Okobo: Story of a Nigerian People

Copyright © 2013 by Essesien Ntekim.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013902387

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4797-9113-2

               Softcover      978-1-4797-9112-5

               Ebook            978-1-4797-9114-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction based on personal imagination and recollections of life in a real entity called Okobo. Use of historical events, places, or names of public figures is done solely for the purpose of placing the story within a time frame or geographic region. Any similarity of the story line to actual events is coincidental.

Rev. date: 07/19/2013

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 Homecoming

Chapter 2 Behold The Land And Country

Chapter 3 Antecedents

Chapter 4 The Starving Hoe

Chapter 5 The Seagull Is A Migratory Bird

Chapter 6 Canoe Of Sour Palm Wine

Chapter 7 Footprints

Chapter 8 God Lost In Translation

Chapter 9 Bounds Of Human Thought

Chapter 10 The Making Of A Nation

Chapter 11 Okobo In World Politics

Chapter 12 Tourist Guide Of Okobo Towns

Acknowledgement

Postscript

Bibliography

To my mother, Atim Andem Ibok

PROLOGUE

AT AFRICA’S ARMPIT was the land of Okobo as it had been for thousands of years. The people were known as Okobuo, a term that was anglicized by its colonizers as Okkoborr or Okobo. It was a community that was better known for its prowess in farming, fishing, and trading. Recent disputes in drawing maritime borders between Nigeria and Cameroon brought Okobo to world headlines because of its strategic location at the Atlantic oceanfront. Renewal of global interest in knowing more about Okobo extended to other ancient communities that dotted both sides of the Cross River estuary to the sea. The story of Okobo was the story of a people whose secret to greatness derived from its smallness. Many people wondered how Okobo was able to retain its unique identity despite being wedged in on all sides by the larger ethnic groups of Ibibio, Oron, and Efik. In many ways, Okobo was a once-in-a-lifetime tourist destination and those who did hear about it were not disappointed.

Okobo: Story of a Nigerian People was a personal account written with deliberate intention to broaden the frontiers of knowledge about Okobo, its land and people. One rare opportunity that made the storytelling easier than expected was the privileged access to primary sources of information one had as a member of the Okobo community. Okobo elders knew and said so much about themselves and their neighbours that further delay in retelling their story, this time in print, would have had no legitimate excuse.

The craving for a book on Okobo was what gave birth to an idea to begin the story line. The urge was both urgent and persistent, so much that as I crossed midlife, I decided to embark on a self-searching journey to know who I was and where I came from. As this book would reflect, it was what Okobo people said about themselves that was important and not what others said about them. Who one was represented one of the most important concerns of life. A person who could not account for himself or herself and for that matter where he or she came from was rootless and dispensable once the short span of life was over. I shall not be much in error to say that Okobo people deserved to know and say who they were.

Somehow over the years I had remained under the assumption that I knew the answers. Indeed many things were taken for granted because whenever I told people that I am a country boy, I did so just to show off some strong attachment to Okobo, the land of my birth, whereas in terms of knowing all about Okobo people, I was nothing more than who Okobo people would tease as—nkong nsangha ekpu, a gliding ghost.

In substance, all I knew about Okobo and its deep rooted cultural orientations was suspect. I found no possible explanation for a child born and bred in Okobo delicacies like uka-mbuong ma ebre, palm soup and yam to be poor in telling the story of the land. An intense desire to step back in time in order to know more about Okobo people became a motivator then that was far greater than obvious research problems. It was my expectation that similar motivation would be found in the minds of Okobo people and all interested persons. This book was intended to remind such individuals of what they already knew and possibly add a little to what we all might have taken for granted.

At first glance, it was hard to mould a common story for land, people, and economy for Okobo people split in the mainland and the Atlantic base for ages. Like the old Vikings of Northern Europe, one knew Okobo people to be at home either on land or sea. So a passing impulse was to present what could loosely be called the story of the people. But one would not be wrong to call it a social history of Okobo people. To me, however, name or book title was not as important as deeply getting to know Okobo.

Okobo was green, physically and idiomatically. Research challenges were like entering a virgin area with little or nothing to build on. At the time I began to put pen to paper on the story of Okobo, I realised almost suddenly that knowing who you are was not as easy as telling who you are. A new mindset and new eyes were needed to comprehend what presumably was already known. To relate a meaningful story about Okobo meant going out to ask familiar questions once again on unwritten issues in the minds of each Okobo man or woman.

Efforts to look at Okobo with new eyes opened the door to an amazing amount of information I did not know existed. In good measure, this work enjoyed the strange reputation of being the first to start the argument as to who the Okobo people were. So this effort was only intended to be a pathfinder for a more academic enterprise where possible grey areas would be seen with newer eyes.

Sometimes writers stood the risk of getting their subjects wrong, especially if the subject belonged to a category different from that of the author. At the end, cases of misrepresentations usually reduced otherwise great people in the process. The tragedy of Africa was to a large extent caused by prejudiced publications about them in the world media. In my time, I was delighted by the conscious struggle of African writers to rewrite distorted history about them. African writers refused to make excuses, and the results were marvelous in presenting their communities anew to the world.

Okobo was widely known as one of the most interesting communities in the lower Cross River basin. Efforts to recall the history of Okobo also led to some captivating narratives on the distinctive culture of the people. I believe readers would be pleasantly surprised to find something new about Okobo in this book.

