couldn’t remember the names my mom
gave him plus some other names. I was always rushing home to be with him when he
was growing up.
After his birth it was tough taking care of him but whenever I get down to my last kobo
as a struggling young lawyer in Lagos, someone will need my services and at least we
will make enough money to buy his food. A pathetic one was when I went all the way
from Egbe to Ajah so I could get some money to buy his food. I met my clients at Ajah
and was able to retrieve 500 Naira out of what they were owing me, I saw my sister on
the Island, took a soft drink from her refrigerator without paying because I was saving
the money for my son’s baby food. I got home, paid the bike man went in and settled
down for some Eba and cold water. I told his mom to take money from my pants to get
his food. I should have waited till I finished eating. She didn’t find any money in my
pocket, I got up, in annoyance, because of course the money was there, checked the
pants’ pockets, they were empty and the baby was down to his last tin!
I was wondering whether to go to my friend, a pharmacist who had a chemist in the
compound to get some food for him on credit, something that I am not used to or …,
no other option at the time. I hate to hear him cry and it will break my heart if his tears
come from hunger. He pauses when crying and his cries go “ta co ta co” which earned
him the nick name “ Tacoma”
I went to the guy’s store to ask for the loan, didn’t know how to present it. I was still
there rehearsing how I will present my case when his mom came to call me that one
of my clients was there to see me, turned out to be Mama Jadesola Oshodi, the
woman whose case I was attending to when he was born, She saved the day when
she gave me 300 Naira. That was the closest he was to going hungry.
When he was 8 months, he started practicing walking, which to me was quite fast but
then he fell sick, defecating like it was going out of fashion. He was so sick and so
lean I thought he was going to die. He was also trying to talk then and was always
humming Busta rhymes’ beatings and will sing along with the music in his baby
language but his “1998 yo” was audible. He will end it with “yo yo, ho ho” . we were
worried but he will laugh and sing and try to walk only to fall back down and then
struggle up. That boy was a miracle.
He survived his sickness, went on to jump a class in school and at 9 taking the high
school entrance examination. Fearless and not afraid of any of his peers and those
older in some instances, I remember him telling an older boy just beside the window
when he went outside to play “I know I’m 4 and you’re 6 but I will still beat you” that was
6 years ago.
He loved to play on my stomach, back and all, something he did till he was too big for
me to accommodate. He loves music, just like his dad and thinks a little too deep for
his age. He loves to play games on the computer and was doing really good on one of
the software I had on the computer before I left for USA. I wish I could see him play on
his playstation2 now.
Happy Birthday boy and I hope I get to see you before you are 10. I remember asking
him sometime ago what he wanted me to get for him and he said, “Nothing, I want to
see you”.
Minorities Interests
Knowledge, Culture, Social
Meet And Share
Knowledge, Culture, Social
Meet And Share
