My Odyssey, My Country

By Cephas Sallem Kan Tardzer

The author recollects his quest of a better future for himself, his family, and his native country stemming from ideals he obtained from his childhood Western education and conversion to the Christian faith. His hopes were thrwarated by Nigerias political and religious troubles resulting in his exile to America, then seeing his family broken time and again. Though forthrightly recalling these failures, their remain for the author: his faith in God, his love for his family and countrymen, and his hope for the future of both.

These memoirs include some plactical advice for Nigeria that are based on the beginnings of his adopted United States of America. There is needed a Plymouth Rock type of partnership between government and an enterprising community of faith. From pioneering studies developed by the author and his friends, Cephas Tardzer explains how this can begin in Benue State.

Duffel bag pictured on front cover is worn by the elders of the authors TIV tribe, symbolizing their responsibility for the welfare of the people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469199283

Cephas Sallem Kan Tardzer

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Copyright © 2012 by Cephas Sallem Kan Tardzer.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2012906677

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Contents

Acknowledgments

My Odyssey, My Country

Prologue

1 Genealogy

2 Childhood

3 Brothers and Sisters

4 Bible School and First Teacher

5 Child Custody Disputes

6 Home Away from Home

7 Primary School at Adikpo

8 School Days

9 Primary School at Mkar

10 Gideon Kajo

11 New Lease on Life

12 An Open Door

13 Government College Katsina-Ala

Map of Nigeria

Map of Benue State

14 Quest for a Belief System

15 End of My Schooling at Katsina-Ala

16 Career Begins

17 Police College at Ikeja

18 Posting to Jos

19 Seeds of Discord

20 Islam and Tolerance

21 Mother’s Visit

22 Transfer to Minna

23 Training in the United Kingdom

24 Elizabeth

25 New York

26 Return to Nigeria

27 Kaduna

28 Transfer to Kakuri

29 Transfer to Makurdi

30 Marriage to Patti

31 Return to Ilorin

32 A Phantom Charge

33 Meeting Albertha

34 Transfer to Port Harcourt

35 Albertha’s Pregnancy

36 Retirement from Police Work

37 Mother’s Death

38 Move to Juladaco

39 Return Home to Mbawer

40 Reactionary Agitation

41 Departure for USA

42 Arrest by Fraudulent Officers

43 Montgomery, Alabama

44 Western Colorado University

45 Detroit, Michigan

46 Albertha’s Divorce

47 Meeting Kathy

48 Naturalization

49 Arlene

50 Albertha/Arlene Nexus

51 The South

52 An Encounter

53 Marriage to Kathy

54 Greater Atlanta

55 Mercer University

56 Nigeria Revisited

57 My Uncle’s Visit

58 Father’s Death

59 Starting a Business

60 Divorce

61 My Sister’s Death

62 Return to Private Business

63 Telecommunion Nigeria Project

64 Report

65 Meeting Priscilla

66 Marriage to Priscilla

67 Retirement Plans

68 Central Florida

69 Nigeria: A Prognosis

70 The Way Forward

71 Conclusion

EPILOGUE My Hopes

For my Children

For Benue State

Glossary

myself.jpg

Cephas Sallem Kan Tardzer at age 18

For my mother, Bueh;

my foster mother, Mbakoson;

and my sister, Hannah Ahungul,

three wonderful women who showed me what it means to live,

love, and forgive.

This book is also a tribute to the dedicated teachers, friends, and relatives, too many to mention here, who helped mold and encourage me to pursue a dream, or provided financial, material, and moral support needed to survive both at home and in the diaspora. It is my sincere hope that this odyssey inspires someone else to embark on a similar adventure to discover their full potential, regardless of their resources or background. I must, however, apologize if any part of this book has been uncomplimentary or offensive to any parties mentioned by name.

