By Chido Onumah
Knowing the relationship we had, I didn’t anticipate my mum’s reaction. The moment she returned and saw me, she yelled at me, asking if I wanted to kill her by going to play football considering my condition. For the first and only time in my life, I talked back to my mum. I replied that I was 17 and old enough to take care of myself. That further enraged her. I would apologise hours later, after refusing dinner, telling her that I only accompanied my cousins to the game. She said she was informed that I went to play football and wondered why I didn’t tell her I was just a spectator. I replied that she didn’t give me the opportunity to explain myself. We agreed that as soon as I was strong enough to travel, we would return to Lagos.
Lagos holds strong memories for me, though the chaos, noise, heavy traffic and general planlessness combine to fill me with dread each time I have to return there. As a pre-teen, I would sometimes skip school to tend my mother’s stall each time she had to attend the regular meetings, in central Lagos, called by Abibatu Mogaji, then President-General, Association of Nigerian Market Women and Men. Interestingly, I was the only boy among the female pre-teens who would also stand in for their mothers. As a youngster, I insisted on working for my welfare allowance. So, during weekends and holidays, I would encourage my mum to buy me things to sell and I would “kiri” (a Yoruba word meaning to carry a tray filled with items on the head and sell in the neighbourhood) different items, mostly fruits – depending on the season. I made enough money to invest on newspapers and books. By the time I left high school in 1983 and had become too big to kiri, my mum made sure I never lacked ‘pocket money’. Much of that money went to buying The Guardian newspaper which debuted that year and would change the trajectory of Nigerian journalism.
One of the fondest memories about my mum took place in 1995. After graduation, I had moved back to Lagos in search of work as a journalist. I started contributing to The Punch during my National Youth Service and would spend some time at The Guardian as a trainee reporter after service, then Sentinel magazine, before moving to ICNL, the parent company of The News/Tempo magazines which had just started a daily newspaper called AM News. I was reporting education, though my interest was politics. This was at the height of the brutal military dictatorship of the maniacal General Sani Abacha.
I had done a story on the secret foreign accounts of Abacha’s second-in-command, Gen. Oladipo Diya, way before #PanamaPapers would expose the underbelly of global capitalism and the illicit financial activities of companies and prominent individuals around the world, including past and present public officers in Nigeria, such as Gen. Theophilus Danjuma (rtd.), one of the ringleaders of the second military coup in Nigeria on July 29, 1966, a former Chief of Army Staff and later Minister of Defence, Gen. David Mark (rtd.), ex-Senate President; and Bukola Saraki, former governor of Kwara State and current President of the Nigerian Senate.
Abacha would later fall out with Diya, nicknamed the “Crying General” – after a video emerged showing him on his knees, weeping and pleading for leniency on being accused of conspiring to overthrow the Abacha regime. On this occasion, before the coup allegation that condemned Diya, first to death, and later, to life imprisonment, the story on the cover of AM News had alleged that Gen. Diya maintained foreign accounts which had fallen into the hands of fraudsters. Abacha was aghast. As the mindless looting that took place under his murderous regime came to light, it became clear that his shock had to do with the fact that someone else was beating him to his game. The day after the story was published, about five operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) arrived AM News as I was preparing my story for the following day and arrested me. I was taken to the SSS headquarters at Shangisha on the outskirts of central Lagos and detained for eight days.
While the story of my arrest was widely reported, my dad and siblings made sure they kept it from my mum. I used to visit her once or twice a week, sometimes before work, and at other times after work, depending on my schedule as a reporter. As the days rolled by and I hadn’t visited, she enquired from my siblings if they had heard from me. They were able to convince her that indeed they had heard from me and that I had indicated I would visit. By the end of the week, she had become very apprehensive. She had genuine reasons to be concerned. We had endless discussions about the dangers of my job. In his attempt to legitimise his regime, Abacha had declared war on journalists and human rights activists.
I went straight to the office to inform my bosses the evening I was released. I was given the day off and I went immediately to visit my mum. I imagined the different questions and scenarios that would play out the moment I saw her. Though I had lost a few pounds from not eating the miserable food that was served once or twice a day at the detention centre, I didn’t think I was too dishevelled to betray the fact that I was in detention. I barely slept while in detention, partly because there was no bed, and partly because my interrogators kept prodding me, morning, afternoon and night, to retract my story in order to facilitate my release.
The moment I appeared before my mum, she took one look at me, inquired why I did not visit her the week before and intoned that I looked like someone who had just been released from prison. I smiled and replied in a jocular way that she was right; that I had just been released from detention. I sensed a feeling of betrayal, from my siblings. Then I complimented her clairvoyance before narrating my experience in detention.
I learnt many life lessons from my mum. If ever there is one disappointment I have in life, it is that she did not live to see my family: her daughter-in-law and grandchildren. I remember on many occasions we would talk about love, family and relationship. At the end of such discussion, she would say in that tone only a doting mother would use that she would not interfere in my marriage and that she would not visit my home unless she was expressly invited by my spouse and me. She was sincere about it, but she would add that she knew, considering my disposition, she could not win that battle even if she wanted to act the proverbial “mother-in-law from hell”.
I remember my sibling with whom I shared laughter, love, affection, and many childhood pranks; my childhood best friends, Ben Ogazi and Kennedy Etoroma were a constant source of inspiration. Kennedy and I would share a flat much later in Festac Town after graduation. Initially called “Festival Town” or “Festac Village”, Festac Town, the magnificent housing estate along the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, was built by the military regime of Olusegun Obasanjo to house participants of the Second World Festival of Black Arts and Culture in 1977. After the festival, the 5,000 dwelling units were handed over to Nigerians who participated in a ballot. Festac Town was, as Andrew Apter noted in The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria, “intended to evoke the modern age and the promise of state-sponsored economic development fuelled by oil”.
My high school was just opposite what was known as the 2nd Gate of Festac, and my friends and I enjoyed walking to school because of the scenic view. Sometimes, on our way from school, we would sit and chat on benches with trees along the well-paved streets providing adequate protection from the sun. Anyone who wants to understand the tragic paradox called Nigeria, our knack for abuse of systems and processes need look no further than Festac Town. Today, less than four decades after it was opened, that once serene and picturesque estate has degenerated into a slum.
One of the most interesting people I came across during high school was my principal, the late Chief (Mrs.) Bolaji Aduke Awoboh-Pearse. Mrs. Pearse, as we called her, was a mother away from home. She took me and other raw pre-teen boys who arrived Awori Ajeromi Grammar School in September 1978 under her tutelage and refined us in character and learning. Rather than flog us, she would cry – as a sign of disappointment – each time we pulled a prank deserving of punishment like when a few of my friends and I went to swim in a stream after school.
The late Pa Alfred Poopola Jaiyesimi adopted me as one of his sons and opened a vista of interest in politics, history and the struggle for Independence. Dr. Lambert Onumaegbu was my earliest encounter with the world of intellectualism. My cousin, Chief Ibem Onumaegbulam, the older brother I never had, saw me through university.
I salute my comrades – the cadres of the Movement for a Progressive Nigeria (MPN) – at the University of Calabar (UNICAL) where I mastered the art of insurrection and agitation. Regrettably, it was not until I arrived UNICAL that I first became aware of the role of ethnic consciousness (even among intellectuals) in the stymieing of the Nigerian dream. As part of the rites of passage for fresh students, we were entreated to join, depending on where you claimed to come from, one of the many “Parapo” or ethnic associations on campus that served no meaningful purpose other than to magnify our fault lines as a nation.
We fought many battles against this parochialism. Our other exploits, including the planned take-over of a radio station in Calabar, during the Orkar coup of April 22, 1990, could have cost us our lives. The “canon of the movement”, Austin “Canoways” Emaduku, rallied Malabites (male students of UNICAL) to rescue me when I was abducted by reactionary forces one early morning in those turbulent days.
Moyosoreoluwa! I thank God for life and His mercies. On this occasion of the golden jubilee of my birth, I rededicate myself to the destruction of that system, no matter what its purveyors call it, that seeks to enslave the workers of the world; to “the categorical imperative to overthrow all circumstances in which the human being is humiliated, enslaved, abandoned, and despised!”
I pledge to Nigeria; however, not Nigeria in its extremely dysfunctional state. I commit to a new, progressive, and egalitarian Nigeria where citizens will be defined not by their name, language, faith, or ethnicity; where citizens will find fulfilment no matter which part of the country they come from; above all, a Nigeria where every Nigerian can live in peace, go to school, work, raise a family and run for office wherever they choose. I believe that Nigeria is possible!
(Concluded)
• Onumah, an author, is Coordinator of the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL).