Across the Niger with Ukachukwu OkorieI was walking down Summerhill en route to a friend’s place when I heard rants from a tiny voice behind me. “F***ing Black man, go back to your f***ing country, you do not belong here.” When I looked back, a smile came out on my lips in a bid to captivate my abuser. “How are you doing?” I asked the little girl, still trying to catch her attention. “Don’t f***ing talk to her, you f***ing…” The mum rained abuse on me, empowering the daughter to continue. I decided to walk fast so I could disappear out of their sight in avoidance of more verbal tirades. While I hastened my steps upfront, I could still hear a tiny sweet voice doing her ma’s thing.
I tried to laugh the whole episode off in my heart, but instead a story flashed back to my memory. What baffled me most in the debacle was that the little girl was likely about four or five years old. Though issues like this abound, it is most worrisome when toddlers are taught the ‘ABC’ of abuse and hate in a globalised society.
With knowledge, there is more to academic brilliance or the breaking of the classroom chalk. So says an old African adage. In essence, the family is always the first important classroom for a child. More so, the ‘ma’ is the first partner in the child’s learning to talk. Therefore, I would assume mothers hold the ace in a child’s behavioural attitude.
This flashback leads me to a very sad and horrible story that has refused to be erased from my memory. I was 10 years old, during one of the military juntas that reigned in my beloved country. During the military regimes, decrees were enacted to set up special armed robbery tribunals which would try and expense justice to suspects.
There was one particular armed robber who was very notorious in my locality. He was ruthless, leaving trails of death and heartbreak in his wake. Before he fell into the police net, many lives were cut in their prime; wedding feasts turned to gatherings for condolence. For one full year, the ‘Terminator’, as he was known, was the king of the night. He remained so elusive from the cops that locals began using a popular phrase: ‘The fear of terminator is the beginning of life.’ One raid I read about in the newspaper which my dad brought home from work told a gory story of how the Terminator and his gang struck a bank and carted away millions of cash. They also wasted five innocent lives in a melee as they fled.
However, most people were in the comfort of their homes when the government electronic media announced the capture of the Terminator. The announcement did not arouse jubilation because it was already dark outside and a phobia of night had been instilled by the likes of this criminal. A clearer picture about the capture started unfolding in the morning when different stories about his apprehension in a brothel appeared in tabloids. Though locals have been seeing armed robbers and their menace, the Terminator seemed a celebrity among his infamous lots, and as such the military administrator made a statewide broadcast in that respect. In his speech, he promised more crackdowns on hoodlums and a logical and fast conclusion in the dissemination of justice. Three weeks later, the tribunal found the Terminator and six members of his gang guilty. They were to die in the hands of a firing squad, and locals were invited at the beachside venue of their execution as witness.
I went with my uncle to the Agwuishi beach on the day. We arrived 30 minutes early to stand on a good spot for a bright view. Shortly afterwards, a black police van (popularly called the Black Maria) drove in with the condemned criminals. As they disembarked, a mammoth crowd kept quiet in anticipation. The criminals were tied at stakes while their uniformed executioners marched in rehearsal. A priest lurked around with his Roman missal and crossing a stole on his neck, waiting to hear any of their confessions, and also deliver the sacrament of extreme unction. Incidentally, the Terminator was wearing a Holy Rosary necklace.
Before the orders for the guns to fire, the Terminator appealed to talk to his mother, who stood in the crowd with a handkerchief wet with tears. As she moved to her beloved son in shame, the crowd kept mute, trying to watch what seemed to be an unfolding drama. As the mother brought her ear for her son to whisper his lifetime secret, the Terminator gnashed his scissors teeth and chopped off a bit of it. While frantic calls for medics went on, there was a mix of amusement and panic among the spectators.
“Do you know why I did this?” the Terminator shouted. “No,” the people responded. “Though it is too late to tell my story, the fact remain that my mother taught me how to steal. All my life, she has been my source of inspiration to steal. Unlike most lovely mothers, she kept my liquid thefts and procured voodoo charms for me. With her, I came to know that when you spare the rod, you spoil the child.”
Ukachukwu Okorie is originally from Nigeria. He writes a weekly column for Metro Eireann
olumoukachukwu@yahoo.com
With knowledge, there is more to academic brilliance or the breaking of the classroom chalk. So says an old African adage. In essence, the family is always the first important classroom for a child. More so, the ‘ma’ is the first partner in the child’s learning to talk. Therefore, I would assume mothers hold the ace in a child’s behavioural attitude.
This flashback leads me to a very sad and horrible story that has refused to be erased from my memory. I was 10 years old, during one of the military juntas that reigned in my beloved country. During the military regimes, decrees were enacted to set up special armed robbery tribunals which would try and expense justice to suspects.
There was one particular armed robber who was very notorious in my locality. He was ruthless, leaving trails of death and heartbreak in his wake. Before he fell into the police net, many lives were cut in their prime; wedding feasts turned to gatherings for condolence. For one full year, the ‘Terminator’, as he was known, was the king of the night. He remained so elusive from the cops that locals began using a popular phrase: ‘The fear of terminator is the beginning of life.’ One raid I read about in the newspaper which my dad brought home from work told a gory story of how the Terminator and his gang struck a bank and carted away millions of cash. They also wasted five innocent lives in a melee as they fled.
However, most people were in the comfort of their homes when the government electronic media announced the capture of the Terminator. The announcement did not arouse jubilation because it was already dark outside and a phobia of night had been instilled by the likes of this criminal. A clearer picture about the capture started unfolding in the morning when different stories about his apprehension in a brothel appeared in tabloids. Though locals have been seeing armed robbers and their menace, the Terminator seemed a celebrity among his infamous lots, and as such the military administrator made a statewide broadcast in that respect. In his speech, he promised more crackdowns on hoodlums and a logical and fast conclusion in the dissemination of justice. Three weeks later, the tribunal found the Terminator and six members of his gang guilty. They were to die in the hands of a firing squad, and locals were invited at the beachside venue of their execution as witness.
I went with my uncle to the Agwuishi beach on the day. We arrived 30 minutes early to stand on a good spot for a bright view. Shortly afterwards, a black police van (popularly called the Black Maria) drove in with the condemned criminals. As they disembarked, a mammoth crowd kept quiet in anticipation. The criminals were tied at stakes while their uniformed executioners marched in rehearsal. A priest lurked around with his Roman missal and crossing a stole on his neck, waiting to hear any of their confessions, and also deliver the sacrament of extreme unction. Incidentally, the Terminator was wearing a Holy Rosary necklace.
Before the orders for the guns to fire, the Terminator appealed to talk to his mother, who stood in the crowd with a handkerchief wet with tears. As she moved to her beloved son in shame, the crowd kept mute, trying to watch what seemed to be an unfolding drama. As the mother brought her ear for her son to whisper his lifetime secret, the Terminator gnashed his scissors teeth and chopped off a bit of it. While frantic calls for medics went on, there was a mix of amusement and panic among the spectators.
“Do you know why I did this?” the Terminator shouted. “No,” the people responded. “Though it is too late to tell my story, the fact remain that my mother taught me how to steal. All my life, she has been my source of inspiration to steal. Unlike most lovely mothers, she kept my liquid thefts and procured voodoo charms for me. With her, I came to know that when you spare the rod, you spoil the child.”
Ukachukwu Okorie is originally from Nigeria. He writes a weekly column for Metro Eireann
olumoukachukwu@yahoo.com