Acknowledgments

There is a saying among the Tiv that a river is unable to cut a straight path downstream because it failed to seek the advice or cooperation of others when it decided to set out on its course. This allegory conveys an important truth with particular relevance to a literary enterprise where, without the cooperation and advice of others, success for its wider circulation might be jeopardized.

A cooperative support network, the advice of a reliable, knowledgeable agent, a dedicated editor, and an experienced publisher have thus seamlessly collaborated to bring this publication to reality. I am also indebted to a lot of others whose patience, inspiration, and encouragement helped propel me into action each day during the construction of the manuscript.

To mention just a few, let me give credit to my wife, Priscilla, and son, Nengeh, for their unflinching support and cooperation, without which it would not have been easy for me to do the research and spend countless hours in front of the computer to produce this work.

Then I must thank my friend and publisher, Philip E. Williams, for his unflinching support, contribution, and encouragement. He believed so much in what is possible I could not do anything else but to oblige.

And most of all, I would like to express my profound gratitude to Elisabeth Adams for her patience, passion, courage, and the professionalism she brought to bear on the editing of the manuscript to make this book an easy-to-read reality. I remain eternally thankful for her input and support.

My Odyssey, My Country

Prologue

On December 20, 1950, I began my odyssey, leaving my Northern Nigerian village for the first time. When I returned in 1977, after years spent in school and at a law enforcement job, I was no longer at ease with the constraints of my Tiv culture. Thus, in 1978, I began life anew on the other side of the Atlantic. This book chronicles my encounters, exploits, and experiences in Nigeria and the diaspora, interspersing my personal story with Tiv cultural norms and conditions in Nigeria itself.

Though born to a largely uneducated family, by age nine, I found myself a boarder at a nearby Bible school being systematically taught how to read, write, and reason. Gradually, I was made aware of an all-powerful god who rewards the faithful and the diligent and will eventually judge the dishonest, the indolent, and the wicked.

After two years of intensive coaching, my teacher concluded I was ready for enrollment into a formal elementary school. With his help, I was admitted into the third grade in Adikpo, just three miles from home. Within a month, my new teachers placed me in the fourth grade, allowing me to complete my elementary education within one year instead of two, and clearing the way for me to pursue a full primary school program at Mkar, a distance of sixty miles from home.

Halfway through this three-year program, I was granted a special dispensation to sit for the competitive entrance examination into government colleges and secondary schools. My dream was to complete this six-year program of study and then either seek admission into tertiary institutions or join the country’s labor force at a supervisory level.

At the end of my schooling, however, I was persuaded to enlist in the Nigeria Police Force. Unfortunately, my desire for honest investigation and reporting soon placed me at loggerheads with superiors who were motivated by tribalism or extortion. I was nicknamed Bature, which means imitation white man in Hausa and frequently given job assignments to far-flung duty outposts across the vast territory of Northern Nigeria. This trend continued unabated until my compulsory retirement from the police force in 1975.

Undeterred, I moved with my family back to my ancestral home where I was appointed councilor for finance in the local government council. But when I attempted to acquire legal title to the land, the village elders opposed my project on the basis that it had never been done that way before. Feeling that I could not continue to represent the people who had clearly shown their mistrust of my motives, I decided to give up my position and migrated to the United States. Despite my uncertainty about life in a foreign land, I convinced myself that I stood a far better chance of success in North America than at home if I was willing to be reeducated and to work hard for a fresh start.

After obtaining a BS degree in business management from Western Colorado University, I took a job in Michigan. But my desire for a more stable job environment led me to seek employment in the southeast. There, the Internal Revenue Service hired me. After my voluntary retirement in 2002, I set up an accounting practice and invested in real estate with most of my clients drawn from the states of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida.

As I grapple with the complexities of my personal story, it is evident that I sometimes made decisions that did not always turn out as well as I had anticipated. But my desire in this memoir is to share my experience and personal failures and successes—not just to entertain the reader.

To protect the identity of a few individuals who might feel offended for being mentioned in an uncomplimentary manner in this book, some names have been slightly altered without an attempt to dilute the substance or impact of the narrative.

My story is one of personal triumph over adversity. It is a testament to the goodness of people of all nationalities and races whose generosity, selflessness, and forgiveness helped make my story possible. The debt of gratitude I owe to numerous teachers who believed in me and sacrificed time and resources to teach me inspires me to do something in return for their generosity. It is to all my dedicated teachers and supporters that this book is dedicated. It is my hope that you will enjoy reading the story as much as I have had pleasure in narrating it.

1

Genealogy

Iam a Tiv by birth and national origin. To grasp the context in which my story is told, therefore, it is necessary to understand a little more about the social organization among the Tiv, who now number over 5.6 million and constitute about 2.5 percent of the total population of Nigeria.

Until 1910, when the British imposed colonial rule over the Tiv territory for the purpose of creating an artificial nation-state known as Nigeria, the Tiv had maintained their fragmented but fiercely independent sovereignty through clan lineage councils. Under British control, their territory was arbitrarily broken up into administrative divisions that today constitute the state of Benue and parts of Cross River, Nasarawa, Plateau, and Taraba, although the majority of their kith and kin now lives in Benue State.

Up to the time of my birth and a little beyond, the Tiv were an individualistic people with no centralized social controls or unified laws and customs. Their common identity was their Tiv or Munchi ethnicity and Bantoid language. In each of their villages or compounds, the elders maintained peace, law, and order. For instance, one of the responsibilities of the village heads, in consultation with a council of elders, was to ensure the economic and social well-being of all the inhabitants of their compounds.

The village head settled disputes, maintained peace—between family members, and equitably distributed farmland during the farming season. Superimposed on the village council of elders was the clan council, the ityo, whose responsibility was to deliberate and adjudicate cases. Its membership was composed of village heads representing each sublineage or family. The decision by the ityo on any matter of life or death was final and binding on all members of the lineages. The appointment of the first centralized paramount chief, known as the tor Tiv, was made by the colonial administration in April 1947. With a council, the tor Tiv was vested with authority to exercise control over the whole Tiv nation, in line with the system of indirect rule, first introduced by Lord Lugard after the conquest of the vast territory of Northern Nigeria in 1906.

Under indirect rule, a powerful emir or chief was usually vested with authority to maintain law and order over his people and to collect taxes subject only to the control of colonial administrators. Although this form of governance had proved effective in the Muslim North, it was doubtful whether the tor Tiv would be able to wield the same clout and successfully centralize the administration of justice or exercise appellate jurisdiction over the clan councils in the Tiv nation.

It is through this background that the history of my ancestry might be understood. My great-great-grandfather, Tackuruku, settled in Mbawer toward the end of the eighteenth century. Legend has it that he was not only a prosperous and noble farmer but also a fierce warrior whose exploits on the battlefield resulted to the capture of a large number of weaker tribesmen during intra-tribal wars. At the end of hostilities, he was said to have co-opted the captives into a free labor pool for his farms.

However, his first son, Assuah, who ascended to the leadership of the clan after his father’s sudden death in about 1841, was a more humane and egalitarian leader. Assuah did not go to war with any neighboring tribesmen, but he did something that has stood the test of time. He parceled out his father’s vast land holdings, giving a portion to each laborer-family to farm in return for an annual tax on the yield. In 1842, he made a treaty with the captives on behalf of his clan, promising never to intermarry with them and to protect them against aggression from external forces. By this pact, he thus conferred upon a captured people the rights of brotherhood and neighborliness that they had lost as prisoners of war.

my%20dad_3.jpg

My father, Bho’on Tar ou Dzer Assuah Tackuruku

To this day, a significant part of that treaty has stood the test of time. The descendants of the freed subjects are regarded as my extended family with property rights. They still live in their homes dotted around my father’s compound. Intermarriage between them and my blood relatives is prohibited, and it is considered an abomination to engage in a love affair with their descendants. Public fights between them and my clan were also outlawed from the day they were co-opted into the clan.