Investigation on the cultural history of Okobo required deep knowledge of uyi okobuo, the Okobo language, an aspect I confessed to lack. I still recalled long ago the fun of trying to catch up with classmates in the mother tongue, all in a desperate effort to belong. To make matters worse for me, Okobo people, including my classmates, had little patience for one of their own who could not speak fluent uyi okobuo. The disconnect became more irredeemable when even as an adult one had to live far away from the cultural environment. This admission was necessary to enable readers to show some understanding in their critical assessment of the author’s level of knowledge of some aspects in the subject matter.

However, I had one consolation. Failure to grasp the intricacies of uyi okobuo, as debilitating as it was, did not stop the birth and blooming of an idea. Backing off was not an option. The desire to put Okobo in print on the bookshelves of the world was too irresistible. I also discovered with pleasure that when I was putting my drafts together, so many people in Okobo were willing to make it happen. Without their inputs, the book would have been robbed of its vitality.

I was equally amazed at the abundance of dormant information waiting to be tapped on Okobo. A comprehensive historical research could run into volumes that require the cooperation of experts in a combination of disciplines. My supreme wish was to start something that others will sustain on and on. The scope of the work was simply to tell a moonlight story using the very method Africans have used over the years to tell important issues about themselves. This publication was one small step to place the story of Okobo in the literary map of the world.

As a geographical expression, Okobo was a piece of land of 343,496 square kilometres located between latitude 44' and 44' north of the equator and longitudes 821' and 816' east of Greenwich. The other part of Okobo was bathed by the Benguela current at Atlantic base between latitude 426' and 450' north of the equator and longitude 830' and 908' East of Greenwich. On the political map, Okobo was located at the deep southeastern part of present-day Nigeria.

Some close observers of the layout of the land described Okobo mainland in the shape of the Christian cross, with Esuk Inwang town in the north, Atabong town in the east, Nda town in the south, and Odobo town in the west. The four cardinal points created a densely populated area around the towns of Ekeya, Okopedi, Amamong, Nnung Atai, and Ebighieta. At the Atlantic base, Okobo occupied huge flat marshlands in a delta formation from the eastern bank of Cross River estuary to Rio del Rey.

Okobo mainland dipped into the Cross River drainage system in the north and east where the edges were susceptible to soil erosion at the Okopedi and Ekeya flanks. Along its southern frontiers were gentle depressions and dry riverbeds. It was widely believed that these natural features were factors that enhanced accessibility, agriculture and human settlements hundreds of years ago.

Okobo was not a suitable place to go searching for snow-covered mountain ranges. Except for distant views of blue-coloured peaks of the Cameroon Mountains, there was no precipitous height in sight for miles around. At no point did the land rise over 300 feet above sea level. The expansive green land stretched from border to border with no looming horizon to relieve vision. The low hills and knolls scattered here and there were however good places to command a panoramic view of the land. Perhaps the place that fitted the description of high elevation was Obot Inwang, where one could stand and look down at Okobo land as far as the eye could see. Nnung Udom Odobo too was located where one could hear night celebrations down in Okopedi in the east or Atak Oro in the west.

In time and space, Okobo was regarded as the farthest frontier to the land of Efik, Oron, and Ibibio. A visual survey of the actual locations of communities showed that in simple terms, Okobo land was the only meeting point of land borders for these three big ethnic groups. Some people described Okobo as the only frontier community in the entire Cross River estuary that still survived under such conditions. The fact was well known that by its nature of interaction, frontier communities were usually flash points of tension and hostility. It was not always easy to avert being swallowed up, especially when such a community was hemmed in on all sides by more populous neighbours. Visitors would wonder out loud how Okobo with its tiny population was able to survive as a zone of convergence marked by peaceful coexistence at its common borders with other communities.

In the 1991 National Census, 164,420 persons were recorded to be residents of Okobo. The figure, however, omitted a far larger number of Okobo people resident in Okobo settlements on a 100,000-square-kilometre peninsula curiously referred to as Bakassi in Cross River State. People still wondered how politically correct it was for authorities to split Okobo people into two states at the same time. If the two sections of Okobo in Akwa Ibom and Cross River were grouped together, Okobo would have been a 500,000-square-kilometre land mass with over a million people. Okobo was a mustard seed from which the great tree towered above other trees. In addition to its rich history, Okobo in my mind was a land of prosperous farmers, traders, and fishermen whose evidence of wealth was reflected on its enviable cultural heritage and hospitality. Traditional religion and relationship with the cosmos in the Cross River estuary was common knowledge in some books. A section of this book offers an interesting blend of the practice among Okobo people in a way never done before.

It should be timely to add at this point that Okobo: Story of a Nigerian People was an imaginary effort to re-create history virtually from first-hand oral tradition. The near-perfect vacuum of written literature in the subject was visible threat to be overcome through rigorous cross-checking of multiple sources for facts. References to actual names of people and places were unavoidable and should be deemed absolutely coincidental.

References to events in Okobo raised an important question on the age of things: how old was Okobo, both as a people and as a civilisation? A simple logic was learned in the course of interviewing old people in Okobo. For an eighty-year-old man to talk confidently about his ancestry in reality pushed his generational timeline backwards for at least some 200 years. Yet these folks were able to recall memories of their great-great-grandfathers and mothers with ease. That was an indication of how old things have been in Okobo. A careful effort to reconnect events based on my personal experience with Okobo octogenarians in no small measure supported the estimates of how long Okobo people remembered their history.

Personal experiences as an Okobo native also assisted this work. Quite a lot of information on Okobo were derived from reminiscences of what I could recall happening around me when I was growing up as a child. Subsequent events depended on testimonies of Okobo people I came in contact with at Calabar, Lagos, Abuja, and the United States. That might sound like one trying to hold back the hand of the clock, but by starting from the secured environment of old people who related the story, one could enlarge the period of recovery of a golden heritage that was fast ebbing away. Much care was however taken to avoid compromising old facts about Okobo with the impressionist views of a young man.

The effort to reconstruct events was partly intended to inspire literary capacity of all Okobo students into further research without which Okobo history would fade out of memory when the custodians die. At a more subtle level, this book was a passionate call for contributions from all well-meaning individuals to improve on areas omitted or needing correction. Ideas gathered here were supported by extensive interviews with Okobo people in the fifty-to-one-hundred-years age bracket. Happily, these people demonstrated extraordinary excitement at the prospect of having their opinion in writing for posterity.

An English ethnographer called Keith Nicklin did an exhaustive work on the ekpu culture of Okobo and Oron people. His recent book on material culture of well-known Okobo masters of the art provided me with a mirror to authenticate my findings on the culture of Okobo people. As this book was intended for general knowledge about Okobo, no limit was placed on the type or amount of information that went into it. It was wonderful to talk to any person who clearly understood the essence of printing memories in the sands of time. I owed them all my profound respect and best personal regards.

It should be added that the most compelling reason to publish a book on Okobo was because recorded works on the neighbouring Efiks, Oron, and Ibibios communities had left out Okobo, which was indisputably a major ethnic group in the lower Cross River region. Possibly the skip of Okobo by authors could well have been out of respect for Okobo’s separate identity and sensibilities, as if to say, physician heal thyself. By implication, the task of writing about Okobo was better left for the Okobo people themselves. Even where writers could not avoid the mention of Okobo in their works due to its strategic location in the region, it was only done in passing and hardly satiating.

In a critical review of some of these books, I perceived a struggle on how to treat Okobo. Writers may have known Okobo to be an unavoidable factor in the human history of the region, particularly the estuary area, but they seemed not to have known the right thing to commit to writing. Indeed, an author’s worst handicap was writing what he could not defend. Invariably, authors were more at ease in clearing the entire land and leaving Okobo as a sacred forest to be touched by those who may know better. This book was to pick up that challenge from where they stopped. It sought to restore that broken link by telling a more wholesome story of Okobo. Even though much of the story was told by Okobo people themselves, responsibility for possible errors remained mine. In this pioneering effort, extreme care was taken not to assume too much particularly in sourcing information on datelines from well-researched books. It was likely that those earlier works relied on authentic records so much that one could not at least, for the sake of argument, differ but respect their version of events.

It should be clarified that the area covered by some eighteen century writers like A.J.H Latham, P.Amaury Talbot and Gwyn Jones was not limited to the modern Calabar municipality of Cross River State in context and form. Old Calabar extended from the northern reaches of Arochukwu to Uruan in the west, Idombi now in the Cameroons in the east and Oron communities in the south. That was because of its status as the dominant political and economic power at that time. In effect, any account on Efik of Old Calabar equally meant an account on the peoples of Okobo, Mbo, Odobo, Oron, Idua, Enwang, Ibaka, Ekeya, Ito, Ukwa, Uruan, Ifiayong, Ebighiedu, Ebighieta, Obufi, Amamong, Okopedi, Ibeno, Itu, Okoyong, Ikoneto, Ebughu, Eniong Abakim, Esuk Inwang Okon Eyo, Qua, Efut (land folks), Efiat (water folks), Usakedet, Atabong, and many other towns and villages.

A quick check of the migration map of the region showed no major population shift that was dramatically different from accounts in Forde’s book. Okobo was strategically situated at the crossroads of contact with foreign powers at that time. It would be logical therefore to claim if the Spanish and Portuguese who entered the estuary in the middle of the fifteenth century met any human settlement before they arrived at Calabar in 1450, that community was Okobo, in particular Atabong. These people were a pioneering group of fishermen who inhabited the east side of the Cross River estuary.

If by the year 1472 the Europeans’ arrivals confirmed to finding the estuary already fully settled it stood to reason that people had been where they were for at least seven hundred years and Okobo was part of that community. A prolific writer on Efik literature, E. N. Amaku actually did some honour by recognizing that fact about Okobo in his books. He boldly recognised Okobo as one of the principal actors in the political economy of elite Efik families of that era. Much of what was read in these books agreed with accounts by Okobo people themselves. I could not forget to say how much I was indebted to those authors who proffered such valuable information on the timetable of events.

Be that as it may, I wanted to contend that it would be too restrictive to limit the history of the Cross River estuary to the timelines mentioned in the journals of European adventurers, merchants, and travelers. What was read in the archives was useful to chart sequence of past events, but they were not the only evidence. I accepted them as leads to possible truth, but not the whole truth. A more intelligent proof of the length of stay was read in the patterns of ancestral settlements, skill acquisition, ethnic religion, as well as the quality of life of the people found in a particular place. If such indices were gauged against developments in other regions of the world with earlier recorded history and found to have existed, that would be a more reliable guide to determining the age of peoples and events in the estuary region.

The fifteenth-century European adventurers did not come to find people of the estuary living in caves and throwing arrows. They found settled populations leading civilised standards of living. Anthropologists would agree that the transition of man from the age of bow and arrows to the era of planned towns and cultured habits took thousands of years. Following up on evidence recorded by the Europeans of finding organized settlements in the area, perhaps surprisingly one was on safe grounds to stretch the timeline of civilised settlement of peoples of the Cross River estuary further back for at least a thousand years.

However, I refrained from recycling already known sources in order not to sound too academic. I had asked myself, ‘Why not generate new and previously unrecorded sources of information, especially in the mainland part of Okobo’? This was the area I found those interviewed very helpful.

In the course of putting together data, I encountered a strange puzzle. It was pertinent to ask how it came about that the Okobo people found themselves split into two states of the Nigerian Federation at the same time. The situation was that in their fishing grounds down at the Atlantic coast Okobo people were in accordance with the 1991 constitution grouped into a local government authority in Cross River State. On their seasonal return to the ancestral home in the mainland, they belonged to Akwa Ibom State—a very awkward and confused arrangement.

If memories had not failed, this matter could be remembered as one of the most volatile sources of hot exchanges between politicians and top government officials in Cross River and Akwa Ibom states. At the peak of the struggle for the heart and soul of Okobo, one saw the need to explain to the Nigerian political leaders the obvious abnormality of using the Cross River estuary as state boundary because like the Iron Curtain across Berlin, it split a homogenous ethnic nationality into two federating states. A situation where Okobo people in the so-called Bakassi local government area in Cross River State were regarded as Akwa Ibom people as soon as they touched down on the mainland was, to say the least, an aberration.

One of my main aims was therefore to question the bases for such an ambiguous setup. Inclusion of Okobo in Akwa Ibom was as erroneous as using the estuary to divide kith and kin. The rejection of recommendations in the government white paper of 1996 for Efik kin on both sides of the Cross River channel to remain together was a brazen falsification of historical facts and a timid attempt to gown Okobo people in a cloak that did not fit them.

Time and energy had already gone into explaining this dilemma affecting Okobo people in the manuscript when Okobo settlements at the Atlantic base again exploded in an international dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon with devastating effects that ended up at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The new question that arose as a result of the court case was basically who were the people involved and what was their stake in the international power struggle. Unfortunately, one did not see any indication if even the federal government knew the identity of the people who were ancestral owners of the Okobo Peninsula called Bakassi other than claim the territory to be part of Nigeria. Even when they knew such preliminary issue to be very vital to winning the case or enhancing legal arguments, Nigerian officials made no effort to resolve matters with Okobo people before heading out to insist on their rights of ownership in the world court.

The responsibility to tell Nigeria, Cameroon, and the world about Okobo and who they were automatically became a self-compelling matter for the Okobo people themselves. And sadly, there was hardly any good record then with which to reach out to those concerned. The confusion in the Nigerian camp was unmitigated when the puzzle of how Okobo was split between two states remained unresolved.

In fact, when at the 2006 tripartite meeting in Greentree, New York, Nigeria was forced to comply with the court decision ceding Okobo Peninsula (Bakassi) to Cameroon, I lost my voice on the initial controversy over which state of Nigeria Okobo people really belonged. I was only able to regain my bearing when I chose to definitively conceptualize Okobo in a much larger picture as a legitimate minority member of the international community as contained in the United Nations charter on the rights of minority peoples.

To some extent, these two major events slowed down my work. It even resulted in the change of direction about what this work wanted to achieve. At the time of writing this book, that controversy had not been rectified. The controversial status of Okobo made me to expand my initial focus of just telling the story of Okobo into a discourse on the dual location of Okobo in two politically distinct states. The work had to shift from explaining events in Okobo to attempting to answer two important questions: Who were the Okobo people, and where did they belong in the international politics between Nigeria and Cameroon?

At another level, the book was partly designed in a particular format to make it interesting to all categories of readers. People from Okobo would discover with surprise new ideas about themselves, particularly with regard to their status in the Nigerian state. Tourists might obtain elusive details of the unique ecosystem and rich culture that set Okobo apart from its neighbours. More valuable than general reading was the anticipation that this book was structured and recommended to serve as a reference guide for academic studies.

If attention was to be drawn to the attributes of Okobo people as replicated in their socio-cultural behaviour and physical appearance, social anthropologists and historians would be interested in the evolution of institutions that dated back into antiquity. Naturalists, geologists, and life scientists would learn with a deep sense of accomplishment a thing or two about specimens of life-forms and soil types in Okobo.

Perhaps more than all other considerations, this book was intended as a direct call to all young Okobo people in educational institutions to be interested in themselves and who they were in the midst of Cross River estuary communities. I challenge teachers to find something necessary in this book to teach their students about Okobo. General readers, too, deserve to have books under Okobo title in their private collections.

