I am that most urban of Nigerians – born in Lagos, went to school in Lagos (mostly) and have worked in Lagos for more or less all of my working life, and so it surprises even me (not to mention wife, children, and everyone else!) that I am building a house in my village. Why? Because I had an epiphany this year and realised that I ‘owed’ my people a little more of me.
The village begat my 90-year-old father, he begat me – and so on. And so began my trips home – a flight to Calabar and a 200km road journey that, when I was younger, could easily be achieved in two hours but which, today, takes an average of four and a half hours. And that is only if you are lucky and don’t encounter a broken-down trailer that has blocked the road, or a tanker that has rolled over and spilled its contents – both of which events I have experienced, and which turned what used to be a two-hour journey into a nightmare that lasted seven or more hours. Quite simply the road, which cuts through the agricultural heartland of the South East of Nigeria, is an unmitigated disaster. A far cry from the days (not too distant at that) when I would make a day trip from Lagos to the village on my father’s birthday, and be back in Lagos by 7:00pm.
Such was my aversion in those days to spending even a night outside Lagos! That was then. I have made the trip to the village 12 times this year to keep an eye on what is happening with the ‘prodigal house’ project and, although I have given it considerable thought, the “why” (as in “why was the road allowed to deteriorate so badly?”) remains completely beyond me. It can’t be the economy, because during this period the Nigerian government benefitted from unprecedented oil prices and revenues. It can’t be ‘politics’ because for sixteen years, Cross River State had governors that came from the party which controlled the centre – and we ended up with that road? I was already angry, but when on a few of those trips I took a flight to Uyo in order to attend to some personal commitments, and thereafter made the journey from Uyo to Calabar by road, my blood really began to boil. Calling the (track?) between the Uyo junction and Calabar a ‘road’ would be to do a great injustice to the word. And like Cross River State, Akwa Ibom State also had governors over the past 16 years that came from the then ‘ruling’ party. So this is the context in which, for the first time in my life, I felt something akin to hate for my beloved country – with a quadruple portion of that emotion being reserved for the people who, through their greed and short-sightedness, have brought my beloved country and its people to this sorry state. And that is just the roads. The poverty and hopelessness that I see every time I make the trip to the village has almost scarred my psyche – which, given the frequency of my visits this year, means I have had to dig deep for some extra mental and physical strength. So that is why I hate(d) Nigeria – and those Nigerians…!
A conversation today with my 90-year-old father made me realise, however, how much I still love Nigeria, how far we have come, and that we must still have hope. My father is that most fortunate of persons – 90 years old, in decent health, and with a memory that remains largely unimpaired by age. He and I were in my car heading for Calabar, to catch a flight to Lagos, when I asked him what the journey to Calabar was like when he was a young man. He commenced his tale with his favourite opening (“Now let me tell you…!”) and told me how his first trip to Calabar was in 1942 when, as a young man of 17, he accompanied an uncle of his in a dug-out canoe from our little village on the banks of the Cross River, to Calabar. And when I say “accompanied” I don’t mean as a passenger in a business class seat, but as a strong extra pair of arms to join in the paddling! It took them three days – an ‘easy’ journey because it was the rainy season and they were going ‘down river’, with the current. By this time his storytelling had really warmed up and, to pass the time on that awful road, I asked him whether he came back by canoe. He looked at me as if I was crazy. “By canoe?” He said that only the strong (the really strong!) did that because going back was a two-week journey, during which you would be paddling against the current the whole time! He also said that even if you started off that journey with a healthy build, two weeks of paddling would leave you looking like a stick! No paddling for him – a small(ish) young man to start with – and so he decided to make the 200km journey the easy way.
He walked. It took a week, through forests and through chest-high swamps, but the 17-year-old boy (in those days a man) made it home. Those feet, and that prodigious memory, took him to other places – the University of Exeter, the Nigerian High Commission in London, Presidential Liaison Officer – and have taken him back to his village where he spends his time amazing people with his memory and his stories. So that is why I (still) love Nigeria. The ‘road’ is awful, but when my father first made the trip there was no road. I realised, after hearing his stories today, that I must not lose hope.
The hope that, one day, the road will be rebuilt, as part of the rebuilding that our beloved country so desperately needs. And did I mention that I am typing these random thoughts on an iPhone, as I traverse that ‘road’? Something else my father didn’t have in 1942!
Dan Agbor
Agbor is a partner in a Lagos-based law firm and wrote this during a recent road journey.
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