About a kilometre from Taraku area was another Operation Zende Hilux, with a soldier standing in the middle of the road. The soldier flagged us to stop, but Old Soldier turned on the left hand side and sped off. The soldier waved his riffle at us dangerously. The driver said we shouldn’t mind them, that its money they were looking for. I said he should have stopped and that they wouldn’t kill us. Some passengers who were discussing 2015 elections said they will delay our vehicle and what the driver did was right. Ahead on both sides of the road were green grasses and trees. Before the Howe community were three mobile policemen standing by the roadside, close by there were four healthy-looking, bare-bodied children, laughing and waving at us. None of the passengers acknowledged the cheers from the poor kids. I had to do that. There were few round-shaped dwarf mud huts roofed with thatches around the Howe settlement. They are farm houses.
About a kilometre from Taraku area was another Operation Zende Hilux, with a soldier standing in the middle of the road. The soldier flagged us to stop, but Old Soldier turned on the left hand side and sped off. The soldier waved his riffle at us dangerously. The driver said we shouldn’t mind them, that its money they were looking for. I said he should have stopped and that they wouldn’t kill us. Some passengers who were discussing 2015 elections said they will delay our vehicle and what the driver did was right. Ahead on both sides of the road were green grasses and trees. Before the Howe community were three mobile policemen standing by the roadside, close by there were four healthy-looking, bare-bodied children, laughing and waving at us. None of the passengers acknowledged the cheers from the poor kids. I had to do that. There were few round-shaped dwarf mud huts roofed with thatches around the Howe settlement. They are farm houses.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
After the Mbaga area were four mobile policemen, no roadblock, but standing by the side of the road and waved us to stop. Old Soldier refused to obey them. Rather he brought out his left hand through the window, used the right hand to hold the steering wheel, and drew small circles in the air with it (meaning he was coming back to them). In front were three soldiers and two mobile policemen stood at a checkpoint. They were not really stopping us. Their target was to use us to stop a big truck carrying load of wood behind us. At Gbache, there were about ten operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) standing in the middle of the road. They wore mufti and had on red jackets and on the back boldly printed, ‘ NDLEA’ . They were brandishing small assault guns which looked like the Russian’s SR-3 “ Vikhr”(whirlwind) guns. They didn’t stop us, but were stopping other vehicles. After St. Vincent Hospital we diverted northward, and passed through Abenga and arrived Ahumbe in the Gwer Local Government Area around two p.m. Before Igbor, about twelve young men were arguing violently as if they were at war, pointing fingers at one another. We passed the Igbor police post on the left side of the road and later Agundo, another mobile police checkpoint and the Ikpayongo community. Both sides of the road had large expanse of land which seemed to have no end.
At exactly two twenty-five p.m., we saw the sign on a massive poster, “Welcome to Makurdi – Coca Cola.” On same side with the Coca Cola message was a massive depot of the pipelines and Products Marketing Company Limited (PPMC). Opposite the gate was a disaster scene. A tanker loaded with petroleum products had reportedly exploded mid-afternoon the Monday before and razed all houses within the area to ashes. I was told that nobody died. From Makurdi, the capital of Benue State to Lafia, Nasarawa State capital is about eighty kilometres.
We climbed through the wide bridge on the great Benue River. From the racing vehicle I flung my eyes below and saw the lovely rolling fresh water. We passed the 72 Special Forces Battalion of the Nigeria Army on the left. Traveling on the Makurdi – Lafia Road we passed by Uhembe and Daudu villages in the Guma Local Government Area. These Benue villages started as farm settlements, but are emerging into towns. Three months before, peasant farmers there and nomadic Fulani herdsmen clashed. Several deaths and an unprecedented refugee crisis were reported. The villagers accused the herdsmen of destroying their crops with cattle. The communities have not recovered fully from the bloody violence. Around Daudu, I saw four young boys digging up sands from the road edge and filling up some holes on the road. They expected vehicles passing to give them some small amount of money in appreciation of such voluntary work. Before the Awunago village away, there were five energetic young men, bare-bodied and perspiring profusely, while carving mortars and pestles out of woods. A mortar is a bowl where pepper, tobacco, leaves amongst others are pounded into pieces. While a pestle also made from wood, is a smoothened instrument used for pounding items in a mortar.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });
A team of Operation Zenda was stationed before Sekargugu area. Close there were two brand new cars, a Toyota Corolla and Toyota Camry. They were coming from opposite direction and crashed into one another. The cars were damaged beyond repair. Few metres away, a combined team of mobile police and soldiers on the road asked us to stop. After pumping some quantities of tobacco into his nostrils again, Old Soldier walked up to one of them seating at a dilapidated table by the side. He folded a two hundred naira note (a dollar and few cents) and stretched out his left hand like a frightened chicken and gave a police officer. I heard when a soldier who seemed to be familiar with old soldier said, “Sorry. You know we are with police”.
