Riding The Storms With God In My Sails: The Autobiography Of Admiral Alison

By Admiral Allison Madueke

Riding The Storms With God In My Sails: The Autobiography Of Admiral Alison Madueke is an epic story of the travails and triumphs of a two-time Military Governor, a Naval Chief, and a Member of General Abacha's Provisional Ruling Council (PRC). This book is a record of unblemished service of a patriot that served with fearlessness and integrity.

Although it is a written account of his own life, the book is an invaluable historical document and succinct annals of the Nigerian military-political interplay over three decades.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098387082

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

GROWING UP IN MY FAMILY

My parents, Benaiah Nnenanya Madueke and Esther Ucheagba Madueke were blessed with nine children, two daughters and seven sons. Even though we lived in Otukpo, Northern Nigeria, it was the practice at the time that when a wife was due for childbirth, she was taken back to the husband’s hometown to have her baby. That was how it came about that most of us were born in Inyi, my hometown or at Iyienu in Ogidi, where there were good maternity hospitals. My father’s firstborn is Cordelia. She married Mr. Patrick Opene from Aboh in Delta State. She is a designer and dressmaker who after graduation from Rural Training Centre (RTC) Asaba in 1960 decided to take to our mother’s profession and now runs the Golden Needle, a Garment manufacturing outfit in Lagos. I am the second child and first male. Then there is Chika Harriet who married Mr. William Echezona Ike. She has a Masters degree in International and Public Relations from the University of Kent, England. After Chika is late Hon. Obi Madueke, (Idu Di Uru), a graduate of East Ham University of Technology, London with a Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Systems Analysis from Aberdeen College. He also trained as a Certified Computer Engineer while working with Dowel Schlumberger Statistics London/Paris as an Electronic Data Processing Manager (Africa Region). He was Chief Executive of Cobi Computers Limited which was off Allen Avenue, Ikeja, and was an Honourable Member of the Federal House of Representatives in1993. He was married and had four children. After Obi is Engineer Chike Madueke (Agbalanze). Chike read Chemistry at the University of Ibadan and then Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Manchester. After gaining experience at Suzuki Motors Co in Lagos, he moved to Japan for a year as Production Engineer. He later set up an Industrial Development outfit INDEV Ltd. He also serves as Resource Person to the Presidency and some Federal and State Ministries on Science and Industrial Development and on Power. Chike is married and has four children. After Chike, we had Jason Onyeachonam (Mbara Uguru). A biochemist from the University of Benin, he worked with the Nigerian Customs and Excise, rose to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Customs (DSC). He was appointed Public Relations Officer before he died in 2003 at the age of 46. He was married and had three children. Levi (Obata Obie) studied Agricultural Engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He also holds Masters and Doctorate degrees. He was Branch Manager at Savannah Bank in Aba and thereafter got employed by The United Nations Atomic Energy Agency, Geneva. He is currently in Addis Ababa as Head of Division, Strategic Partnership in the African Union. He is married and has three children. Then, there is Godwin (Okwara Uzo N’ikpa), an Estate Engineer with Prince Georges County, Maryland, USA. He has a Masters degree in Engineering and was invited back to Nigeria in 2007 to serve as Commissioner for Works in Governor Sullivan Chime’s Administration in Enugu State. He is married and has four children. The lastborn of the family is Onyeka Jeff (Ono N’enyi). A businessman, he is married and has three children, and lives in Enugu.

Our father, Benaiah Nnenanya Madueke (Omenyi) was born about the year 1910 at Inyi, Oji River Local Government Area of Enugu State to Maduekesi, the son of Nwokororie, and the grandson of Orie, and son of Akwum, the father of our kindred. His mother was Madam Chimezie Madueke, nee Nzejiofor of Umuori Achi also in Oji River Local Government Area of Enugu State. He had an elder brother, Onwuaju and a younger sister Onujiole.

A self-made man, he commenced schooling against the wishes of his father and had to pay his way through school. Then, it was not fashionable to allow a son to go to the Missionaries instead of helping the father with farm work.

He was seen as lazy for opting to go to school. In fact, it was said that if it had been in the days of the slave trade, he would have been sold for cash. Young Benaiah was not deterred by such threats but continued until he completed Standard Four at the Holy Trinity Primary School, Inyi.

Courageous and adventurous, he ran away from home to Onitsha where he worked as a porter at the River Niger waterside warehouse. He never stopped pointing at his balding head to remind us that he worked hard to achieve success in life. He told us stories of how he would climb mango trees to have a fruit lunch when he was too broke to buy a meal!

