The Lekki Headmaster

At morning assembly, a student named Ikenna speaks enthusiastically about visiting Jos and says he would prefer to remain in Nigeria. Bepo is expected to follow the talk with his usual lively remarks. Instead, he stands silently at the podium, drops the microphone and weeps in front of the students and teachers. His behaviour is especially puzzling because the school has just celebrated its strong WASSCE results and rewarded successful teachers.

The managing director, Mrs Ibidun Gloss, comes to the school and asks Mr Ope Wande, a Physics teacher and pastor, to speak with Bepo. She learns that Bepo’s wife lives in London and wonders whether the separation is affecting him. She arranges for him to go home, concerned about how the incident might look to parents. The reason for his tears remains undisclosed at the end of the chapter.

After five days, Bepo tells the school why he is distressed. He has accepted a teaching job in Britain and agreed to join Seri and their children. The separation and his reluctance to relocate have strained the marriage. His colleagues compare his Nigerian salary with his prospective British earnings. Some regard his hesitation as absurd, while another points out that the higher salary comes with living expenses paid in pounds. Bepo had planned to retire at fifty-five and start a business in Nigeria, possibly another school or a transport venture. Moving means putting those plans aside.

The chapter also explains the title. While Bepo was headmaster of Stardom Kiddies, he regularly settled quarrels among teachers. Mr Audu compared him to King Oloja, the peacemaker in the television drama Village Headmaster, and dubbed him the Lekki Headmaster. The nickname followed Bepo when he became principal of the secondary school.

Bepo listens more closely to Nigerians who have settled overseas. Wages can sound enormous when converted to naira, but people abroad also pay rent, taxes and other bills in the currency they earn. The desire to leave Nigeria can itself lead to desperate choices. Bepo recalls a teacher who took a cooperative loan before disappearing abroad and a driver who tried to steal a school bus to raise money for his son’s education overseas.

Sola, a former Stardom teacher living in Britain, reassures Bepo that joining an established household will ease his adjustment. Her experience shows some of the benefits of reliable public services. Other accounts are harsher. A former banker struggles with the loss of professional status after becoming a carer, while Akindele, who moved to the United States at fifty-five, takes physically demanding work loading freight. Together, the stories give Bepo a fuller picture of the life he is considering.

Mrs Ignatius calls Bepo late at night about her family’s failed plan to move to Britain. During the visa process, a DNA test revealed that her husband, Ibe, was not the biological father of their fifteen-year-old daughter, Favour, a Stardom student. The visas were denied, and Ibe walked out after confronting his wife. The family’s preparations for a new life abroad have exposed a secret that threatens their life together at home.

The call prompts Bepo to remember another parental complaint. Bibi Ladele has a nightmare about her Government teacher, Mr Ayesoro, whose traditional facial marks frighten her. Her mother complains, and Stardom transfers Ayesoro to its property division. The decision shows how fear of losing a fee-paying family can shape management’s treatment of a teacher.

Mrs Gloss visits land the school owns and is startled to find it being used as a staff car park. She suspects that school funds may have been misused. Bepo and the accountant, Jeremi Amos, explain that many of the employees financed their cars through the Stardom Cooperative Society and repay their loans through salary deductions. The explanation settles the question about the school’s money but raises a new concern for management.

The board learns that the cooperative has ₦95 million in its purse and has lent out more than ₦50 million. Its chair, Chief Mrs Solape Bayo, worries that the staff could use their resources to establish a rival school. Her image of a snake hidden in the roof gives the chapter its title. The board caps individual loans at ₦250,000, makes the managing director’s approval compulsory and requires management to be informed about cooperative elections.

On Open Day, a parent named Mr Guta objects to a sentence in his child’s notebook, Ade as well as Jide comes early. He insists that the verb should be come and threatens to withdraw his children. Mrs Gloss takes his side and orders Bepo to dismiss Mr Fafore, the English teacher. Bepo’s own memories of unemployment help explain why he finds it so painful to deliver a dismissal letter.

At a staff meeting, Bepo explains that the verb agrees with Ade, the singular subject. The phrase as well as Jide adds information without making the subject plural. With and, the sentence would read Ade and Jide come early. The staff check the rule on their phones and confirm that Fafore was right. The dismissal is reversed, and Mr Audu defuses the embarrassment with a joke.

Bepo remembers working at Beesway Group of School. When he suggests changing School to Schools, the director, Mr Egi Meko, takes offence and later blames Bepo when a parent makes the same observation. One night Bepo sees men leading a live cow towards a pit on the school grounds. He tries to intervene, is struck and discovers that the director is among the men conducting the ritual. Bepo eventually leaves Beesway.

The incident recalls another encounter, from the days when Bepo and a friend ran Fruitful Future. A parent, Mr Ogo, offered to scatter grains around the school in a ritual he claimed would attract pupils. The founders refused. Years later, Bepo sees Ogo on the news in connection with the killing of a woman who had paid him for a supposed fertility cure. The two episodes show the consequences of treating rituals as shortcuts to success.

Bepo regrets leaving a dispute that has dragged on for three years. During a campaign speech for Social Prefect, Banky told students to vote for him instead of the son of an ex-convict. Everyone knew he meant his rival, Tosh. Tosh’s father, Chief Didi Ogba, had spent time in detention during a trial, but he had not been convicted. An older rivalry between the families, already visible in student competitions, PTA politics and party affiliations, turns the remark into a legal dispute. Bepo has tried to arrange an out-of-court settlement.

His other unfinished responsibility is the Invention Club’s Breath Project. As the club’s patron, he has encouraged students to build a phone using recycled components. He worries about leaving before they finish and promises to return for the launch if the project succeeds.

Bepo recalls organising a local excursion each term and an international trip each year. He wants pupils who may eventually study abroad to know Nigeria first. They visit places such as Erin-Ijesha Waterfalls, Ikogosi Warm Springs and the National War Museum in Umuahia. In Lagos, they see wealthy districts as well as communities such as Ajegunle. Bepo challenges his pupils’ assumptions about poorer neighbourhoods and points to people who have risen from them through talent and opportunity.

The trip to Badagry affects him most deeply. The Akran explains the town’s history, and the group visits sites connected to the Atlantic slave trade, including the Point of No Return. At the Black Heritage Museum, the relics and accounts of enslavement disturb Bepo. He begins to draw his own comparison between that history and the pressure he feels to leave Nigeria to work abroad.

Bepo has let his passport expire. Now that the move is imminent, he wants to avoid the crowds and delays at the Lagos passport offices. An intermediary named Tai offers to help him renew it in Ibadan for ₦100,000, above the official fee of ₦70,000 in the story. On the journey, Bepo notices the improvement to the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway and reflects on the religious camps along it. Ibadan’s brown roofs remind him of the city’s literary and educational history.

At the Agodi passport office, Bepo learns that Tai runs a business centre and works with people inside the passport system. The application still stalls because Bepo’s National Identity Number needs validation. Network problems delay that process, putting his departure plans under pressure despite the extra money he has agreed to pay.

Stardom holds a three-day farewell. The staff beat the students 3–2 in a novelty football match helped along by comic refereeing. The next day, senior students debate whether the arts have contributed more to national development than the sciences. The final ceremony includes songs, sketches imitating Bepo and traditional dances. The Badagry canoe dance brings back his memories of the slave-trade sites and unsettles him as his departure approaches.

Mrs Gloss recalls how her father, the school’s founder, recognised Bepo’s promise when he hired him twenty-four years earlier. She presents Bepo with a foreign-currency cheque, the largest farewell gift the school has given a departing staff member. When he tries to thank everyone, he breaks down at the podium again. This time, the school community understands his grief and shares it.

On Saturday, Bepo leaves early for his flight. His landlord, Mr Ogunwale, accompanies him with his grandchildren, Jide and Kemi, and several Stardom colleagues also come to see him off. Bepo feels guilty about leaving Jide, whom he has been coaching in elocution and African history. At the airport he falls asleep and dreams that enslaved Africans are being forced aboard a ship. A man orders him to enter, and Bepo wakes shouting as an airline official summons him for boarding.

The scene shifts to Monday morning. The students miss Bepo at the gate and during assembly. As Mrs Gloss promises them another principal, Bepo appears. He tells the students he is staying and has come to complete his mission. They lift him onto their shoulders and sing the school’s victory song. His return answers the question raised by his tears in Chapter 1. He can now say openly what his work at Stardom means to him.