"Relax Ikemba, this is a
personal story only few people have heard.” he said after he paused to look at
my face. “And I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.”
Jerry Obiagbor, a renowned professor
of History, was heading to Abuja for the Independence Day celebration when his
car broke down on his way to the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu. It
was my wife, Adekemi, who first spotted him leaning against his car along the
Emene express.
I had insisted on a souvenir;
especially since I was going to turn back towards old Abakaliki road. After
some light-hearted haggling, my wife suggested he give us a significant,
personal story, only very few people had heard. He thought for a while before
he found a story; the story of the Nigerian Civil War.
For many, the civil war started on 6th
of July 1967, but not for people like Prof. On the 29th of July
1966, General Aguiyi-Ironsi was assassinated after 194 days in office, and that
was when the war really started for Professor Jerry.
Professor Jerry was ten in 1966. He
lived in Kano with his parents and four siblings who, like him, were born in
Kano. His father traded on groundnut while his mother was a full-time house
wife. Jerry was attending Gidan Makama Primary School, Kano.
He had lost his parents in the midst
of commotion that day, and returned home only to see their neighbour, Mazi Ude,
and his son lying beside their bags in a pool of blood, with machete cuts all
over their bodies. He took off again, turning the plate of food on the table
into a piece of cloth.
Jerry spent two days in the dreaded
Falgore Forest before miraculously running into his aunt and her family, who
were being smuggled out in an animal truck by a veterinarian; a Northerner.
"Aunty Adanna informed me that
my parents and two of my siblings had been transported out, in similar fashion,
by a groundnut farmer; a Northerner." Prof paused to continue in a
contrite tone. “Idika and Chike had been killed." The veterinarian had to
stop them at the Niger Bridge, for his own safety. They joined a sea of people
heading to the East. Jerry was seeing and crossing the bridge for the first
time.
He was reunited with his parents and
two surviving siblings, Amaka and Ulonna, at the Biafran Refugee Camp in Aba.
The camp had become their only home as his father had lost all his livelihood
in Kano. “We were rationed milk, and had to hunt lizards for food.”
We were pulling into the airport now.
“Finally, the war ended and chants of one Nigeria filled the airwaves.” he
continued, “We were relieved that at last the suffering had come to an end at
least."
As we leaned on our car, still in our
wedding clothes, watching him go; he turned and said, “A lot separate us, yet
there are more that bind us. One Nigeria!”
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