An interesting aspect of his time at Onitsha was his love for the small whitish fish fingerlings (Elem). Payment for labour at the waterside was either in cash or Elem which you ate, battered for other food items or sold. While in Onitsha, he nursed the ambition of becoming a tailor, and when he had saved enough money, he made his move to Odenigbo Nsukka where he had some friends, to start his apprenticeship.

Before long, he graduated and once again, looking for largely untapped opportunities and greener pastures, he moved to Otukpo in Benue State where he set up his tailoring workshop. Always in his mind was how he left home and the challenge of vindicating his decision; he was focused on making a success of his life. Because he sewed clothes in unique styles and delivered on time, he became very popular, and his business thrived. Money rolled in!

My mother, Esther Ucheagba Onwu, a woman of calm mien, was born in 1921 to Akudimma and Onwulara of Ubaha Awlaw in Oji River LGA. On completion of her primary school education, she proceeded to Inyi. As was the practice in those days, young Christian girls of marriageable age attended a Preparatory School at the Domestic Training Institute organised by the Missionaries at Holy Trinity Church, Inyi. It was from there that Benaiah found his love: pretty Esther Ucheagba Onwu. Their courtship was brief and on 6th April 1939, marriage was solemnised at Umuabi Udi by Mr. P. B. Herbert (Esq.), Registrar of Marriages in the Enugu District of Nigeria. Papa, as we called him, loved his wife and adored her; to him she was the LIGHT. Little wonder that when she passed on in 1991, he declared that the Light of my life had gone off!

The marriage flourished and soon became an example of happy family life. Esther brought to bear all the domestic science knowledge from school on the smooth and happy running of her home. I fondly remember her crocheted table covers, headrests and table mats.

Benaiah continued to work hard as a tailor while his wife underwent training with Mrs. Lloyd, the wife of the British District Officer, who taught her Fashion Designing and Dressmaking. Very soon, husband and wife had their tailoring workshops side by side; so complementary, so compatible. Mother’s business also grew rapidly and she soon established the Premier Sewing Institute in Otukpo. She was an entrepreneur of sorts and had spite for salaried work. She often said in derision that, Salaried workers never ever have enough money to meet their needs.

In 1952, Benaiah left his tailoring shop to his most senior apprentice as a new and wider vista of timber business came beckoning. Benue State had abundance of timber forests and this new challenge was to be conquered. As one of the pioneers in the business and for impact, he engaged four Gangs of sawyers, hewing and sawing timber in the hinterlands of Otukpo. Over thirty young men from Inyi town and environs constituted the workforce. In fact, there was a saying in Inyi that any young man who wanted prosperity should head to Otukpo and make some money working for Benaiah – if he possessed the sinews!

In those early days, there were no chain saws; the tedious labour of felling trees and sawing the logs into planks was done manually with giant saws with handles on both ends; two men, one in a trench under the log and the other standing on the ground, who would in alternate push-and-pull motions, split the logs inch-by-inch and produce timbers for sale.

Benaiah’s timber business thrived, and before long he became the major timber contractor to the Nigerian Railways Corporation, supplying sleepers for the building and maintenance of the rail lines in the Makurdi Railways district. Payment for supplies was monthly and the arrival of the Railway Pay Train was always eventful. The paymaster paid the contractors in coins: Shillings and Pence. We needed basins and head pans and at times a push truck to carry the jute bags of money home; after which the children were herded into Papa’s bedroom to count and arrange them in £1 mounds. We could thereafter, in our infantine eyes, not understand it when our father told us that he had no money when we made demands for buying uniform items for either the Girls Guide or the Boys’ Brigade. With piles of money in jute bags in his bedroom, how could he be telling us that he was broke? At that time, there were no banks in Otukpo, the nearest bank was the British Bank of West Africa (BBWA) in Makurdi, some 85 kilometres away.

As a father, he was a very caring provider; we were used to our mother buying foodstuff in large quantities, rice and beans in large jute bags. For our father, the practice was to go to farmers whose yams were due for harvesting, pay the agreed sum while we went and harvested them as we needed. His favourite meat was the cow rump tozzo and cow tail. He still made dresses for us the boys while Mama made those for the girls. They both engendered a sense of security and contentment in us. Father was a disciplinarian; you told lies at your own peril, not after his unceasing lecture of the Biblical Let your yes be yes and your no be no which he always supported by citing its source in Matthew Chapter 5 verse 37! He did not spare the rod.

A very active man, he was at a time the Chairman of three important bodies in Otukpo – the Ibo State Union, the Methodist Church and the Awgu District Union.