By three thirty p.m., we left the Benue State territory and ran into Fati Niger Keana Local Government Area of Nasarawa State. Some policemen were moving around their Hilux jeep with the lettering “Operation Nasarawa Phase II.” After there, were three under-aged boys with sticks longer than them, flogging a group of cattle to leave the main road into the nearby bush to graze. We passed through Agyaragu village where I saw a fat, young beautiful woman. She tied wrapper round her waists, rolling her waist earnestly to the Hausa music of the famed Binta Labaran, popularly called ‘Fati Niger’ coming out of a radio set under a mango tree. An under-age girl who looked like her was standing close, laughing and clapping her hands as she danced. What was the serious dancing about? Or the Agyaragu dancer suffered for love? These thoughts raced through my mind as we stopped near there to drop off a passenger. I am familiar with some sentimental Hausa love songs of Fati Niger. The singer, in that tune was lamenting how she (the songster) has suffered for love. She hails from the neighbouring Niger Republic; and still remains the Queen of modern Hausa music.
The driver was such an energetic man. He kept on firing his car until we were in the Obi Local Government Area. On both sides of the road were houses crowded with people. Sixteen days before, suspected Ombatse militias had attacked there, leaving in its wake deaths. Ombatse in the Eggon language, simply means, ‘Time has come’ or ‘Our time or turn has come’. The base of the 58th Squadron of the mobile police was there too. Night was coming, but the Lafia sun was still stinging harder like irate bees. Fifteen minutes before five p.m. we arrived at a filling station opposite Total filling station located along the Lafia-Akwanga Road.
I strolled across to a small shop by the side of the Total filling station and sat on a small decayed chair. While waiting for a friend to take me to my hotel, I watched the movements of cars and humans. I noticed that motorcycles and some cars racing were vomiting clouds of white smoke which formed a thick blank over the city and choked me. I was told that motorcyclists and some motor users bought fuel from filling stations and mixed them with engine oil and used it. I had spent about five minutes there when a group of under-aged boys numbering twelve swarm around me like locusts. Their clothes were extremely dirty, and some torn, their skins dusty, some injuries on some them, some bare-footed and looking malnourished. They carried dirty plastic bowls in the hands and begged me for alms. Their sights were quite pitiable. My new Lafia friend said I shouldn’t mind them that they are almajiris, and that when you give them money they will give their Islamic guardians. I ignored all that, and gave them all the biscuits and bottle water I had bought which I wanted to use for dinner.
Few minutes after six o’clock, my friend arrived to take me to Mosmmera Guest Palace. The hotel is located along the Shendan Road on the south-west and opposite the Government House. The Shendan, is a long stretch of road. Along the road was the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on the right, Al-Iman School, an Islamic School and the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital. Amongst other institutions and agencies located along, were pictures of the governor, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura. There were also some billboards with the imprinting, “the truly national party…” with a giant flag of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). There was another large announcement with a portrait of the Nasarawa Governor smiling in his flowing Agbada. On his right was President Goodluck Jonathan, in his classic Niger Delta hat, smiling too. “The Government and Good People of Nasarawa welcome His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR, to the commissioning ceremony of the network of roads, 29th July, 2013”.
The location and design of the Mosmmera Guest Palace are favourable, but sadly, it now lay in ruins. The hotel was built some fourteen years ago. Low patronage is a major problem. I paid four thousand five hundred naira (about thirty dollars) for a moderate room in the hotel for the night. Unlike the Obollo Lodge Limited, Mosmmera Guest Palace was bigger, quiet, and spacious and had steady electricity. In spite of several reports of violence in the area, Lafia looked calm. I was able to meet my contacts and interviewed them accordingly. From the Mismmera Guest Palace to the Alakyo community in the Lafia Local Government was just about ten minutes. On Tuesday, 7th May 2013, a joint team of police, Department for State Security (DSS) and Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) carried out an unprofessional reconnaissance mission to the Alakyo community. A booby-trap set by the Ombatse militia band led to substantial casualties on their part. The police lost over sixty of its men, DSS, Nigeria’s secret police lost about over ten, while the NSCDC never declared the number of its officials killed by the group’s fighters. As a result of the awful incident, the Nigerian media ran dramatic headlines and the rumour mills became active again.
Monday morning was bright but hot. I spent greater parts of the hours for further interviews. About eleven thirty a.m., I left the Mosmmera Guest Palace in a hired Peugeot 406 car. The driver was a short and pious Muslim. Instead of taking through the Shendam Road, he drove took a road which runs through the Government Reservation Area (GRA) to connect the Jos Expressway. Different people have different names for the trunk road. Some called it, “Makurdi-Akwanga Road,” others called it “Jos Expressway” and vice versa. The journey to Kaduna had started. From Lafia to Kaduna metropolis was about three hundred and twenty kilometres. The driver agreed to collect fifteen thousand naira (about one hundred dollars) to carry me in his air-conditioned, fairly new car. I got that good deal through a special arrangement.
