Great Okrika Part 1

Opukirike or great Krike is Okrika.

This is my home town. I was born here and raised awhile for some time before I was taken to Kafancha, a part of Jos in the North, before I finally settled in Jos city.

Here in Jos, I start my primary school education up to primary 3.

Due to the coming war, I move with my parent and four junior siblings down to the south and now I am at Okrika, my home town and place of birth.

This is the place where my placenta is buried and it has summoned me home.

Okrika is a country of rivers domain. Years later, some youths described it as Okrika London. It is an Island surround on all sides by water, with feeder delta creeks routes.

Okrika has an outlet to the Atlantic ocean due north. It is here that ocean going vessels can enter the island to both ATC and then marine base. Again, from this northern boundary, very big marine vessels or ships enter and leave the first ever sea port at Port Harcourt.

When I return from Jos, I see that this little but great country has only one English link standing in its glory. It is the famous African Technical Company or ATC. 

After the war, it became just a shadow. Its remain is now buried under the sea due to dredging of the river front.

ATC is an English trading enterprise. I do not know what is traded. But the company I gather is a mercantile venture. It is located on a deep sea port.

It made history as the first English trading company in Okrika.

It is at this ATC terminal that you can enter and leave the island or kingdom. Other route exists, but ATC is the main and the most important.

I think also that ATC has an outlet, branch or station at the deep marine base sea channel for the tide rarely falls low here. Marine base affords all sea vessels to Okrika any time day or night.

24/7 the river is waiting for boats coming and going. At other points you have to wait until the tide rise again.

It is on record that the Union Jack or the British wants to build a sea port in the Eastern part of Nigeria. But survey on Old Calabar, which is also sea coast seems very unreliable and Okrika shows that a sea port can be build for ocean going vessels.

The result was the Port Harcourt sea port and others.

Being raised in the city of Jos, I initially found Okrika hard to accommodate me and my four little brothers and sister: two males and two females. Jos city is somehow westernized. 

At Okrika, I saw 10 years old boys and girls of my age go completely naked. They do not even wear pants.

In Jos, you have to wear your pants. Even the bushman when he and his family come up to the city covers their nakedness with some leafy foliage. 

Seeing a girl of my age and up to 13 years naked is a belief I learnt in Jos brings death to a person. So I and my juniors think we will die soon!

I believe I will die and told my mother we all go back to Jos sooner not realizing that home coming is escape from death.

She was laughing, while I and my juniors were crying and relations what to know what is going on, because I speak in Hausa language to her. Her explanation sent them to roar in laughing too!

The belief, that to see the private sexual parts of the opposite sex cause death is even strong with my juniors at that time. It is something we all learn when we are in Jos, although we have not seen a death body.

There is a lesson in covering one’s private parts here. The death it carried has nothing to do with untimely or timely death.

Going all the way of the earth is normal. When the time comes, one dies and go to his or her creator.

I think sexual arousal is the issue as I realize when I fully grow up to a man.

Sex can kill a man. The opposite is also true. Should a man’s heart trod after the girl in seeing her naked to the private parts. Some men or women have fallen victim to this process even on mere flirtation before the opposite sex!

Or we would say that the man (even some women too) viewing the opposite sex nakedness can be arouse and desire sexual intercourse intensely and immediately. The desire when very strong can lead to a positive or negative effect.

That is the issue here.

There was this famous prophet and king in the bible on seeing the nakedness of his neighbor’s wife while she bath, sent for her and had sexual intercourse with her immediately.

Did the king died? Yes, he died to all common sense and reason. He has not a right to take his neighbors wife or any other girl to exploit the damsels sexually. To cover up his evil act, he send his soldiers to kill a private and husband of the woman! He proved this or his action is wrong when he was told of a similar incident committed by a lord of his status.

You can read the story in the Christian bible second Samuel chapter 11 and 12.

There was this story of valentine day festive. We take it was due to love affairs. But whether it was due to sexual arousal, I do not know. But it implied that sex is involved.

This is the morale of dying.

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Home Coming

Okrika is my home town.

In 1967 there were political uprising in the northern parts of Nigeria.

Jos, the city I live is strongly affected. 

I remember I was a boy of 10 years at the time.

This was as a result of the first military coup in the history of the country.

The leader of the coup army major Chukuma Patrick Nzeugwu Kaduna is Igbo by ethnicity. Popularly known a Chukwuma Kaduna, he was an intelligent officer and head of the military school, Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna.

Chukwuma was born and raised in the North and grew up there.

Chukwuma was so hard during the coup that it resulted in the death of some Northern political leaders. 

Famous among these were the prime minister Tafawa Belewa and the Sarduna of Sokoto.

This generated the feeling that the coup was a section of the army or country military raising arm against another ethnic group.

There was reprisal in the north against the coup.

The Igbos and the Hausa/Fulani who had been living peaceably for long before the British united the northern and southern Nigeria as one country for centuries were now enemies.

One should not blame the Hausas for not understanding the motive of the coup planners. The Hausa/Fukani were not education well in the western sense. What is important to them was that their leader was killed during the execution of the coup, despite the fact that both an eminent Yoruba and Igbo army officer were  also killed during the process. 

The Hausa/Fulani mindset was fear and to get rid of the Igbo fast.

Thus the southerners particularly the Igbo who were doing business in the north were seen as enemies.

All these I understand in later years during my history lessons.

The result was the revenge of the north against the south as seen in the beginning. The southern were no longer safe in the north.

It is in the midst of these events that the southerners begin to flee from the north of the country.

One evening, my father hurried up with his bicycle from his workshop, and told my mother to get ready. He sound very urgent. It frighten my mother. He want us to go home with the remaining south bound train.

Within an hour or so I think we were all ready.

We took a taxi to the railway or train station.

We arrived in time, get our ticket and board the train to the south or to my country.

My father had to arrive a week later.

The train carry more southerners especially those from the Igbo country. 

The journey is however not a happy event! 

Station after station that the train arrived, we were all checked for fleeing Igbo army personals.

Whoever is suspect to be an Igbo soldier was pull out and killed by the vigilant Hausa/Fulani soldier.

Crying and lamentations follow the journey day and night. We all can plague to death any time.

Even when my train crosses the Niger Bridge, the cry of the Igbo’s seems to rent the earth!

This is a happy cry. At this junction, my mother told me we are now on a much safer place. We will sooner or later arrive at Okrika country.

But I do not understand all this until years later during my college days; and especially in my history classes on the course of the Nigerian civil war.

I believe Okechuku and me were on the same train. We live in the same environment and I do not see reason why he should stay behind. Okechukwu is Igbo. As a civilian, he and his family is not safe at Nasarawa, Jos.

I saw some of my school mates in the train but not Oke. He was on the same train. We were all going to our respective country. He to igbo land and I to Okrika Kingdom.

I think it took at most a week before my train arrived at the Port Harcourt railway terminus.

It was already night. 

We unbound the train and my mother who knows the place well took us her children to Okrika water side. Here we took a hand paddled canoe to Okrika.

If we had took a boat fit with a motor engine, we would have arrives in less than an hour. But it took that long with a dugout canoe.

I remember the scent of the river and the swamp vegetation. The cool breeze refreshed our mind and body. The evening air seems more so refreshed. This is the first time I travel back to Okrika from any where else.

We arrived very late into the night at Okrika and went to sleep.

But I was soon waked in my sleep. It was my mother who woke me up. She wants me to meet my uncle. He was a lawyer, and a law nut; and in later years became a Justice of State High Court, having been a Federal High Court Judge earlier.

I went back to sleep and wake up the following day.

But I do not know the day whether it is a Monday, or Tuesday or Wednesday.

All I know is that I woke up fresh to meet many people in the extended and immediate family.

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