With the timber business booming, he reasoned that business would be more profitable and efficient if he had his own means of transportation, having been disappointed on numerous occasions by vehicle owners from whom he chartered lorries to evacuate timber from the hinterlands. His next move was predictable. One day he informed me that I would be accompanying him to Makurdi the following day without letting me know what for and I dared not ask. On arrival, we headed to CFAO Motors, dealers in Austin vehicles. Austin petrol engine vehicles were the choice buys in those days before the advent of Diesel vehicles in Nigeria. He paid Nine Hundred and Ninety British Pounds (£990:00) in cash and took delivery of his first vehicle and behold it was a 5-Tonne Austin Chassis. It was a moment of extreme exhilaration for me, driving back home to Otukpo in a brand new vehicle. The news of such great feat spread like wildfire throughout the town. On completion of the construction of the bodywork, it was quickly commissioned to trade as Chukwu Ka Odi Naka (All In God’s Hands). This lorry was quickly followed by another 5-Tonne lorry, Oge Chukwu Ka Mma (God’s Time Is The Best) and a 3/¼-tonne bus, Urgent Message, also known as ZZZ. The ZZZ stood for Ziem, Ziem, Ziem – the Igbo way of saying Send me, Send me, Send me! The primary assignments of the vehicles were transporting of timber from the hinterlands of Ankpa, Ugbokolo, Ochobo, Orakaram and Otukpa to Otukpo, ferrying traders to hinterland markets on market days, and plying longer routes like Onitsha to Kano, Jos and Yola. They were also available for charter to other timber merchants.

As a consequence of owning his means of transportation, he gained an advantage over his competitors as he could penetrate further than them into the heart of the timber forests. He built access roads for his vehicles to easily reach the remote villages in his operational area, thus opening them up to development. With his sawyers coming out to town from time to time in their tens and twenties for their salaries and holidays, our family house was always a beehive of activities. The kitchen was perpetually busy especially with preparing meals for our guests who were renowned for heavy food consumption. In all these, mother went about her responsibilities of feeding and providing for everyone with cheerfulness and mirth.

A major event occurred in the life of Benaiah in 1961 when Mr. Nelson Chukwu, his close childhood friend and classmate, converted him to the Jehovah’s Witness sect. The family came to the brink of breaking up as we all resisted and opposed the change. His friends made attempts to dissuade him. Fellow members of the Methodist Church, of whose Otupko congregation he was at a time Chairman, came in droves to find out the reason for their being abandoned as it were. Our father would listen to entreaties on any other issues, but not his faith – once he had made up his mind. Our mother could not understand a life without being the Chairperson of the Women’s Guild of the Methodist Communion. We the children could not comprehend not being in the Church Choir. Further, the fear of not continuing with our education was all-pervading as it was muted that the converter had suggested our stopping schooling as proof of his conversion. Besides, the prospect of carrying the Bible and knocking on doors to preach to people filled all of us with absolute horror.

Our family faulted and stratified on sectarian lines and tension grew to breaking point; it was our father on one side and us the children behind our mother on the other. Weeks grew into months and months into endless and unfathomable years as our father grew stronger in the Word, applying himself deeply to spreading the Good News.

Amid our state of uncertainty and strife, and in a special display of exceptional wisdom and love for her family, our mother, the Sage, declared: I will not let what the White man brought to us (Christianity) break up my family. I will follow my husband; Alison, you take care of your siblings’ education.

She decided to go along with her husband to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and mandated me, as the eldest son, to take care of my siblings. I took the mantle from there.

Of a truth, a house built on Christ, the Rock, withstands every weather and every storm.

The 15th January 1966 Army coup d’état and the counter-coup of July 1966 which culminated in the mass killing of Igbo people in the North, compelled my parents to abandon their thriving businesses and properties in Otukpo. Like all Ndigbo who were lucky to make it alive, they returned to Eastern Nigeria (in their own case to Inyi) where Benaiah had in 1953 built The Stone House. He quickly settled down with the family and became one of the pillars of the Jehovah’s Witness in the District. His belief in the Bible was complete and the doctrine of preaching and teaching the Word every minute of the believers’ life became a preoccupation.

Every opportunity was converted to a preaching session, every discussion soon turned into a sermon. The Bible became his life; he would read till the early hours of the morning and the more he read the more he preached with gusto, quoting the Bible copiously to support his assertions. In the community, he soon became the epitome of truth and no far-reaching decisions were taken without his input. He always said it the way it was, not minding whose ox was gored. He became a Pioneer in the Jehovah’s Witness and later an Elder.