On the Jos Expressway we passed by the College of Agriculture on the right. After there, I saw five young men. Their paralysed legs- (some afflicted by polio inflection) looking like those performing the yogic mediation, the ancient spiritual practice of Hinduism, the old Indian religion, gummed to small rectangular wood each, and beneath them were small wheels, which they steered it back and forth. They were stationed by the roadside near a bump built across the road, and were turning round in different directions when they saw any incoming vehicle climbing and begged for money. We passed a settlement called Shabuland. There were rocks on both side of the road. Pockets of clouds seemed to be resting on the rock tops, but as we moved further the clouds seemed to be far away. The new car’s brakes started making some whistling noise. “Can we stop and get a mechanic to look at it?” I asked. “No, I don’t want any road side mechanic to compound my problem,” he replied me in his forcible Hausa ascent.
Nasarawa Eggon Local Government Area was ahead. There were many hills, rocks and valleys on both sides of the road, some places had large expanse of farms. We passed by the Eggon community Secondary School and a divisional police headquarters before we got to a side over-crowded with its natives. The Eggon group is one of the major groups in Nasarawa State. They want to produce the governor of the State come 2015. Nasarawa is deeply split along ethnic positions like most states in Nigeria. This will impact negatively on the upcoming elections.
In that May, a day after the Ombatse incident, I had entered a public vehicle, traveling from southern Port Harcourt to its north. I encountered a young medical doctor, from one of the groups in Rivers State I had encountered him some two years earlier, practicing at the state owned Braithwaite Memorial Hospital (BMH). Someone had stirred a hot debate about the Ombatse because a local radio station in the bus was commenting on the issue. I listened to the doctor arguing passionately about the killings by the Ombatse. Of how a good number of DSS, police and NDSC officials got to the house of a top Ombatse leader in a bid to arrest him. According to the doctor, the Ombatse man asked the state operatives to leave his house and they refused. He said that the man dashed into his bedroom and brought a magical stick and waved at them and they all died. The doctor said he gathered his story from a “reliable source”. Almost all the passengers in the bus believed him. I said that can’t be true. Though I didn’t have any details about that, I relied on what I had read in the newspapers and heard on radio. I shall find out more. I recall a young man by my side who asked me whether I didn’t believe in God. And that if I believe in God I should believe the fairy tale that God gave power to Satan. I didn’t disturb myself to argue further because I don’t have the facts then. It is really sad our society can be so superstitious where the so-called ‘learned ‘people make assertions without scientific proof or evidence.
From Nasarawa Eggon by road to Akwanga is about twenty-eight kilometres. There were several of flags with the signs, “Change-APC-All Progressive Congress” hanging on tall iron poles, tall sticks and rooftops. It is interesting to note that in late June, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress of Progressive Change (CPC) and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) merged to form All Progressive Congress (APC). Al-Makura, the sitting governor of the state who hails from one of the minority tribes in the state won his election on the CPC platform. He is now APC. Few minutes after, we were at Gako, a hamlet. The road wasn’t wide enough for two cars to go smoothly in the opposite directions. On both sides of the road were gigantic hills and rocks which threatened to collapse on the road. We raced through Doshon and Wowyem heading toward Akwanga. Cars running through raised clouds of dusts. We couldn’t see any object in any direction. This caused a mild traffic jam. The driver used his wipers to clear the dust from his back and front windscreens.
We drove past the 38th Squadron of the Nigeria mobile police force. This squadron spearheaded the anti-Ombatse operation that ended in a fiasco in the Alakyo community which led to the death of an Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations amongst numerous other officers. The government had set up a Judicial Commission of Inquiry to look into the Tuesday, 7th May Ombatse killings.
Instead of going through the over-crowded Akwanga town in the Akwanga Local Government Area (LGA), we diverted into the Akwanga – Keffi Road, northward. Nigeria’s current Minister of Information and Supervising Minister of Defence Labaran Maku come from the Wakama community in the Akwanga LGA, though he is of the Eggon tribe. Not all the groups in the Akwanga Local Government are the Eggon people. There is a small Okrika Ijaw community in Rivers State called Wakama. It is located in the southern axis of the state and administratively situated in the Ogu/Bolo Local Area of Rivers State. I don’t know whether there is any blood link between the Nasarawa’s Eggon and the Rivers Ijaw tribes, or just a coincidence of name.
Naagbanton lives in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital
• To be continued.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });