Carry On My Boys: The Story of Identical African Twins

Lagos.

Chapter One

Life at Oshogbo

The ancestral home of the Sunmonu twins is located in Odeyemi’s compound in an area of Osogbo called Abija. Not that there were no sets of twins in Abija or at Osogbo for that matter, but what sets apart the Sunmonu twins, Hassan and Hussein, from other twins in the area, nay, the whole town in 1947, was the fact that they were the first identical twins that people found very difficult to identify, and they became instant celebrities.

Their mother, Arnina, spent about two years with them at Osogbo before leaving them to the foster care of the grandmother before leaving for Ghana to join their father in 1949. Grandma wasted no time in sending the twins to Ansar-rudeen Primary School at Sabo, Osogbo, in July 1947, where they became the darling of the teachers particularly the female teachers. The twins found out that they were the only pupils from the entire family compound that attend Ansar-rudeen Primary School, Sabo, while the other school going children attended All Saints’ School, a Christian school. They therefore mounted pressure on their Grandma to relocate them to All Saints’ School from the Ansar-rudeen School, which was a Muslim school. The reason why the twins wanted to change schools was mainly due to the fact that the Muslim school was relatively new, about 5 years old at the time, while the Christian school was over 40 years old. In fact, it was the oldest primary school in Osun Division (now Osun State) at the time. It had the best teachers, the best structures and facilities at that time.

An incident happened in the lives of the twins, when, one afternoon in 1949, on their way home, after closing from school, a young beautiful lady of about 20 years of age, called Dademu invited the identical twin boys to meet her father. Her father happened to be His Royal Highness, Sir Ladapo Ademola- the Alake of Abeokuta, who was in exile at Osogbo as a result of the women agitation in Abeokuta against the payment of poll tax by women in the town. The women’s agitation against the poll tax was led by the famous Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, the mother of the legendary musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, human rights’ activist, Dr. Beko Ransome Kuti, and renowned pediatrician, Prof. Olikoye Ransome Kuti.

Sir Ladapo Ademola asked her daughter Princess Dademu, to serve the twins’ food. When the twins got home, they informed their Grandma what had happened, and she was alarmed. She asked the twins never to call on Sir Ladapo Ademola again on their way from school, as his Royal Highness was too important a monarch in Nigeria for commoners like them to dine with!! But, in spite of their Grandma’s admonition, the twins never stopped to see Sir Ladapo Ademola every afternoon on their way from school at the insistence of Princess Dademu, until December 1949 when they relocated to All Saints School. They held back from telling Grandma about the afternoon encounters with His Royal Highness and the lovely lunches by Princess Dademu till Sir Ladapo Ademola was recalled to his throne in Abeokuta just before the end of 1949 when Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome Kuti and her women folk of Abeokuta won the fight against payment of poll tax by women. The second meeting of the twins with Sir Ladapo Ademola, the Alaka of Abeokuta, will be unfolded in subsequent chapters.

At All Saints School, Osogbo, just like the Ansar-rudeen School the twins left in December 1949, they became instant celebrities in their new school in January 1950. There were at least three or four sets of twins in their new school, including Taiwo and Kehinde Olanipekum, who were their classmates, but none of them were identical like Hassan and Hussein. In spite of the fact that the school is a Christian School, about 40% of the student population was Muslim, and in Bible Studies the Muslim students were always ahead of the Christians! It is to the eternal glory of the Anglican Communion that Muslims were never discriminated against in their schools until the last year in the primary school of the twins when Muslim students were asked to pay three pounds (€3.00) before their first school learning certificate could be released to them. The alternative to paying the €3 levy was for the Muslim student to convert to Christianity. Since many of the Muslim students were from poor homes, the twins inclusive, many of them got baptized into the Anglican Communion. What saved the twins from Christian baptism was their uncle, Chief T.A. Ajani, who was a prominent member of the All Saints’ Church Cathedral, and who became the Babajo (Father of the Congregation) of the church. But for him, the twins would have paid €3 each before their certificates would be released to them or got converted to Christianity as the alternative. Mr. Lamidi Ademola Akande, one of the classmates of the twins became Samuel Ademola Akande before his primary school leaving certificate was released to him.