In March 1988, he stunned everyone when he sent out invitations to all his children and all those who had worked for him: drivers, sawyers, house helps, apprentices, guards and all. Their spouses represented any such workers who had died, and where both were dead, their children or relatives represented them. It was to be a celebration that he entitled My Gratitude. On the appointed day, as the party was to begin, the clouds began to gather and not very long thereafter, the rains came. As the guests were running for shelter, carrying their chairs with them, he came out in front of his house, looked heavenwards and intoned: the Jehovah that I serve shall not let the rain spoil this occasion and, to our consternation, the rain stopped immediately and the sun reappeared. That was the degree of faith he had and expressed in God.

As the ceremony went underway, he recounted to the hearing of his guests his life’s story and the details of God’s abundant mercies to him. To conclude, he asked his listeners if he had at any time cheated any of them, or dealt them a bad card, or if he owed anyone of them any outstanding payments. No one replied in the affirmative; it was a unanimous shaking of heads and the chanting of No, No, No.He went on to apologise to anyone he might have wronged in the process of working with them. He told them that the occasion was simply for him to say THANK YOU to those who worked for him and made his business such a great success. There was plenty to eat and drink and the evening drew into midnight with stories of the good old days!

On 20th January 1999, his last day on earth, he said, As of today, I do not owe anyone a penny, I have paid my driver his salary, paid those who worked for me at Oji River; it is only people that owe me. His sense of justice and fair play was simply unassailable.

Ten minutes before his call to glory, he said in English The Spirit of God is coming from heaven to earth to explain to the world the Scriptures. I give my right hand to God. He requested that Revelations Chapter 1: verses 4-8 be read to him. The verses read:

John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven spirits which are before his throne; 5. And from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. 6. And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7. Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.

While the verses were being read he kept nodding in consent, raised his right hand up and as the hand came down, he passed on!

He witnessed to Jehovah with his last dying breath; To God be the Glory!

Our father, the Loader, Tailor, Timber Contractor, Transporter, Employer of Labour and, more than all else, the Preacher man left for his children enough teaching by example to last us a lifetime. We thank God for his fulfilled life dedicated to serving the Lord.

The town of Otukpo is in the present Benue State of Nigeria, located south of Makurdi on the River Benue and north of Nsukka in the present Enugu State. Otukpo Camp, as it was then known, was mainly a habitation of non-indigenes of Otukpo, non-Idomas, and therefore the school population was so represented. Most Idomas lived in their villages and communities surrounding the town except for a few Native Authority (N. A.) employees who had to live in town for proximity to their places of work.

I remember my first Headmaster, Mr. Agozie, an amiable, portly, if not rotund, Igbo man who we fondly called Ten-Ten after his usual acclamation to a pupil’s very good result in Arithmetic. I remember the school bell, a lorry wheel hung low on an acacia tree with a chain and the striker, a piece of iron one-foot-long, deformed from years of summoning school pupils to Western education. School started at 8am with Assembly during which the pupils fell in lines according to their classes for the teachers to thoroughly inspect them: teeth, haircuts, finger and toenails and the school uniform were inspected. Thereafter prayers were said by one of the teachers and later the school band played as the pupils marched into their classrooms – a hall that doubled as a church on Sundays but was partitioned with standing plywood barriers that seemed to amplify the noise from the other classes. The Headmaster’s table stood at the Altar end of the hall from where he, from time to time regulated the noise level by rapping his cane on his table. There were two lessons followed by a break, another set of three lessons before a 30-minutes’ recess and then another two to bring a long, boring day to an end. Leaving school was such a relief after which an unauthorised bout of play ensued and those school uniforms that passed the teacher’s inspection in the morning underwent rude shock treatment of dust and dirt.

Back home you had to explain your untidy look to mother before settling down to a well-deserved lunch. Talking about lunch, my happiest days were when pounded yam or garri was served with ogbono soup. But serve yam and vegetable and my long face would almost drop; I would finish up pounding my portion of yam and eating it with the same vegetable! I am not sure why, as a child, I found yam so tasteless and boring. Perhaps, I lacked the patience to chew for a long time before swallowing.

The Madueke family lived in the part of Otukpo called Rocky Hills (Ugwu Okwute). On the right in front of our house was a jutting rock which, to my infantine eyes, looked like a mighty boulder. The boulder had smoothened from years of being the base on which nine children were bathed, to prevent mud from splashing dirt on them. I vaguely remember how often I cried onto that rock, like a sheep being led to the slaughter slab. I still wonder why children dread having a bath!

In the early 1950s, Otukpo Camp was inhabited mostly by stranger elements; amongst them were Igbos, Yorubas, Hausas, Ghanaians, Cameroonians and people from other ethnic groups of Nigeria.

