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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