Tell Them What Happened To Me - a short story about the Nigerian civil war that ended 50 years ago

“Tell them what happened to me…” he said repeatedly to his nine year old son.

Fear and panic had seized him on sighting a battle ready soldier moving towards them from some 100 metres away.

The winding bush path they walked, helmed by thick forest and wild fallow farms, could only reveal the soldier when they got that close.

“What would the soldier do or not do,” Mazi Amadu Okocha tried to resolve quickly as he held on to his son, Oluebube; now slowing and stopping momentarily.

As his eyes could see, they were the only ones in the vicinity. Anything could happen without interruptions or records!

Nobody is coming or going on the road. No sign of activity either in the bush. The nearest village is some two and half kilometers away.

Amadu felt so strong that this was the most dangerous turn of his life as a civilian in the Nigerian civil war. He mightn’t be as lucky this time as he had been three times before.

“The soldier appeared ready for anything – his menacing visage bore witness.”

His uniform clearly showed he was one of the Nigerian Federal troops.

“He kept marching steadily towards me and Oluebube.”

This was September 1969, tell-end of the Nigerian civil war, perhaps the most dangerous belt of the three year old hostilities.

“Any such encounter at this time could lead to instant death,” Mazi Amadu Okocha had told.

“So I quickly told my nine year old son all I could at the time; he was the only one with me; to tell the story of my death.

He couldn’t think his boy might suffer the same fate. “I must be the target…,” he surmised.  

He had even gone ahead to console the boy, urged him to bear witness to his struggles to cater for the family of 16.

Amadu and son were returning from the popular yam market in Nkporo, about 15 kilometres away from his Amaeke home town in Abia state, where he had gone in continuation of his petty trading.

Few months to the end of the war, things were said to have gone absolutely out of control – “anybody, no matter the age could be killed for the flimsiest reasons.”

“Suspicion or in anticipatory self-defense,” Amadu said.

He remembered that some people were so killed at “Agbo mmini, Amaeke early that year”  by a detachment of federal soldiers on the allegation that a handful of Biafran soldiers ran into that section of the village.

At this time, the federal troops had infiltrated most of Bende communities but didn’t quite have full control.

“We thought of ourselves more as Biafrans,” Mazi Okocha pointed out.

In the innermost being of the people, the federal soldiers were the “vandals” and enemies so well described and scandalized by Radio Biafra before they arrived.

In the day, they were “Nigerians;” in the night and beyond the sight of the invading federal soldiers, they were “Biafrans”.  A chameleonic way of surviving the ever mystifying undercurrents of the civil war, you may say.

The trip to Nkporo was one of the many Mazi Amadu Okocha made with his boy as a trader in food commodities striving to survive the very harsh economic condition of Biafrans.

The nine year old had become his permanent escort, better, a partner since the older ones could not afford to show up for the risk of being conscripted into the Biafran army or killed by the federal soldiers on the suspicion of being disguised members of Biafran BOF, the guerilla fighters.

Okocha had left his thriving textile manufacturing and trading business in Aba in 1968, trekking the whole of about 70 kilometers along with his nephews to Amaeke, his home town to escape from the rampaging federal troops who took the Enyimba city from the Biafrans.  

Like other Biafrans, he had moved to his ancestral home with the hope of escaping the ravages even if it was temporary.

Back in the village, he resorted to farming cassava and other local staples, selling off his rich collection of clothes and other belongings as well as doing petty trading on yam. 

Of all the places in the part of old Bende, Nkporo further down the north of Abia state, had the most fertile land and was renowned for growing very big yam tubers. For the large productions, the yams sold cheap.  It was the Mecca for those looking for low priced farm produce especially yam.

He wouldn’t do the alternative afia attack, the more lucrative but dangerous night trading across military posts of both the federal and the Biafran soldiers.

The distance from Amaeke to Uburu in Ebonyi state, the location of the main attack markets was farther – some 35 kilometers or more following bush paths.  

Only the strong-hearted, younger and Biafran soldiers on AWOL, absent without leave, dared to do the afia. The Nkporo market was a pleasant alternative being much calmer and safer by all assumptions and was the home town of some of Mazi’s former business associates.   

The rural town of Nkporo provided the escapist nostalgia and pleasantries with old folks and relaxation away from the “heat” of the unpredictable occurrences in his village, either from the Biafran or Nigerian federal troops. 

Okocha had weighed the risks and at a meeting of his family of 16 including three wives, announced his decision.  

“Need to do something for our upkeep; a little is better…,” he told members of family.

“Nkporo trading was only less risky and nearer, I know; one can still be killed either by the federal or Biafran soldiers,” Okocha explained.

He chose Nkporo for all the reasons.

Mazi had had a number of trips to and from Nkporo for the last three months until that fateful day and never felt danger was imminent.

