I still remember the first time I met Kacha in secondary school. I was minding my own business, packing away my books at the end of one of my first days in school when this scrawny boy with protruberant eyes and a manic grin approached me.

"Hello! What's your name?"

"Chukwudi", I replied cautiously. "What's yours?"

"My full name is Adeniyi Oluwadamilare Mongolia Oxygen Malomo. Most people call me Niyi. But since you are going to be my friend, I will let you call me a special name that I'll decide on."

I was taken aback. What kind of parents gave their children names like 'Oxygen' and 'Mongolia'? And since when did this crazy guy decide that we were going to be friends?

But Kacha seemed either unaware of or undeterred by my hesitation. "OK - I've thought about it, and you can call me Kachakachiki."

For some strange reason, I found this name so hilarious that I burst out laughing, and the ice was broken between us. When I recovered, I asked him why his parents had given him such strange names.

"Oh, those names aren't from my parents. I gave them to myself", he replied airily.

Now I was even more amazed. "Why would you give yourself names like that?"

"Oh, I was looking at an atlas a few years ago, and I came across this country called 'Mongolia'. I liked the name so much I decided to make it one of my names. As for 'Oxygen', well, my science teacher told me that it's very important - it gives life to living beings. So I thought that I would add that to my list of names too, since I want to be as important as oxygen."

"So your parents don't know about your names, then?"

Kacha shrugged. "They know... but I think they are used to my way of doing things, so they just pretend that I don't have those names."

I was intrigued. "What is your way of doing things?"

"Well..." He smiled, and made a nonchalant gesture. "I like to play around with things... for example, there was time when I wanted to find out whether it was possible to produce black hibiscus flowers by watering the plant with water that had been dyed green..."

And Kacha launched into a story of the various adventures and escapades that his insatiable curiosity had led him into. It was also the start of a firm friendship which lasted throughout our secondary school days, during which I shortened the longer 'Kachakachiki' to the name I was to use from then onwards.

As it turned out, I ended up being Kacha's only real close friend. Most of our other classmates were divided into two overlapping groups. There were those who regarded him as a figure of fun, because he was always making the most outrageous statements. Once, he said that the existence of gold - which was a yellow shiny metal - and copper - which was a red shiny metal - meant that there was definitely a blue shiny metal, and he was going to work on discovering it. On another occasion, he said that he had perfected a method of sleeping in class while fooling teachers and everyone else that he was wide awake.

Even more outrageous were the things that Kacha did to back up his more outlandish statements. For example, he once came to class holding a tin and announced that from that day on, he was going to give up eating regular food. Instead, his diet would consist solely of spiders, since in his view, they were much healthier. To demonstrate this, he opened the tin, turned it upside down and shook out a large number of dead spiders, which he then proceeded to eat - much to the disgust of everyone.

Needless to say, these antics rapidly earned him names like 'Craze-man', 'Kolo-man', or simply (and most popular of all) 'Kolo'. As his friend, I was always puzzled and irritated at why he would continue to engage in such behaviour. Didn't he mind being ridiculed, I asked?

"Oh, I don't mind at all", he replied with his trademark grin. "If it makes them happy to ridicule me, let them do so. As long as I'm achieving what I want, why should I care?"

"But you aren't achieving what you want! You always start with a new idea or project, and then a few days into it, it fizzles out when you think of something new!"

"Well, why should I continue pursuing an idea if I have an even better idea? At least I have set the ball in motion for anyone who is interested in pursuing the idea. Better for me to free my intelligence to pursue more important matters."

Oh yes - make no mistake about it, Kacha was intelligent - very, very intelligent. In fact, I would say that he was too intelligent for his own good. This is why there were those of our classmates that detested him for what they saw as his arrogance. He would proclaim that lessons were a waste of time for him, because he knew everything that the teacher was teaching. (That was why, he said, he had perfected his sleeping-while-awake technique.) He was also not shy of demonstrating his extensive knowledge. I recall an occasion where he once stood up and, apropos of nothing, started recounting the history of the Songhai empire until he was shouted down by angry classmates.

And it wasn't just the students who viewed him in this way. The teachers feared and hated him even more - there was nothing more they dreaded than have this young upstart embarrass them by interrupting their lesson to correct an inaccurate statement that they had made. They would regularly punish him for what they regarded as his impudence, but this had no effect on his behaviour - he maintained that it wasn't fair for students to be misled by wrong information.