The Idoma indigenes lived in their homesteads, as already stated. With years of living together, the stranger elements developed very strong bonds. For us children, there were no differences between the groupings except that the languages differed but all spoke the English language or the pidgin version of it. I remember the Orji family, the Modums, our neighbours, the Adabanyas, Ogunemes, Madus, Nzejiofors, Osunwas, Azurus, Ogbuehis, the Ampahs, Carews, the Ikwues, Obeyas; there were the Anyabes, Onias, Arubaluezes, the Asiegbus, Okugos, Onwukas, Alechenus, Amehs, Tankos and Abubakars, and a whole lot of families that lived together in such harmony that we never knew we originated from different ethnic nationalities, the way we know them today. Our mother could readily send us to either Mrs. Azuru or Mrs. Nzejiofor to collect bitter leaf or ugu vegetable, just as she was about to start cooking soup for the evening meal or another child could come to our mother to pick up some palm oil! These were the normal relationships that existed amongst our families.

Saturdays were set aside for weddings for Methodist adherents while Catholics wedded on Sundays. It did not matter whose wedding it was; everyone was invited and made welcome. The school bands played at weddings, and it was always a big do for the band boys who were usually entertained separately and specially. I played the side drum and was rather known for my grinding of the drums. Saturday mornings were for the washing of clothes and general house cleaning for all families while the evenings were for choir practice after which we played football while the girls played netball till late, thus always incurring the displeasure of our parents. On Sundays, church services were compulsory except you were admitted in hospital and Sunday School was no less important; you missed any of the two at your own peril at the hands of your parents, and later on Monday, your teacher who ensured a hundred percent attendance to church service, dutifully reported same to the Headmaster. We, however, took risks at times by skipping Sunday School when we had important football matches usually played on Sunday afternoons and were always prepared for any impending punishments. Sundays were special for football because the games recorded high attendance. On Sundays the house helps, the apprentices, the traders and the young at heart professionals were free to enjoy the game of soccer and this was the day we played matches: Pupils versus traders, students versus holidaymakers, etc. This explained why the temptation was so strong to skip Sunday School or evening church service. Conscious of the consequences of our plan to skip Sunday school we went into all sorts of arrangements with some of our trusted siblings, to brief us on what transpired in church; who preached the sermon, the theme of the sermon and who and who were in church. Needless to say that this was usually at a price. Sometimes our plots worked but you remained at the mercy of your co-conspirator; if you displeased or offended him or her thereafter, your prank could be reported retrospectively, and it would still carry the same punishment.

THE TRAIN STORY

I must have been just about five years old before starting school at Otukpo. Our house at Ugwu Okwute was in the middle of the stretch where the rail line and township dust road ran parallel for about a mile. You could almost see the railway station from our house but the signal point was very much visible from my mother’s sewing workshop. Every day at about noon on weekdays, the passenger train would pass in front of our house. It was such a thrill, a thrill that grew into a habit of me standing in front of the house to wave at the passengers in the passing coaches. The great thing was that the gaily-dressed passengers in the trains would wave back at me! Every day, by noon I would wait and watch the signal light go green and the signal arm dip; the excitement would build up as the locomotive engine started, loudly puffing white steam and spewing black coal smoke signifying its take off. Gradually building up speed it would hurtle towards me. Then the engine would steam past and the coaches lazily follow, leading up to the waving climax. As the Guard coach, the last coach of the train disappeared from sight I would have done my duty for the day which included knowing the number of coaches in the rolling stock. The beauty of the dark green painted passenger coaches with their yellow, perpendicular lines and the magnificent, centrally located logo of the Nigerian Railway Corporation on the body of each coach were a sight to behold and always made my day.

This particular day, the day of infamy, I must have been so engrossed in playing at our backyard that I lost count of the hours and failed to position myself for the wave at the train. Then I heard what sounded like a train. I left whatever it was that I was doing and sped out through the corridors through the pantry, and the parlour to the front of the house. But alas, what I saw was only the receding rear of the Guard coach! God, what have you done to me? I missed the train! Tragedy! I fell to the ground kicking and wailing. I have missed the train! I moaned.I have missed the train. I could not be comforted. My mother ran to me, picked me up from the floor, consoling and reminding me that there would be another train the following day. I would not hear any such thing. I have missed the train! I have missed the train! I continued to scream. Utterly frustrated, she quietly lowered me to the ground, picked up a broomstick and began whacking my head with it. The blows stung sharply, and I decided it was in my best interest giving up my protest on the missed train.