“I first cheated death when I escaped arrest by the federal soldiers who worked on the information squealed by one of the leaders of the community regarding a leadership group known as 29 Committee,” Amadu said.

“…leadership group of 29 members, federal troops suspected to have had links with Biafran armed forces.”

He wasn’t fazed that there could be a second time or more times as the war unraveled but not on Nkporo road.  

Between March and April, 1968, Okocha had also escaped being conscripted into the Biafran Armed Forces.  

At age 54, he looked very much younger because of his fitness and smart appearance.  

What gave him recognition with women and men almost got him into the “trouble” of becoming a reluctant Biafran soldier.

On escaping conscription into Biafran Army, Mazi Okocha said, “they came totting their Madison rifles and were hurling young men into waiting pick-up vehicles. You know what? I jumped over the fence, meandered through azu oka, half-done raffia fence and into iyi Okpokwuru, the river bordering our compound.”

Mazi Okocha would argue that he wasn’t just a coward but mindful that he was the only surviving male of his parents of blessed memory.

The third time he escaped life endangering situation was in January, 1969. The bullets of the   federal troops who had come on a sting operation narrowly missed him after some bullets whooped past him chopping off a portion of his right ear. The scar is unmistakable.

A member of the 29 Committee had turned sabo, the Biafran lingo for a saboteur or any Biafran who had taken sides with the Nigerian Federal troops.

Sam Anya had become the second person to leak the information on the inner workings of the Committee to the federal troops and the surreptitious moves of the Biafran BOF in his community.  

Some argued Sam gave the information under duress while others felt he had always been jealous of one of the prominent members of the war committee, a younger richer man popularly known as Mascot who he named as the leader. It was on the strength of this piece of information however it was made available, which prompted the raid on the community that day.

Luckily, some of the key members escaped including Mazi Amadu and thereafter operated under cover.

Meanwhile, Sam Anya was held by the federal soldiers and was later executed.

It was rumoured that the “soldiers killed him with their bayonets because they needn’t waste their bullets…. ”

One of the killer soldiers supposedly had told a friend in a drinking joint in Okoko that “we killed him, anybody who could betray his brothers would kill any other.”

Okoko was the nearest settlement to the camp of the Nigerian federal troops at Umunna-ato war camp.

So, death stalked Mazi Okocha like most people during the civil war, the reason why he was often verbalizing his will.

When he sighted that soldier on their way to Amaeke away from Nkporo heading to Apuanu the next village, it didn’t matter whether he was Biafran or Nigerian; he thought this was the closest face to face encounter.

“To run as usual or duck, leave my poor son behind … I couldn’t make a decision? Confront the soldier as he was alone? Thought, it could be too much a risk”! Okocha reasoned

The federal soldier appeared to be missing his steps as he got closer to Mazi and son.

It could have been the weight of his ammunitions, Amadu thought as he tried to guess which operation the soldier was coming from.

From some 100 meters away, you couldn’t notice that except that he was fully kitted like one ready for battle or challenge.

Mazi turned to his boy, Oluebube, “tell them what happened to me.  May God keep you all! “

“It is over as you can see; meta obu ghu ike, inula. Take heart ehn, take heart.”  

As they got much closer, few meters from the soldier, Amadu became hysterical, greeted the soldier – “Good afternoon sir, good afternoon sir, afternoon sir” in hurried sequence.

“But the soldier never responded; “he just bumped into us and from there I couldn’t say what happened,” Okocha said.

Before he could regain consciousness, Oluebube had fallen and lying face down in the fallow farm land on the side of the bush path.   

“Thank you sir, thank you sir, don’t mind the stupid boy,” Mazi tried to pacify the federal soldier who kept moving away from him and son.  

The soldier continued on his way, until he went beyond the sight of the two journey persons or a section of the bush covered him.

He never had time to look at Okocha or ask their normal question – “wetin da reason? “What is it?”  

Amadu gathered his son, increased his pace, walked and ran at the same to ensure they moved completely out of the sight of the soldier in case he decided to return for them.

Mazi Okocha’s breathe rose and fell understandably but the soldier kept walking towards Nkporo, himself and son towards Apuanu, the village next to his home.

As they got to the centre of Apuanu village, a distance of about one and half Kilometres from the scene of the incident, Mazi turned to his son, Oluebube, “ekele duru Obasi d’relu.  Hmmm, thank God,” he sighed.

“But let’s move faster, faster…” as if the soldier was going to return for them. The boy struggled to match the increased pace of his father as they headed home less than two kilometers away.

With the increased pace, they got home panting but it didn’t matter.

It was Mazi Okocha who told the family members what happened to him. Oluebube didn’t have to.

By Ndu Paul Eke, a writer in Abuja