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This day, 41 years ago By ON October, 1, 1960, I was on the fast lane to age 13. The external world we knew then was quite little, its texture and frontiers defined by our teachers and church preachers. The white Catholic priest was the farthest stretch of our racial imagination. Having been baptised in 1959 and listed as a potential pilgrim to heaven, we were not even capable of reasoning that the Irish priest was part of a British colonial order and that he too was a victim of local colonialism back home. Such thoughts would have been blasphemy, punishable by a life sentence in hell.
Three momentous experiences warned us that independence was on its way for Nigeria. First was the building of a primary school in the village by Awolowo's Action Group government. To have a school a community had to guarantee a registration of about 30 pupils. Our village, Esaba, was quite small, it still is, and so finding the number was not easy. So the community congress issued a decree urging all parents to repatriate any child living away. That law was what forced me to leave Ilaje area of Ondo Province where I had gone as a baby-tender for an elder sister. By the time the community "come home" order came, I was already making progress as an apprentice in the life of a fisherman, looking forward to owning a house and several wives. I left with some fluency in Ilaje, Itsekiri and Ijaw languages. Thanks to Awolowo and independence, I would have been a fairly successful illiterate and polygamist.
The second sign of change came in 1956 with the visit to Nigeria of Queen Elizabeth II. My immediate elder brother, Michael Veloh, had been selected to represent his Modern School in Warri at the Benin reception for the Queen and her husband. This luck made my brother an instant celebrity in the neighbourhood. He returned, hugging a medal with the image of the Queen and the Prince of Wales. Children often gathered around Veloh to hear tales of how the Queen looked or smiled at Benin. The third event was truly dramatic. The Premier of the Western Region, Awolowo, was to visit the divisional headquarters at Otughievwen in 1959. Our experience of party politics was that of fierce rivalry, divided families and rigged election results. The Urhobo area was predominantly National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (N.C.N.C). But Awolowo had brought the lighted torch of education and all the 70 communities in the district emptied themselves to see the man. We heard fantastic tales that Awolowo and Azikiwe used to go for a holiday on the moon. In my final year in primary school, our headmaster brought a copy of the Daily Times, with the news of a Russian who went to the moon in a craft. We did not believe the story. Did the man think he was Zik or Awo?
As the helicopter conveying the mythical visitor landed on the school field, the furious wind from its propellers made hats and headgears to fly into the bush. A stampede ensued and out stepped someone with very detailed facial marks. Awo could not come and sent his deputy, Samuel Ladoke Akintola. He spoke for about 10 minutes as the white, cigar-smoking pilot kept the engine running. The speech was in English and so an Action Group faithful, Charles Mrakpo interpreted in Urhobo. The only thing we understood was a jaw-breaking onomatopoeic Urhobo expression describing the gigantic nature of the corruption the N.C.N.C. rivals indulged in. The best English rendering I have managed tuns thus: "Unpaid loans and embezzled funds running into one hundred pounds times two hundred times two hundred multiplied by two hundred times two hundredfold." No one I know has been able to render this in figures. But superlatives planted in our young minds the shape of corruption that was to come. I have been trying to translate the late Mrakpo's prophetic compound interest formula in the reports of various probes since 1975, including the "disappeared" N2.1 billion funds of the NNPC investigated by Justice Belgore in the 1980s, the mysterious Gulf War oil windfall of 1991 unravelled by Dr. Pius Okigbo and now the terrorism-inducing accounts of the late Abacha's loot. The story is the same, only the figures keep changing.
How did we mark independence day? Fantastic! I remember the story rice, the songs and dances. I was compere general of the village dance troupe that performed. When I compare the nimble choreographic movements we made that day against the stiff limbs I now have, I am assured that where life is going is nearer than its starting point 54 years ago.
Who can forget the plastic cup and flag, made and shipped in England. One of my village peers, Jacob Uhwen, still has his as memento. If you have yours, send it to me by e-mail. That magic word, e-mail, if any student had used it in an English language exam 40 or 20 years ago, the reward would have been outright failure! And the national anthem: "Though tribe and tongue may differ, In brotherhood we stand." This advertised the cultural and linguistic diversity of the country then. As the recent carnage in Jos shows, tongues still differ in deadly ways and brotherhood bears a question mark. The military changed the anthem to "Arise, O Compatriots in the 1970s. In 30 years, many generals rose in not as compatriots but as contractors of fortune.
When the 1967-70 civil war first tore the anthem to shreds, I was in the final stages of secondary school. I already knew what elections meant in 1963 when our church mobilised every living being to vote in the plebiscite for the creation of the Midwest Region. It was a second independence for our area of the Niger Delta. For most people in the new Region the quest for more education meant farther and further migration from home. It is still largely so for internally colonised areas of Nigeria. When in 1975 Gen. Yakubu Gowon fell in a coup by Gen. Murtala Mohammed, I was pursuing a doctoral degree at Ibadan. When Gen. Babangida smiled into power in 1985, I was on the threshold of becoming a senior lecturer in Ife. The drive to learn a thing or two in journalism brought me to The Daily Times in Lagos in 1991. Reaching for higher ground in the profession, I shifted ambition to The Guardian in 1995. The paper like several other leading ones in Nigeria is owned and published by a Delta State investor. To work in it at the level I am, one has to be in Lagos, far from the madding crowd of the Niger Delta oil wells which fuel the economy of the country. And I am not alone. If I were a lawyer, engineer, accountant, banker, architect, consultant, or business magnate, I would probably be in Lagos or Abuja and may be Port Harcourt. Not Warri, Sapele, Ughelli, Asaba, Agbor, Oleh, Abraka or Kwale. I am not alone. Ask Dafinone, the Ibru brothers, Onosode, Onobrakpeya, Brume, Idudu, Majoroh, Doghudje, Duvuwudje, Okiru-Ojigbo, Barovbe, the Sagays, Ohiwerei, Ebie, the Abebes, the Clarks, the Bruce Brothers, Dokpesi, the Momohs, the Akpatas, Lawrence, Amuka, Akporugo, the Otobos, Omene, Kragha, Oyovbaire, Ofurhie, the Kokoris, the Esiris, Obaigbena, Damijo or Otega Emerhor. Remember Etiebet, the Banigos, the Udomas, Akpabot, Ekpu or the Basseys. If you are from the Niger Delta, the higher you aspire and accomplish, the farther you go from driving development in the region. The odyssey of this exodus is part of the narrative of independence reminiscences.
When the British Union Jack yielded place to the green-white-green flag in 1960, we defined prosperity in sacks of cocoa, cotton, groundnut, kernels and weights of rubber palm oil and timber. My generation in the old Midwest dreamed to have a rubber plantation. I started one at 15. These days we measure fortune in dollar, billions of crude oil and gas. When Abacha gave up the ghost in 1998, we learned of ministers who stacked wads of naira notes in warehouses like we did of agricultural produce. Azikiwe, Okotie-Eboh, Awolowo, Akintola, Osadebay, Sonibare, Rewane and other politicians onwed some property. At independence politicians and ministers ordered American limousines to ride in and spite the poor followers. Okpara, Otobo, Enahoro, Mariere and other office holders hardly exhibited affluence. As for politicians from the North, we did not hear tales of swollen bank accounts or sprawling private estates. Ahmadu Bello, Ribadu, Aminu Kano, Sa'ad Zungur, Shagari never exuded the aroma of looted wealth. Even Gowon who was head of state for nine years looks like a pastor till date. Gen. Musa Yar'Adua's father was minister for Lagos in the First Republic. He died owning a plot in the city. His son was in power for three years and ended up being a shipping, banking and publishing magnate.
The years before the 1970s were those of innocence. The war came and mixed with oil to cause a conflagration of corruption. To quench it now, even the fire fighter has to be ready for a suicidal mission like desperados in the Middle East. How has my generation fared? Excepting the misadventure of those who opted for academic and intellectually-related jobs, most have done well. If you want evidence, search the luxury estates, the generator-powered homes, the sleeky automobiles from Japan, Germany and France. The children of many have escaped the purgatory of public schools, finding the heaven-on-earth in expensive boarding institutions. Many have left these nurseries of grandeur to find fulfilment only in campus cults. Their offspring will take a step further and migrate to more stable climes overseas to worship the jealous gods of globalisation. For the broad masses, they fated to second-hand clothes and polluted motor cycles when they afford the cost. Nigeria has done well for those on whose foreheads God spat some blessing. What has not done so well is the country.
Phillip Emeagwali, the U.S-based Nigerian computer grandmaster summed it aptly when he said that the problem with Nigeria is that it values and rewards private wealth at the expense of the commonwealth. The trend is likely to continue until a social revolution redistributes and relocates everyone, rich and poor. As the Urhobo say, the future is blank (Obaro akpo okuku). Yet those of us who have reached the gold-refined age of 50 plus have cause to be joyful. As an Hausa adage admonishes, only the living celebrate. Go ye today and rejoice for the kingdom of emancipation is nigh.
October 2001
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