The word ‘noble’ was one of the first English words I knew. This is because I grew up to see that I lived at No 3, Noble Street, Yaba when I became aware of my identity as a human being from about the age of 5 years. Our family house remains there till today and an attempt to change the name of the street from Noble Street, to ‘Hubert Ogunde Street’ was resisted even by our family, for no other reason than that we just didn’t want to part with a noble name. My first meaningful encounter with the word however was when I enrolled on 22nd January 1971 as a Form 1 student of Igbobi College, Yaba when I learnt the school song which had the last two lines of its chorus run thus:
“Wherever there’s an Igbobian, there also is a noble Nigerian”