For the first few years after this treaty was made, the penalty for breaking the sexual prohibition was similar to that of incest. The offending man and woman were given a hearing before a council of elders. If found guilty, they were sentenced to be locked up in a thatched hut, which was then set ablaze, resulting to their deaths. This penalty existed until about 1924 when the criminal code and procedures, introduced by the colonial administration, preempted the customary laws in that part of the British Empire. When Assuah died, about 1898, his son, Dzer, inherited the lands and leadership role for the clan at the age of twenty-eight. In 1901, he married Amarga, a beautiful young lady from the neighboring Mbahura clan. From that relationship were born two children: my father, Bho’on Tar ou Dzer in 1903 and his sister, Ayadzwa, in 1905. When Dzer passed away at age seventy, my father and several children from his other wives survived him. My father thus inherited the mantle of leadership for the clan in 1940.

During this period of rapid social and political change, my father proved to be a sagacious, effective, and diplomatic leader whose voice of reason was widely respected among his kinsmen. He also served as a peacemaker between clan leaders and the Hausa/Fulani Muslim community whenever a friction arose out of the encroachment of Islamic religion into Tiv territory.

For many years, my father voluntarily served the community in the capacity of Adikpo market chief, whose function included the maintenance of law and order and the trial of petty theft cases that occurred during the market day. At one time, he was the chief tax collector on behalf of the British colonial administration for his clan. He died of natural causes in 1994 and was survived by many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

In the past, no Tiv man ever became a chief by buying a chieftaincy title. The elevation to the position of chieftaincy or leadership of one’s clan was viewed as the highest honor to be bestowed on anyone, but it was a position of great responsibility. Chiefs lived among their subjects to provide leadership on major issues facing their people. Even during the colonial era, chiefs continued to play their traditional roles along with acting as agents of the colonial government.

Unfortunately, in Nigeria today, it has become common to find people who would do anything to be conferred with a chieftaincy title without the responsibility and traditional obligations that used to be associated with the titleholder. Because it is no longer fashionable to be a plain Mr., Mrs., or Ms., individuals are known to spend as much as two hundred thousand dollars in order to be addressed as Chief So-and-so.

2

Childhood

Iwas born on July 13, 1941, on a sunny afternoon at Ya ou Bho’on Tar ou Dzer Assuah, a village near Adikpo, the capital city of Kwande Local Government Area in Benue State, Nigeria. Among the multitudes of relatives who converged on the village to rejoice with my parents that day was Uncle Umaru Akanyi, who predicted that when I grew up, I would travel the world, speak foreign languages, and be a counselor to many. Since Uncle Umaru could read and write, he recorded my birth date and kept a diary of my first few years of existence.

My father named me Sallem Kan, which literally translates to I wish I could freely express how I feel, but I am constrained. In Tiv culture, a child’s name reflects the issues facing the parents at the time of the child’s birth. For instance, because my father presided over the meetings of the elders and had the responsibility of interpreting the customs, hearing judicial cases, and resolving breaches of the law, situations sometimes arose where tempers would flare up. Yet as a leader of his people, my father would constrain himself and say only what the customary norms allowed in a particular situation, regardless of his personal viewpoint.

I grew up as a child with few ailments, requiring little or no medical attention. My early years were spent under the watchful care of my mother, Wan-Adule, which means Adule’s daughter. In Tivland, a woman does not have to undergo a name change at marriage. She retains her maiden name and is fondly referred to as the daughter of so-and-so.

For my daily upkeep, my mother was assisted by my nineteen-year-old half brother, who, with only ten months of schooling, was persistent in teaching me to read, regardless of my lack of enthusiasm.

From the age of three, I began to realize that my mom was spending far too much time alone on the farm. Within the context of the Tiv culture, a nobleman with many wives would divide among them his total farmland and the responsibility of growing food crops for home consumption as well as selling the excess produce that was not consumed. The size of each woman’s allocated farmland was based on her resourcefulness and marketing ability.

My mother’s share of the farmland was about seventy acres and represented the largest allocation among my father’s five wives. She was an astute, natural business type who made lots of money in return for her farming business.

Because it took a lot of time to mind the crops almost all year round, I occasionally accompanied her to the farm, where she had planted yams, potatoes, beans, sorghum, peanuts, and all sorts of vegetables. There, I would do my best to help her. In spite of the smallness of my contribution, I suspected that my presence alone made her happy. She must have begun to speculate or anticipate the difference I would make in her life as I grew up.

As for my father, he seemed to be preoccupied each day with the council of elders’ meetings, which sometimes dragged on all day long. When I accompanied him to the meetings, I would sometimes ask him to clarify what they were about. In answer to my persistent questioning, he would simply say that the meeting resolved matters involving disputes, family relations, petty thefts, or witchcraft. Although I suspected that as a favorite child, I was being groomed to follow in my father’s footsteps, this unspoken responsibility did not really mean much to me at that age.

Occasionally, there were cases of high drama involving allegations of fornication or infidelity in marriages, which were adjudicated and resolved by fines in the form of livestock or chickens. In fact, under the legal framework known as precolonial native jurisprudence in the non-Muslim areas of Northern Nigeria, the council of elders heard cases, resolved all disputes, meted out appropriate punishments or penalties according to local customs, and maintained law and order in society before the introduction of the Western-style statute laws.

In the Muslim-controlled areas of the north, there were sharia courts, supervised by the all-powerful chiefs also known as emirs, who represented the Islamist jihadists who had conquered the area some one hundred years before.

One remarkable feature of the native courts system was the fact that no appeal was ever entertained or even contemplated. Yet justice was not only seen to be done, but was really done to everyone’s satisfaction without a police force to enforce the decisions of the elders.

It was in the early 1930s that the British colonial administration of Northern Nigeria introduced the criminal code and magistrates’ courts to administer justice. But this judicial system only lasted until Nigeria’s independence when it was immediately replaced by the penal code and the alkali court system.

Under the new dispensation, judges familiar with sharia law administered justice in the alkali courts. In the predominantly non-Muslim areas of the north, however, the penal code was administered in area courts by judges who might be non-Islamic persons but who had to pass a proficiency test in the provisions of the code. No defense counsel was allowed in the alkali or area courts to defend accused persons.

3

Brothers and Sisters

Because polygamy is universally accepted and widely practiced among the Tiv, it is common for one to have many relatives arising out of the complex web of multilateral relationships. Polygamy thus broadened or affected the cultural definition of who could be referred to as brother ( angbian u nomso ) or as sister ( angbian u kwase ). Therefore, any male with whom one shares a parent or grandparents, including uncles, nephews, and their descendant male children, are usually referred to as brothers.

Similarly, any female relative born within the complex web of the family relationships described above, including her female descendants, is a sister. Her male descendants, of course, would fall within the definition and classification of one’s brothers. The Tiv language does not have equivalents for the English words aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, or grandchild.

In the context of the above family interrelationships, I had several immediate brothers and sisters, some of whom were married and had several children of their own. Among the extended family, I was particularly fond of Uncles Iyoor Adam, Tswaor, and Atime. This network of relationships provided a sense of belonging, security, and protection while I was growing up.

My mom bore two kids for my father: my sister, Hannah Ahungul, who was five years younger, and me. We were part of a large hustling and bustling community with all sorts of daily activities going on among its inhabitants: half brothers, half sisters, uncles, aunts, and nephews. We lived in a typical middle-class household of the time when it was customary or even expected of a chief or nobleman to marry many wives, each of whom might produce several children. To them, children were a symbol of blessings and prosperity. Adult children were also used as a source of unpaid labor on the farms.

Among my father’s five wives, there were ten or