As was the practice for students in Standard 6, the last year in the primary school, the twins sat for the entrance examination to Osogbo Grammar School, about September of 1954. Both of them passed. About 120 students were short listed for interview; out of which 30 students would be given admission to start Form 1 of the secondary school stated for January 1955. Osogbo Grammar School was a Community Grammar School founded in 1950, with Revd. J.L. Omigbodun, a graduate of Fourabay College, Sierra Leone, which was affiliated to the University of Durham in England, as the first Principal. During the interview for the selection of 30 students that would start Form 1 in January 1955, Hassan was the first of the twins to be called for interview, and he performed very well. The next person to be called was Hussein, and when he appeared before the panel, he was told that he had already been interviewed, but denied that he had previously been interviewed and that it was his twin brother Hassan that had been interviewed. Nobody believed him and he was threatened with arrest by the Police. As luck would have it, Hassan was still lurking around the premises of the interview hall and a member of the panel went out to call him. When he (Hassan) came before the interview panel, none of the panelists could differentiate between Hassan and Hussein, and that was the end of the interview. Both Hassan and Hussein were given admission to Osogbo Grammar School. In their first year at Osogbo Grammar School, the twins became instant celebrities both among the teaching staff and students as a result of their identical looks and academic performance. Both of them were to start in Form 2 in January of 1955. During the Christmas holidays of December 1955, something terrible happened to the twins. They discovered to their sorrow that they could not continue their secondary education because their mother Amina, who was paying their school fees, could no longer afford it. Their father who had been a successful cocoa produce buyer was ill-advised by one of his friends to invest all his capital into Diamond Prospecting which had made many young men of his time multi-millionaires within twelve months of going into diamond prospecting. The year was 1947, shortly after the twins, their mother, and their grandmother had left the Gold Coast (now Ghana) for Osogbo in Nigeria. Their father forgot the African adage (proverb) which says You should ask your Creator, instead of asking people, where money can be made (Bere lowo ori, ma bere mbi oja gbe nta). Not only did he lose his capital, he incurred debt running into thousands of pounds. With three wives, one set of twins, five very young children, loss of franchise with V.A.C. Rowntree and G.B. Ollivant in the cocoa purchasing business and massive debt, his three wives took over the family responsibilities by feeding and clothing him. How was this done? The most senior wife who was the mother of the identical twins, Amina, persuaded the other two wives, who were all petty traders, to pull their resources together, so that they would be eating communally, feed and clothe their common husband and their young children (minus the twins who were now in Nigeria). Any profit thereafter would be shared equally among the three of them, after the payment of the husband’s debt. The profit that accrued to Amina, the mother of the twins, was the one she used to pay their school fees in their first year at Osogbo Grammar School. The guardian and uncle of the twins at Osogbo decided that it will be better for the twins to stay in the boarding house at Osogbo Grammar School instead of going from home. The cost of staying in the boarding house at Osogbo Grammar School in 1955 was €70 per term, and there were three terms in a year, making €2l0 per student per year. For the twins, that came up to €420 in 1955, as against €l0 per term for day students. Had the twins chosen to be day students, their school fees for 1955 would have been €60, which their mother could afford, but fate had its own design for the identical twin brothers.

Faced with withdrawal from the Grammar School, the twins cried their eyes out, everywhere they turned, they drew a blank cheque. Neither their paternal grandmother nor their maternal grandfather, who was a cocoa farmer, could afford the exorbitant fees being paid at Osogbo Grammar School. The twins honourably withdrew from the Grammar School in January 1956. During this period, the twins decided to leave Osogbo as a result of funny jokes being cast on them by friends and some members in the ancestral family compound. They decided to go to their parents in the Gold Coast (Ghana) after making a last minute effort to see the Alaka of Abeokuta, Sir Ladapo Ademola. He had returned to his throne after a few months exile in Osogbo where the young twins first made contact with him. How would they get to Abeokuta, a town they had neither been before nor had any known relation or friend therein? As luck would have it, one of their admirers, known as Mr. Osunpidan a.k.a. Agbefo, a professional truck driver, who used to convey cocoa and palm kernel produce from Osogbo to Apapa Port in Lagos via Abeokuta. He was also a native of Abeokuta, though domiciled at Osogbo. He offered to convey the twins to Abeokuta in his truck free of charge, and drop them off at the Palace of Alake of Abeokuta at AKE.

One night in February 1956, Mr. Osunpidan took the twins to Ake Palace of Sir Ladapo Ademola on his way to Apapa Port in Lagos, and wished them good luck. The palace officials gave the twins a place to sleep until the following morning when they were ushered into the presence of His Royal Highness. The twins prostrated before His Royal Highness as was the custom among the Yoruba’s of South-Western Nigeria and in tears narrated why they came to him. They introduced themselves as the young identical twins one of his daughters brought to him when he was in exile at Osogbo in 1949, and who he ordered to be served lunch every school day, Monday through Friday, for as long as he remained in Osogbo. Sir Ladapo Ademola was moved with the pitiable story of the twins and he gave money to the twins and instructed them to go back to the principal of Osogbo Grammar School, Mr. J .L. Omigbodun, who should re-admit them and send their school bills covering the entire 1956 school calendar to him for settlement. He vowed to continue his sponsorship if the twins passed to form III at the end of December 1956, until they completed their secondary education. However, should the twins fail their promotion examination, they should return to Abeokuta where he would enlist them into the Local Authority Police Force. They thanked His Royal Highness and his chiefs who showered the twins with monetary gifts after Sir Ladapo Ademola gave them €5. Some of the chiefs even prayed that the twins might in future be like the legendary Nigeria’s numero uno of identical twins, Femi and Dotun Oyewule, who were natives of Abeokuta. They decided to head to Lagos instead of going back to Osogbo as directed by the Alake of Abeokuta. It was the considered opinion of the twins that if they went back to Osogbo, it might be difficult for them to catch up with their classmates who had resumed classes six weeks earlier, and should they fail to pass the promotion examination at the end of 1956, they might have no option but be recruited into Abeokuta Native Authority Police Force, which they did not want to join under any circumstances. With the money they received from the Alake of Abeokuta and his chiefs, they got themselves passports in Lagos and traveled to Accra en route Akim-Eshiem to meet their parents. They however wrote a letter of thanks to the Alake and prayed for him for God’s protection and guidance.

Chapter Two

Life in Rural Gold Coast (Ghana) 1956

The twins arrived at Akim-Eshiem about the second week of June 1956. Their parents, step-mothers and siblings were very happy to see them. In private, however, their mother, Amina, wept bitterly for her inability to see her sons through secondary school. The twins pacified their mother and promised her that in spite of their setback, they were determined to succeed in life, and that all they needed was her constant prayer for them. She wiped off her tears and prayed for them. As mentioned earlier, all the wives of the twins’ father were eating from the same pot, likewise the children, and when the twins joined them, they took part in the communal feeding. The family by