I encourage Okobo people to document their experiences and not to depend on words of mouth only. But why in a book when oral tradition was so important in storytelling? My quick answer was time is changing. The most critical appraisal of an idea depended on what was read rather than what was heard and seen physically. In seeing, we flatter in order not to be discourteous. But in reading, we weigh matters more critically.

This book was not conceived as a source book on Okobo. It was not even the work of a professional in most areas touched. Yet it tried to broach on issues that can possibly be a catalyst for more detailed work in the future. In a way, Okobo is a book based on oral history that could change over time as new facts or alternative views emerge. It is not therefore necessary to regard it as one cast in concrete.

Above all, effort was made to ensure that copies of the book are placed not only in the library shelves of all schools in Okobo but also in some unexpected corners of the world necessarily as a catalyst to stimulate more publications of detailed study of the Okobo existence. The dream was for Okobo to generate renewed interest across peoples of all ages and disciplines at the prompt of this book, especially now that Okobo has been mentioned at the Peace Palace in The Hague and the United Nations headquarters in New York. This is a product of the power of imagination.

CHAPTER 1

HOMECOMING

I WOKE UP suddenly, my face covered with sweat and my nerves near breaking point. Outside my bedroom window, the sun was unseasonably hot. At a distance, the shrill voice of Nne Nko, the village seller of salted and delicately roasted groundnut, reminded me for real I was back home in Obufi Okobo, the great land of Mbawa Edukana.

How lovely to be back in the place I love.

Since contemplating the journey months ago, I have been in deep thought as to something new to see when I return to Okobo. I have not been home for three years in a row and had built lofty dreams of things to expect. Traveling from one place to another, I have had one or two snap moments to ask no one in particular: Who am I? Where do I come from? On reflection, these two questions tended to fit a universal preamble of human contact round the world, and no time was best suited for a revisit like now when I was set to go home.

There was however an interesting angle to this presumptive feeling about the homeland. Over the years, one had taken liberty at treating the matter of normal social relationship without any serious thought on the identity one carried. Yet at every doorstep, every check-in counter and every occasion to speak to others, I saw the image of an Okobo man in dialogue with the world.

What a definitive moment for me to relive the identity that has shadowed me everywhere I go! Suddenly my mind was already being flooded with bigger questions as plans for my journey took shape.

Who are the Okobo people?

What is their story?

Where are they in Nigerian and international affairs?

As I planned to travel to Okobo, these were tough challenges I resolved to dent, if I fail to crack. The trip to my roots at this particular time was bound to be different from previous visits.

The previous day had been spent in the long travel between Abuja and Okobo, my beloved homeland. Now that I was fully awake, I was able to recall in fine detail all that happened shortly before I reached my destination.

Okobo! yelled the thoroughly fatigued driver.

Yes, Okobo please, I responded from the far rear seat of the rickety Peugeot station wagon. If someone had asked, I wondered if the driver would have sworn on oath that his vehicle had updated road-worthiness certifications to be operated as a taxi. Yes, the noisy clanging of metals became pardonable and told the whole story as the wagon dipped in and out of a million potholes on the tarred road.

But who still had time to complain about such road discomfort around here anyway?

The mere fact that the vehicle was not painted in the approved taxi colour of the state said it all that this was perhaps a retrenched civil servant who put out his personal car on the road just to rein in a few bucks to feed his large family. Ask him why and he will answer, "Ofon akan ino" (better than stealing). I could not agree more. In many ways, it was a great privilege for me to enter this wagon.

Not when I remembered the obstacle race I ran with my traveling bag on my left shoulder to catch a seat in the much-touted last vehicle to Oron through Okobo. I cannot forget others who sprinted with me but lost out because of their big luggages that refused to fit the tiny space at the back of the vehicle. I recalled the confused look on the face of the professional loader known locally as njeburu who tried to either expand the boot of the car or reduce the size of the box without success.

He lost his commission because his passenger could not succeed to join the ride. Besides, the driver did not help matters in the way he was restraining overloading of the car, all to the serious consternation of the wiry loader and his other touts. They openly berated the driver for lack of seriousness in making more money. Indeed, those boys were miracle workers in the way they created additional space in the vehicles for loads with ropes and sticks.

Ekeya, Odobo, or Atabong Junction, again echoed from the front in mechanical pause after each word. It was partly a question, partly a statement, partly an answer. But everyone in the car understood the usual dialogue at this point of the journey.

Atabong Junction, I refrained in response for the second time.

As regular commuters on Uyo-Oron road, my fellow passengers have heard all that before and will echo the sound of the driver to alert dozing riders. Everyone knew nothing offended drivers on our route like a passenger shouting desired stop only a few metres to the point of disembarkation.

Sometimes in deliberate payback to offenders jungle-style, some drivers often pretend not to have heard the stop signal by shouting back, Which place? before rolling to a stop some twenty to fifty metres beyond the required point. Some drivers would murmur under their breath after the passenger had left the car that the walk back to the destination will teach that passenger a lesson on how to alert the driver in time whenever he or she wants to get off the car.

Such a statement would likely make a topic of hot debate for and against for the rest of the journey. This was to say traveling in these parts had its rules. It was therefore in one’s best interest to learn fast and comply.

But wait a minute!

What is responsible for such unfriendly behaviour between the driver and his passengers?

Everybody seemed to have a reason.

A hard-core driver on this route cut the image of somebody who saw nothing but sweat and blood from morning till night. To balance returns to the car owner and still garner enough coins to feed his family, this man will have to wage a virtual war with motor park touts, traffic police, and car repairer or else the day was lost. By the time his car was loaded and he drove out of the park, people had to be careful because their driver had turned into a tinderbox waiting for just one match to ignite.

It was typical of motorists around here to explode at the slightest provocation. If they were not close enough to exchange some unprintable insults for driving error, the hand signals they made to each other was loaded with all kinds of abusive intent that you can read in their faces without uttering a word. They even spit on themselves to make their anger more painful to the perceived offender.

The passengers, on the other hand, were sometimes out there ready to burn out the short fuse of the driver. First they would resist any attempt to pack nine passengers into a car that was purposely built to carry a maximum of five people. Due to the scarcity of vehicles plying the route, they usually lost out there in the usual noisy contest of will. Then they will complain about the waste of time while the motor park managers haggled over the sharing of the collected fares.

Little wonder, the journey was hardly a jolly ride. The passengers were compelled by unavoidable circumstances to travel in great discomfort, and the driver himself was tensed up after very raw deals in the hands of the garage boys.

Anybody for Atabong Junction? the driver shouted again, as if this matter was never resolved

Yes! Drop me at Atabong Junction, I replied, deliberately refusing to add please as I was in no mood to engage the driver in a war of words. I wondered whether he did not hear when I told him that I will be getting down at Atabong Junction. Indeed, there was no need for that. For me, at least I was happy to reach home in one piece and without the car breaking down on the way as it often happened around here.

About two minutes later, the heavily loaded wagon rolled to a bumpy stop on the elephant grasses that hugged both sides of the tarred road. The sight of the grass all around reminded me of my days in the village primary school when teachers would mark out portions for us to cut. I remember how we used to scramble away from taking the portion with this hardy grass because it does not yield easily even to very sharp cutlass. One was not too sure if that was why this particular type of grass was called stubborn grass or if the teacher coined the phrase just to drum the image of the hardy grass into our dull brains. Yes, they used to do that a lot in their method of teaching.

Even the process of coming down from the vehicle was not an easy task. Regular commuters here were familiar with the rule of conduct and therefore careful not to trip off fellow passengers whose temperament was in no way better than that of the driver. Since this time around I was the last to enter, I refused to accept the fact that the car was overloaded. By my status, I was the driver’s friend and an enemy of my fellow passengers. To get off the car, I will have to be careful not to trip on the passengers in front who were obviously reluctant to create enough space for my exit. Sure as tomorrow’s sun, neither the driver nor the passengers had forgotten the noisy quarrel over space and time wasting before the journey started.

I wonder the behaviour of some people, the driver had said blankly to nobody in particular. They enter the motor and sit as if they are seating in their parlour. Even people who cannot buy bicycle spoke, not to talk of car tyre, will come out here and talk just because they hear other people talk.

The driver’s sarcastic comments as he waited for me to step out were deliberately intended to incite support from passengers like me, the driver’s friend. Somehow I did not respond.

One, I was already too tired having transited half of Nigeria in the last twelve hours nonstop, and two, my mind was not in the car anyway. I was gloating over expectations of arriving in my beloved village, Obufi-Okobo. And that meant a lot to me at that particular time than all the petty quarrel of commuters and their driver.

I just hope you are not referring to me, a fat woman sitting in the middle row quibbled.

If I was not mistaken, this woman was definitely itching for a conversation of any kind since we started off the journey. But for inexplicable reasons, the journey, contrary to expectations, had been too quiet the whole time. You can say that again. Sure as hell, we needed somebody to spice up the atmosphere a little.

Just because I complained how you people pack passengers like sardines into this small car does not mean that you should insult me, the same woman continued.

Out of character, the driver did not take that one, but the woman was not done yet.

Who inside here doesn’t know you were talking about me? Whoever sent you, tell him you did not see me. This car I know is not yours. The moment the owner collects the key, you will surely go back to climbing palm trees and stealing chickens. What responsibilities have you in life anyway? Can you feed a family or pay the village dues?

Everyone was listening to the monologue in studied silence. Only once did I think that I heard someone say in a muffled tone, God bless a man who marries this one.

Otherwise, no one found it necessary to rise in support or denounce the woman. Who was even sure the driver was referring to her?

In any case, this was the usual kind of incidents one cannot miss in our commercial commute around this part. Unable to rally up support, the woman was now speaking to herself in an unintelligible dialect as I tried to get down.

Because she sat directly before me, I had to formally ask her to step out of the car to enable me crawl almost on all four from my rear seat. She obliged after what took like an eternity to stand up.

Indeed, I had all reasons to be careful because who knows, given the subsisting tension in the car, any form of stepping on toes or body touch to balance support could have earned me some abusive farewell. I was determined not to provoke any scene. That was why soon after we passed Ndon Ebom and I saw the car lamp beaming on the reflective road sign WELCOME TO OKOBO, I started to rehearse my move with the passengers sitting in front of me.

For me to get out, the woman and two other passengers will have to completely vacate the car and raise their seat. My advanced notification to them was accepted without saying a word. Their body language made that obvious to me. I was therefore relieved that my torturous disembarkation passed off without any embarrassing comment. My Good night and safe arrival compliments directed to people in the car was hardly answered, but was it sufficient to keep the car from zooming off into the night?

I felt offended.

Were they unhappy I had gotten rid of them after I reached the land of my birth and they still had many more miles to travel, or the fact that such compliments were simply too generous around here? Or could it be that their tired eyes were opening and closing in a kind of sleep-wake atmosphere? Perhaps their minds were fixed on issues far and beyond that journey.

Surely it could be part of or all of these reasons. But whatever reason, I was very glad to be home on my soil.

With the fading red rear light of the car down the hill towards Ebighianwa, I suddenly found myself for the very first time in the last eighteen hours standing alone in pitch darkness. It was so dark I could smell it.

What a long day! I said to the darkness.

To embark on this journey, I had woken up at 4:50 a.m. in Abuja with a firm resolve to complete it at all cost because I was to travel by public country bus. Even in the best of time, this was not normally an easy task. The distance from Abuja to my place was not more than an hour by air, but by road and under normal circumstances, it took nothing less than twelve hours. Should there be a breakdown or trouble with the police, this same journey could run into full twenty-four hours or sometimes two full days.

That was why I did not ignore the alarm clock that woke me and everybody at exactly 4:30 a.m. With great determination, I had rolled out of bed, fighting off sleep, on to my knees for the necessary journey prayers, which I never missed. Somehow I had come to believe that if I prayed before starting a journey, I cared less about auto accidents, one of the most likely causes of untimely deaths in my country.

Ante-journey prayers also made me pity fellow passengers who worry too much about accidents, which had not happened. This time around, my prayer was brief, precise, and ended as always with, Lord, Let Thy Will Be Done!

While my wife was warming dried meat that she always insists in my carryon bag, I was waiting for the Magic shaving powder to soften my sharp beards for shaving.

EB! Are you sure the house key is with you or with Nte at Calabar? Koko asked without bothering to come out to me in the bathroom.

I believe it is packed in the traveling bag, I replied with my face firmly fixed on the wall mirror over the wash hand basin.

Sure?

Go and check yourself to be sure.

Can’t you see I am busy?

Oh, I am watching television in here?

No no, just too early for that! Don’t get me started.

Then leave the key matter alone. I shall consider the bridge when—

She did not allow me to complete what has become to her a belaboured excuse by me to be complacent on matters.

Mbok Ete! Don’t bother me with that your bridge, this bridge, that philosophy. Imagine reaching Obufi and there’s nobody at home. Will you go to Oron or Calabar for the key? May be you want to sleep on the verandah?

Thank God, it will be in Obufi. There they don’t steal a person sleeping in front of his house. And you know that is true. You are from there too and you know fully well what I mean. Or has tradition started to change in your part of the village?

Hold it right there, Mr. Know-It-All. Oku would have none of it. So can’t you discuss anything without mentioning how Afahandu is better than Oku?

I did not say that. You are the one comparing notes.

You did! I know you too well, or is today the first day I am talking to you? I would pass for a nonstarter if after fifteen years of marriage, or what is it called, I cannot read you as clearly as the lines in my palm.

Koko, do you know I am traveling today? Why this?

You started it. One thing leads to another.

So you are the cricket who doesn’t close its eyes to sand?

Just listen to that! You’ve started again. You’ve not had enough? Come on, I am right there for you.

No please, my young lady! No, Koko! Not again… was all I could mutter as I desperately sought to end the early morning banter.

Cruel humour was our stock in trade. It was never lacking in our relationship. Somehow it translated into what gave us the strength to carry on. What I may not have realised was for how long we carried the nag. Imagine a loving couple that woke up at such an odd hour to prepare for a far journey only to burn up energy on whether it was safer to sleep on the verandah in Oku or Afahandu. What an inappropriate subject at an inappropriate time! Seriously in my mind, I knew she raised a very pertinent issue. She was right to think ahead to the journey’s end.

Why? one may ask. I should have known having the key was also important as reaching home. Maybe I was too concerned that overcoming possible hassles of traveling in commercial vehicle was already enough headaches. I was going to take it one at a time. Gaining access into the house was therefore not in the top ten checklist until Koko slotted it in.

Come to think of it, it was not for nothing that a car owner like me would choose to subject myself to all the inconveniences of traveling by public transport over such a long distance. There was a compelling reason.

I was traveling at a time of fuel scarcity. Penalty by law was heavy if one was caught carrying fuel in jerry cans. It was equally difficult to see any petrol station to refill your car throughout the entire length of the journey from Abuja to Okobo, a distance of some one thousand miles. I had learned it the hard way in my last journey when a journey of some ten hours took me three days due to lack of fuel along the road.

Traveling by public transport was therefore a lesser of two evils but at the free choice of risking your personal comfort. Chances were those commercial vehicles were poorly maintained and could break down suddenly in places where there was no help for miles around. As I said earlier, sometimes a cross-country vehicle could be seized by the police on flimsy reasons and delayed for what is known as lack of cooperation by the driver.

Also during a period of acute scarcity of fuel, it was common incident on our roads that the vehicle could simply run out of fuel and the driver will look at his passengers in the eye and tell them to find their way because his company had no money-back policy. In situations like this, bad as it was, one could still have the convenience of hiking another lift to continue with the journey.

If however any of these scenarios were to involve a person in his private car, you could be stuck right there for whatever time it took to sort out the problem. I had scrupulously weighed all these options before I decided to travel by public transport this time around.

I was therefore in high spirit as I bade my family, a very large one—Koko, Nneyo, Big Eyes, and Ikio—farewell that early morning before disappearing into the dawn darkness, with my heavy traveling bag slung over my right shoulder.

To get a car going my way, I had to make a distance of some twenty-five miles from Kubwa to Wuse central bus station by waving down a local taxicab. The alternative was to hike a lift on the popular commercial motorbike that can get me there in less than no time, that is, if I was lucky not to fall off the often wild ride before reaching the bus station. At this time of day, both options were scarce, and I was becoming apprehensive of missing my cross-country ride that departs the bus terminal only once in a day.

Apart from that, walking the lonely stretch between my house and the next road junction where I could possibly get a car, with a big bag at that time, was like offering an open invitation to muggers who slept out the night in the open spots of the neighourhood. I was concerned such an attack could abort the journey before it even started.

Luckily, as a good omen of the journey, I did not have to wait for long before a motorbike with its lights carelessly beaming right into my eyes came to a stop before me.

Haggling over fares in times like this was usually in the biker’s favour, so I did not bother to waste precious time on that. We took off at a breakneck speed, my hands desperately grasping the seat frame and my bag delicately perched on the fuel tank of the Yamaha motorcycle. As I balanced tensely behind this man who seemed fully convinced that motorbike taxi business has come to stay everywhere in Nigeria whether people laugh at them or not I could not help to reflect on how it all started. How time changed everything!

I recalled many years ago how using motorcycle as a means of commercial taxi was portrayed by the media as an embarrassing mockery of urbanization. For reasons of humour, it was said to be a predominant means of transport in the southeastern part of the country where I come from. I recalled that the popular TV anchorman, in his hilarious weekly television programme Newsline, did not blink nor give a hoot featuring Calabar, Uyo, and other towns in my part of the country as laid-back for patronizing motorcycles instead of cars as taxi. The message put across was the caricaturing of man’s desperation in times of scarcity in an impoverished society. The programme critiqued claims of urbanization if people can resort to motorcycle for public transit. This business was commonly called akauke, an Ibibio phrase which means, Where are you going?

Come to think of it, frankly, at the time this tale of the unexpected was discovered and beamed across the country in radio and television channels, motorbike taxi was never portrayed as a very practical or real-life means of commuting. Akauke was maligned as retrogressive mentality of a society that has either lost out or innately incapable of attracting boisterous urbanization and city life development. Calabar, which prides itself as the first capital of southern Nigeria, was singled out for media glitz, as if to say it was in fact one big village and not a town, just because of the number of motorbike taxis that ply its roads.

It was however ironical that taunts that was intended to galvanize Calabar to change into modern urban city taxi system was in fact quickly adopted and spread like wildfire across all Nigerian cities, including megapolis like Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja, Kaduna and Onitsha, Port Harcourt, Enugu, you name it.

Suddenly, very suddenly, the cruel joke of Akauke taxi that was discovered in Calabar and Uyo merely for television light entertainment won nationwide respectability as more and more four-wheel taxis quit Nigerian roads without replacement. Almost like an enchantment, Nigerians everywhere across the land were getting caught in the act. Motorcycle taxi was now being patronised by the low as well as the high and mighty to beat heavy traffic, cut cost, or substitute for a taxicab that will never come. It was then Nigerians understood what happened out there in Calabar in the first place.

In their usual manners of refusing recognition to anything from minority areas, Nigerians even changed its original name from akauke to okada, a possible reference to the booming bike taxi commute between the Benin-Ore expressway and the university town of Okada in midwestern Nigeria. When it all started, I am sure Okada people would have rebuffed any association with such an ascription. Akauke was mark of a society in decline.

One therefore felt that since akauke later became an acceptable means of transport, ostensibly due to the worsening ability of more Nigerians to afford the luxury of riding in a car and no longer the telltale identification symbolizing communities that had lost out, honour should have been done to those who started it by retaining its original media name of akauke. On the contrary, okada business has helped to put the name of that town on the world almanac, whatever the merit or lack of it. That was Nigeria for you.

Again, time was when people from these parts, no matter the status in society, were jokingly known as professional houseboys. As in the akauke phobia, it was popularized in a television character called Boniface in the Yoruba-based dramatic comedy, The Village Headmaster.

But when due to the economic hardship that was ravaging Nigeria without mercy like a plague that spares no one, all Nigerians, including the so-called first citizens of Ibos Yoruba and Hausas have shamelessly infiltrated and massively dominated the houseboy business. Deeply amazing to find these people also eager for employment in cooking, cleaning houses, washing clothes, fetching water, opening gates, and running errands for ogas and madams. Believe it or not, many of these so-called first-class citizens now also scramble for menial jobs around households in the Calabar and Uyo urban area.

Yes, houseboy work has indeed become serious business. Now no one looks down on it because senior Nigerians have also entered the field. In fact, those who serve others in their homes and offices are no longer called houseboys or messengers. At home, they prefer to be addressed as housekeepers or security officers. In the office, they loved being seen as office attendants, but all in the same line of duty