For a long time, my elder sister, Cordelia, teased and teased about this episode. I have no apologies, though; a man had the right to enjoy doing what he liked. In fact, that episode could be today likened to my having a golf booking on a Saturday or Public Holiday and missing the Tee Off because of the notorious Lagos traffic jam. Of course, one would not fall in front of the caddies kicking and shouting, I have missed my Tee-off! I have missed my tee-off! But a loss is a loss.

For the aeroplanes, I never cared or bothered about them. To start with, they were too high up in the sky that you could not see the passengers let alone wave to them. Again, not even once had it ever done my bidding or entreaty. My elder sister had taught me to always ask the planes to drop a bag of money for me and I always did but nothing of the sort ever happened. What a waste of time!

THE FOOTBALLER

As a child, I had a great passion for football, such that I occasionally ran afoul of family programmes with severe repercussions. My love for the game nevertheless had its rewards. In secondary school, I was a member of my school’s First Eleven; at the Nigerian Defence Academy, I was the football Captain for the two and a half years that I was there. And, at the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, I played in the College First Eleven and went further to play for a club side in Plymouth. But, for all these, I paid the initial premiums in various forms.

I had gone out on one of my soccer escapades in Otukpo when I was aged nine or ten. In those days we had no access to soccer boots and any open ground served as football field. Unfortunately, I stepped on a nail in the course of the game; that did not stop the game as I promptly covered the wound with sand. On getting home that evening, my mother’s keen eyes detected that I had a limp. I owned up that I had sustained an injury and my father who was there prescribed the Hot Oil treatment to be administered by one of the numerous house helps. My father’s prescription involved inserting a knife in the fire and, when red-hot, applying palm oil from it onto the wound. It was a very painful procedure that practically fried the wound and I dreaded it. Therefore, I refused to undergo it. A day later, unknown to me that I was still limping, my father asked if I had taken the medication he recommended and I answered in the affirmative. He knew I was lying and to prove it he sent for the house help who was to administer the surgery; he promptly confirmed that I had refused to take the treatment. Heavens broke loose; I had never before seen my father in that state of rage. With his very hairy and muscular hand, he gripped my arm like a vice, dragged me to the mango tree in front of the house. In a second he had a multi-tongued branch in his hand and with the cane he administered a worse than hot oil treatment to me. One of the earliest lessons we were taught in the family was never to tell lies. At morning devotions, father would repeat the verse in the Bible that says, Let your yes be your yes, and your no your no. I must have heard that admonition over a thousand times during my childhood and I always adhered to it. But on that occasion, the fear of the hot oil treatment got the better part of me. As my father flogged me, he kept asking this question under his breath: So, Alison, you tell lies? So, Alison, you tell lies? This happened nearly seven decades ago. But the guilt I felt then remains with me. The shame of telling lies is indeed a heavy burden. That was the last time my father flogged me and, not too many years before his death, he professed that I was an obedient and honest son and he celebrated the trait in the family by slaughtering a goat for me.

THE CLOVE HITCH

In the days before pipe-borne water, the largest stream in Oturkpo was Okukoro, a stream issuing from a cliff of rocks and clay. At the source of the stream the water was reasonably clean or, at least, clear; that was from where drinking water was fetched. Downstream was fairly deep and conveniently inclined like a swimming pool, the deeper end, and the not too deep end. This took care of the swimming skills of the swimmers and the non-swimmers. On Saturdays, it was the routine of many families to do the general family washing of school uniforms, household curtains, blinds, bed sheets, pillowcases, you name it. On completion of the washing the items were spread on the grass to dry before being folded in readiness to head home. While the materials dried in the sun, swimming was the most reasonable thing to indulge in. We would swim for hours on end, our eyes red as a result, our primary assignment of the day completely forgotten. Normally, we went to the stream as early as 8am, which meant that we should be done with the washing and be back home before 1pm, but no. We at times would swim until five or six in the evening. Sure of the impending scolding on reaching home, we would tie our parents’ mouths by making clove hitches on the ears of elephant grasses and, as we did that, we would say to the grass do not let our parents scold us. At times it worked, at other times we were not only scolded, we also got the cane!

WORKING WITH FATHER

As I already mentioned, my father employed more sawyers as his timber business flourished. He sent them to remote forests where timber was in abundance. They went in Gangs, each Gang having a Head and his deputy. They hewed gigantic trees with manual saws and then reduced them to ordered measurements. Reaching the remote sites where they worked and evacuating the timber products necessitated the building of access roads, a move that won my father the admiration of the villagers and the Native Authority.

Sawing is energy-sapping and sawyers are reputed for heavy eating. Whenever payday brought them to town, my mother’s kitchen worked all day and all night; the house helps were stretched to the limit, pounding yam and garri, preparing pots and pots of soup. Those days brought out the best in our mother as a superlative hostess. Under such acute culinary demands and pressure lasting for several days, most women would snap, but not Esther.

She was invariably calm, cheerful and pleasant, exchanging banter, always willing to lend a hand, yet very firm and understanding. A good number of the sawyers would bank their earnings with her.

During my holidays, my father would insist that I accompany him to his place of work, to the Bush for timber product evacuation by lorry. During the trips I would sit in the front passenger seat with father and listen to his conversation with his driver and friend, Mr. Adolphus, while we rode out the rough, rugged, Madueke-built dirt roads. Some days, especially during the rainy season, our heavily laden lorry would get stuck in the muddy road. This sometimes would necessitate off-loading the entire cargo before the vehicle was extricated and once more reloaded for the journey to resume. Often offloading and reloading the logs of timber were executed by less than five of us or, if we were lucky to be near a village, a handful more. My father never failed at any opportunity to expose me to hard work; he would often tell me that food tasted better after hard work, that it was difficult to make money and very easy to spend it. I consider myself a good student, as my children often complain of the Madueke trait of strict financial control, if not outright miserliness. After all, it is said that he who is taught to live on little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has been left a great deal by his father.

Talking of bringing up his son the hard way, I cannot remember any holiday period that my father gave me any pocket money. In fact, the matter never came up; not when there was plenty of food in the house. I often wonder how our children would manage the situation if they found themselves in the position I always was as a secondary student on holidays.

However, in the absence of legal financial empowerment by my father, I resorted to other survival strategies. My immediate younger sister, Chika, was a hard-working daughter that won the heart of our father; she would always ensure that the family never lacked water in those days when there was no pipe-borne water in Otukpo. Even after pipe-borne water became available, only the strong and aggressive could fetch water as supply was insufficient and therefore rationed. Chika was ready to rough it out with the other children and soon she was always allowed to fill all our containers from the lone, standing metal pipe dispensing water forcefully under pressure, releasing chlorine gas to our faces, as if to reassure us that it had been properly chemically treated. Chika never did any wrong in the family, especially in comparison to the elder brother who detested household chores and did nothing other than play football. I remember how I would frown and grumble any day mother assigned me the chore of either grinding the egusi or ogbono or, worse still, preparing the Bitter Leaf vegetable for making soup. Actually, I did not grudge Chika her enviable position as long as I was left off the boring, monotonous chores; it was only the matter of pocket money that bothered me.

When Chika went to the Ibo Union Grammar School, Kano, fortune smiled at her because many of our father’s timber customers lived in the ancient commercial city and readily gave her monetary gifts which she added to the already bounteous supply of fund she received from father as pocket money. I could not but be at her mercy if I needed to purchase things like groundnuts or oranges, a situation she always used to remind me of my misfortunes. But I found a way out. I snooped and discovered her Bank – an Ovaltine can, hidden in Mama’s bedroom. Bingo! Chika, in her industry and independence, had opened a grocery where she sold oranges, groundnuts, boiled eggs, puff-puff, and other finger foods. Thenceforth, I helped myself from her ‘bank’ and with the money paid for groundnuts, oranges and at times boiled eggs, from her grocery. As far as I was concerned it was not theft, after all I used the money in purchasing goods she purchased with the money given to her by our father in preference to me! After all we were all his children. But sooner than later the bubble burst on me. She was intrigued by my sudden affluence and ability to pay for my purchases and suspected foul play. She confronted me on loss of money from her ‘Bank’ and I quickly pleaded guilty without reason; that took the wind off her sails; she simply reported the incident to our parents who had a good laugh at what a man could do when he had his back to the wall. That did not change my condition as I still never got pocket monies during the holidays.

THE BOYS’ BRIGADE.

The object of the Boys Brigade shall be The advancement of Christ’s Kingdom among Boys and the promotion of habits of Obedience, Reverence, Discipline, Self-respect, and all that tends towards a true Christian manliness. BB for short, the theme is about Being Bold, about how we feel about our faith; about standing out because we are so distinctive in what we try to do as followers of God’s principles, which do not always line up with the world’s views. With the Motto Sure and Steadfast these are the tenets that sharpened my childhood and teenage years and literally guided my perception of what I should be. With the benefit of hindsight, it was my first romance with the uniform and the disciplined life.

The Navy-blue Safari-type jacked over white shorts, a white haversack under a two-inch-wide black leather belt and a hard cylindrical black cap with two narrow white bands running the full circumference, a Boys Brigade metal badge, a chin stay and any pair of sandals made up the Brigade uniform that I was so proud of. Once a week we met after school hours and engaged in Brigade games, team exercises, physical development and sing songs, tales of heroism, and such activities that inspired confidence to take positive risks and dream big and work hard to achieve great things. Once a month we marched in our uniform accompanied by the Brass band, in which I played the side drum, to the remote villages of Otukpo on Christian Campaign, preaching the Word and converting the unbelievers to Christ. Once a year we went on Camping, the high point of the year’s activities. For camping, every boy came prepared with cooking utensils, sleeping gear, two pairs of uniforms, toiletries and above all some ration of raw food for the five days of the camping. At camp you made your fire and cooked your food. It was an experience many of us who lived with our parents never had. There was map reading, bush exercises using the compass and on the final night there was a bonfire, and plays presented by the different sections. It used to be the most hilarious event with sections striving to win the concert presentation shield. The ten-mile walk back to town was delightful and an opportunity to rehearse all that transpired in the five days of living together in an environment far removed from the ever-watchful eyes of parents. The Boys Brigade Camp was my first opportunity to prepare a meal and was it delicious! Many years later, I have had occasions to surprise my family with my Flower Rice, my adaptation of cooking rice with large chopped fresh pepper, onions, tomatoes and other fresh vegetables, in the absence of proper grinding utensils.

The spirit of fair competition, teamwork, accepting others for what they are and assisting them in their weaknesses and most of all learning from others, these were the lasting benefits that this Association inculcated in us.

But joining the Boys Brigade did not happen without its funny side. The first day I declared to my parents my intention to join the BB they were together and on completion of my proposition, my mother went into a tirade on how I never did anything to help in the house and how joining the BB would mean that no one would ever see me in the house anymore. Offhandedly my father interjected on my behalf. Allow the boy to go to Boys Brigade. Allow him to go to BB, and as was her nature, mother had simply raised her objection and left it at that. About two weeks later when we were given the bill for the uniforms, I tendered the request to them. Once my father heard about giving me some money he quickly retorted What is BB? What is the meaning of BB?

With a burst of mischievous laughter, my mother replied, Oh, now you don’t know what BB is, because he is asking for money? Please find money for the poor boy so that he can go to BB! My father’s response was most unexpected as he burst into his characteristic throaty laughter at his being irretrievably floored! This woman, you will kill me in this house!" He concluded.

THE DISTRICT OFFICER, MR. LLOYD

Empire Day was an important event in the year’s Calendar, Nigeria being a British Colony. We would proudly sing to the beat of our school band that the British Empire shall never perish! All the schools would assemble at the Government field and then march past as the Resident, Mr. Lloyd, the Representative of the Queen of England took the Salute, clad in his white uniform with gold epaulettes, white helmet and gold-coloured sash. Thereafter there would be athletic competitions in Track and Field events between the Primary schools, after which prizes were distributed to winners and The Empire Day Shield given to the school with the most medals.

Mr. Lloyd’s wife was a seamstress and, being close to my father, though not as a friend, she taught my mother her profession of a seamstress. That was where she learnt the latest designs and patterns that placed her in a class of her own. She could easily have passed as a London Trained Tailor! Again, when the Lloyds were leaving Otukpo at the end of their tenure, he sold off a number of his personal and household effects to us. Amongst other items, my father bought a beautiful water jug and a soda water maker. We would excitedly fill the adroitly wire-meshed bottle with water, insert the soda capsule into the chamber, squeeze the trigger and watch the bubbles form as the water in the bottle came under pressure. Soda water was not exactly tasty but the operation of the apparatus was enough reason to drink anything that resulted from the exercise. Dad also bought a stainless steel sieve for tea and a number of other household items that then looked out of the ordinary.

A central part of our lives was worship. Our father was an ardent Christian; in fact, both our parents were. My father was at a time the Chairman of the Methodist Church, and my mother the Head of the Women’s Guild. There was never a reason to miss church service. We attended the Sunday morning service, followed that with Sunday school and then the Evening service. All those were before my father converted to the Jehovah’s Witness sect. By the time anyone of us was old enough, he or she joined the choir as a matter of course. We enjoyed it additionally because it represented a great escape from doing the house chores. I benefited immensely from being in the choir as a child. As I grew, I was the Choir Master in the Secondary School and up till now, I still sing in my church choir to the amazement of not a few.

For my Primary education, I attended the Methodist Camp School, Otukpo, and our teachers were mostly Ndigbo. But the School, which doubled as a Church on Sundays, was only for Primary One to Primary Four pupils from where you graduated to the Methodist Central School in a different part of town for Primaries Five and Six. After school on Fridays, we arranged the chairs for church service. The women cleaned the church on Saturdays and adorned it to look like a church. My