By Tony Afejuku
Sapele and Warri are two significantly important Nigerian cities that need no introduction, special or un-special, from the historic, realistic and imaginative imagination of this creative creator whose impression of things is often – if not always – determined by features which fit the descriptions that convey meaningfully what must be conveyed – meaningfully.
Sapele and Warri, as very many people know, are two unique cities, two uniquely nifty cities, from whichever dominant or un-dominant impressions or perspectives open to us to define the cities. Of course, the cities’ dense and denizenly denizens and brought-ups where-ever they are always have something, something beautifully beautiful, to say about them in the same way that those of Benin, the antique city, allow their imaginations and conceptions to beautify it.
Indeed,
I have since accepted these three cities for different reasons as my rococo
cities: Warri, the rock-oil city of a kingdom that produced the first
university graduate in sub-Saharan Africa, Sapele the rock-and-roll city
housing the Athletic Club, the first European recreation club in West Africa,
at least, Benin, the un-lucidly lucid city of unforgettably rich antiquity.
In the beautifully good old days we could comb the three great
cities in one day. As a matter of fact, we combed them in one day as we hopped
into different cars and jalopies and traversed different latitudes and
longitudes in Benin, Sapele and Warri at the same time. Going to Safi and Wafi
and Bafi and vice versa to do what we must do show-business-wise,
play-hunting-wise, dame-hunting-wise, solid business-wise, education-wise,
research-wise and otherwise was a peruked experience, so to say, of a classical
theme in our years and years of how we enjoyed and took ourselves seriously.
Everything we tried to see, everything we tried to feel,
everything we tried to touch, everything we tried to bite and eat, everything
we tried to experience proved beautifully un-disappointing – because the
centuries we knew and did not know tried to maintain themselves in our
imaginations and memories.
But as at today, as at now, time has since travelled by and has
assumed a dimension of space that has jeopardised and shattered our compassion
for the dead and gone centuries. Why couldn’t they stand still and maintain
themselves in the present?
Let’s terminate the sweet rigmarole that remains ever sweet in our
recollections of the then and then decades that rolled into centuries. Four
years ago, I did a piece, an engaging piece, on the lamentable condition of the
Benin-Sapele Road. Then – if my recollection is not losing its plume – I put
the Federal Government and the governors of Edo State and Delta State
respectively on the radar of the deplorable deplorableness. I did that in the
hope that the Federal Government and the respective governments of the two
Niger Delta states would do something memorably drastic to return the
Benin-Sapele-Warri Highway to its time of artful and civil engineering
agreeableness.
The deplorability of the road then was such that induced from the
eyes of all those living in Benin, Sapele and Warri and inter-city and inter-
state travellers tears of unhappiness. The tears compassionated the ever busy
highway/road which I then christened Ouagadougou which I deliberately employed
to alter the original meaning of the capital of Burkina Faso (“Land of Upright
Men” or “Land of Incorruptible people”).
I
altered the original name that depicts its beauty to mean Benin-Sapele-Warri
hole and hell of a road on account of the useless and hopeless hours of delays
of travellers and commuters on that road whose rottenly rotten portions have
become far more rottenly rotten than they were then. The jaw-breaking or
mouth-twisting pronunciation of “Owa-ga-do-gu” or “Wa-ga-do-gu” compellingly
makes ugly the essentially original name of merriness in a land of people of
revolutionary colour, fervor and flavour.
On Friday, September 15, 2023 I had to make a trip I could not
avoid to Warri the once merry rock oil city of ogbologbos and cherishers of
decent decency. My plan was to make a brief stop-over in Sapele, Papa’s land of
rock-and-roll ogbologbos of ogbologbos who nor dey fear kain. But how would I
navigate my way through Benin our Benin where the once popular Benin-Sapele
Road has turned itself into a baser and baser road day by day by government’s
neglect of it? The terrifyingly and horrifyingly base road has been emboldened
by our respective calamitous rulers over the years of calamitous nastiness.
Two days before my expected trip I contracted a driver who I was
going to hire to take me to Warri aforesaid. I was away in one of the Western
States. I got to Benin at an ample time a day before my trip to firm up my
agreement with the chap who was to take me to my destination(s).
For the one-way trip he was going to squeeze from me N65,000. I
pinched myself. The guy-man don catch mugu wey nor be mugu. I tried to bargain
with him as best as I could. He was not ready to come down. He mentioned what
the trip would cost him petrol-wise and dwelt agonizingly on the condition of
the road – especially the condition of the Benin by-pass and the Ologbo stretch
before the cross-over to Delta State.
I gaped with amazement. The journey via any transport company
would not cost me as a single passenger more than N3,500. In my determination,
I suggested that we should go to Warri via Agbor. He said that the Agbor route
was even worse than the Ologbo one. In any case, if I was seriously serious
about embarking on the trip via the Benin Agbor route he would accept from me
nothing short of eighty-five thousand naira.
In my desperation I suggested the Benin-Jesse route. He smilingly
kept quiet. But when he eventually spoke to open his thought he said he would
not dare to take that route even if I or anybody offered him the world.
Herdsmen had kidnapped, captured, maimed and killed a number of persons on that
axis. I could feel myself swept back through time as when an ancient memory of
the Warri wars or the Benin massacre comes back to mind. I jettisoned the chap
and reduced my reality to making my trip very early not later than six o’clock
in the morning of my trip by a commercial vehicle.
By 5:45 AM on the dot I was at “Warri-by-air” motor-park on the
day of my trip. Only one Sienna car was available. On enquiry, I was told that
other vehicles and their drivers that were not at the park would likely not go
to Warri on account of the road-less road at the Ologbo stretch which no
road-rollers could immediately redeem. Before long the vehicle was ready to
take us to Warri. In fact, by 7:30AM that morning we were already at Ologbo.
O my dear readers, we were held and holed up there even though our
road-hog on the steering performed all the magic he could possibly perform.
There was no movement to and from the opposite direction.
Almost
everyone on the steering of each vehicle was a road-hog after all! I lost my
sense of arithmetic, algebra and geometry as our dare-devil driver tried to
meander his way without gaining any advantage. By four o’clock in the afternoon
we were still glued to the muddy mud of a wet road of gullies upon gullies.
All the vehicles were plugged into a single outlet-less outlet and
charmed, compelled to remain there. And the trucks (trailers) that
conservatively numbered well above three thousand appeared to me to have caused
a magnetic storm. It was a cloudy day when the rains did not pour down, yet
muddy and ugly Ologbo remained muddily muddy and watery Ologbo of wetness. A
Benin-Warri journey that ordinarily should not exceed one hour even on a bad traffic
day was already taking me ten hours plus! I must do something.
My slight luggage and I embarked on a fresh journey on a
motor-bike trip of not up to two kilometres from Ologbo to Koko junction in
Delta State and which ordinarily should not fetch the Hausa Okada rider N200
squeezed from me N1,000. But I was happy to hop on the Okada pontoon taking us
– my luggage and I – to the other side – Koko junction aforesaid – where there
were several waiting vehicles taking passengers to Warri and Sapele respectively.
On the Okada leaping and snaking through the devilish waters of the
unfathomable gutters of a wicked road, I made sure that the Okada rider did not
mock the storm and spirit of gravity. I compelled him to make his motor-bike to
maintain its/his road-holding. No limb must I lose! Others who did what I did
boarded the same vehicle that flew us to Warri where a stormy rain welcomed us.
The rain beat me and hammered away the sticky potopoto all over me
as I boarded a keke that took me to my Warri special haven. When did I arrive?
Your guess is as good as a guess that is both right and wrong. My return
journey was smoother and better, I now being a thorough expert on how to enter
and get out of Warri without the fear of darkness unleashed on us by wickedly
wicked or demonically demonic leader-less leaders: the Nigerian man’s burden.
I had four assignments to accomplish
in Warri. I completed three and decided to leave after reaching the conviction
that what I achieved was much. The state of the Koko junction and the crushing
Ologbo stretch largely influenced my decision. The road is ever unpredictable;
is ever cruelly unpredictable. Anything could happen any time. So it would be
better to make my leap away from my dear city earlier than my home consciousness
could allow.
What
this also meant was that I would unexpectedly jettison the thought of hanging
out for a while in Sapele with my fellow grand friends, bright and benevolent
chaps, and, to boot, strong-faced and strong-hearted geniuses when any occasion
wants an evidence of it; and who, like my fellow Wafarians, were and are ever
ready to give me breathless attention – if you know what I mean. Wafarians and
Safarians never ever forget that they belong to one huge family in the manner
of Jewish Synagogue members. Bafarians also possess this consciousness
underscored over their great centuries by kindred instincts.
Wafarians, Safarians and Bafarians are Wafarians, Safarians and
Bafarians anytime every time, all the time anywhere. They develop a passionate
zeal for Wafarianism, Safarianism and Bafarianism without blind sentiments.
Their ism is the ism of progress, of education to the highest level, of keen
and acute human-rights consciousness and togetherness in diversity. Wafarians,
Safarians and Bafarians are beautiful, fundamental and devout brothers and
sisters who always will resist oppression, exploitation and devastation of
their land. But why has this collective family, the pride of the Niger Delta
silently mum on the Ologbo infantilism, the Ouagadougou infantile disease that
has become the measles not only of the Niger Delta but of the country and
mankind as a whole?
In my Warri and as I hopped a Bolt taxi to the park where I hopped
a hired vehicle to Koko Junction where I again hopped an Okada to Ouagadougou,
where I finally hopped another vehicle to Benin, this thought did not depart
from my radical consciousness. What has compelled us to be too eager to
sacrifice our profound faith in our peculiar mannerism not devoid of our
positive ism (Wafarism/Safarism/Bafarism) in order to conform? The civil war
years calmly penetrated my memory. How we barely thirteen year olds with stones
and sticks and bottles and nails led by Empire, our commander, confronted our
tormentors. Nietzsche would certainly applaud us for not being satisfied with
ourselves as we were not satisfied with the rest of things at all in the
Nigerian civil war years.
In my next trip to Wafi or Safi I would remind the living mates of
that era of this and table before the ones of the current times our conscious
attitude that is entirely different from the un-earnest and seemingly thwarted
impulse and dwarfed propensities of now. Our national and un-national
governments have taken us for a ride for too long.
The way we are going only motorcycles (and maybe kekes) will be
taking us to enter Sapele and Warri from Benin in the not distant time. Forget
to travel to Sapele and Warri if you are a heavy luggage-journeyer. Soon buses
and motor cars and trucks and tankers going to Sapele and Warri (and Rivers
State and Bayelsa State, Akwa Ibom State, Cross River State and Cameroon) and
Lagos and the Western States through Benin in reverse journeys will soon be
embarking on mission no head-way.
The
Lagos-Benin-East-West Road is the busiest highway in Africa – yet it has no
highway or road worth its name especially from the Benin axis. The way things
are now every inter-city business or trade and significant social as well as
political, religious, academic and agricultural gatherings in our geographical
area and political zone, will soon be non-existent. Of course, there is hardly
any industry anymore in Sapele and Warri, and our great port cities are now
port-less cities. I can’t place any important name on any industry that is an
industry in Benin as well.
What can or must be done? I must not pretend to appear or to state
here that I have the answers. Yet let me argue that. Engineer David Umahi, our
new Federal Works Minister, must concede that, for a start, we deserve to hop
to Sapele and Warri (and other places in the Niger Delta) from Benin through
modern roads that are modern roads, through modern highways that are modern
highways.
This minister who made his well moneyed monies that flew him
highly successfully to Ebonyi and national politics from the Niger Delta should
compel himself immediately to do this and set machinery in motion accordingly.
Besides, Benin to Sapele and Warri deserves a railway now. The cities similarly
deserve air-ports that can enable us to enter them with ease. Warri and Benin
have air-ports but as at now passengers don’t enter the cities straight from
either air-port. Sapele deserves an air-port or an air-base of sufficiently
sufficient quality to support a modern road, an efficiently efficient railway
of durable durability to link Benin, Sapele and Warri.
The money to do so which is our money, is very much available so
no one, nobody not from our geo-political region should burden themselves with
catastrophic envy and jealousy and tragic bitterness. Our region’s political
lords and sweet and smooth talkers should now employ the application of their
erudition to a form which will be the proper vehicle for the minds which have
amassed the erudition for the labour of judicious politics akin to developmental
and progressive politics.
Now I must quote scintillatingly scintillating Owojecho Omoha,
Benue State-born University of Abuja don, one of my well possessed readers, in
full:
“No government, of course, except the irresponsible regimes we’ve found ourselves
in rejecting, yet forcing themselves on us, would want an immaculate writer,
critic and columnist like you, to travel on our roads, our death-trap roads.
Even if you fly, they would want that you sleep throughout and if by chance you
arrive safely, you forget the high fares, and adulterated aviation fuel used to
fly you on the air.
“Responsible
governments don’t allow roads get battered this much to take you to Sapele and
Warri. You will go, you will write, you will let the world know how you feel for
yourself, and the people. And I saw what I wanted to see, the “dame” corner of
your travelogue, and the old stories on Warri to Sapele, are completely
complete. When next you want to go through the roads, don’t engage drivers or
Okada, they mess up critics and poets. Go by air, I mean, traditionally, by
air, so that governments will get less attack and less high fever when you
return, O Tony Afejuku, the restless blessed bullet of a writer!”
What do I say to Professor Owojecho Omoha as a response to him for
his concern as a poet and humanist who bears the pain of Safarians, Wafarians
and Bafarians? I must invoke Nietzsche for him: “He who cannot bless shall
learn to curse.” You will never ever curse us.
Now let me sign off abruptly. The colours of the late morning and
the sky when I was hopping out of Warri were delicious grey and dreamlike charm
of whiteness. At the Warri Park there were no passengers ready to board any
Benin-by-air vehicle. There were several ones waiting to convey journeyers to
Koko Junction. I wanted to obliterate any despair, any delay and any
misadventure on the way. I wanted, in short, a faultless execution of my return
journey to check at least the very troubling tooth-ache Ouagadougou caused me
before I entered Warri. Thus the traveller hired a cab.
Two chaps begged to enter my vehicle. I agreed without demanding a
kobo from them. The first one, who could not be outside the thirty-something
years mark, I learnt on the way was a northern truck driver whose truck had
been at Ouagadougou for well above fourteen days. He left his motor-boy behind
to come cool down and relieve his raging elevated tension in Warri with a
cherished new love of his life.
His
assistant was to alert him once there was the slightest hope of a stupendous
movement towards Benin. He was answering his boy’s call. The second, a very
young-looking chap, was an Ijaw and a professional diver of an oil company in
Bayelsa. He was going to Benin to spend his two weeks off-shore holiday. Three
of us would disembark at Koko Junction.
We bonded very well. Everything was at a standstill at the Koko
Junction. I could see the despair, shooting from the stout frame of the
northerner from Kano City. I cheered him up as we – the Burutu boy
professionally diving in Bayelsa and I – took our leave to hop on our
respective motor-bikes to Ologbo, the Ouagadougou of travellers’ joyless pains.
The hell-hole was still the hell-hole with several broken down trucks, tankers
and buses and some assorted brands of cars.
I was not in no way surprised when the news of the recent fire
disaster cold-heartedly climbed to the handsome sky brimming with our tears. I
hope my Kano journeying companion and his motor-boy were spared. Or am I
enormously selfish to think only of them? Let me answer by sighing and gazing
into the distance. The battered road cannot batter and hammer our humanity out
of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment