There Was A Dream That Was Bayelsa

More than anything now, it is that rainy night of October 1, 1996, when Gen. Sani Abacha announced the creation of Bayelsa State that I remember most.

We lived in Marine Base, which was at the fringes of Port Harcourt. For current Bayelsans, Marine Base tells stories so deeply and profoundly that it would remain an endearing nostalgia of simple, frenzied, poetic beginnings.

I was very young and observant, not up to six until 1996, when we moved out. But even at that age, I noticed the enveloping Ijawness of Marine Base. These days, one could be right to replace Ijawness with Bayelsaness. Ijaw was spoken everywhere, the variation of Ijaw that would be Bayelsa Ijaw a few years later. It was practically all of us. I do not know how that happened, but a lot of our people occupied that expanse of land just by the river in Port Harcourt from what my estimation tells me began sometime in the early 1980s.

But it is the early 1990s that my memories began, like many of my peers, at Marine Base. I lived with my mother, a nurse, my elder brother and two older sisters in a house just a few yards from the stream that nearly immediately emptied into the river. Our house was sometimes made of plank, like most houses were in Marine Base, then evolved to block, like many houses did. It was a highly communal living. Parenthood was not exclusive to one’s children alone and nearly every older person was a parent.

After school at the Church of God Mission International Church School, which converted the church hall to classrooms on weekdays, though I later attended the now defunct firebrand Aunt Tariah, we would all, my agemates of course, go to the pier and scavenge around. The braver boys climbed the old abandoned ships and hunted for abandoned treasures. Others broke into fishing teams. I preferred to stand by the beach and watch the ships as time and rust tore through them. I figured early that there was something about watching the river from afar.

My grandfather, Lewis Amala, a veteran of the Civil War under Isaac Boro’s Third Marine Commando Unit, was an infrequent visitor. And it was from his short stays, when he took me to the beer parlours in Marine Base, from the then obscure fragments of alcohol-enhanced debates, that the reels of politics floated by me. I heard the words, but they meant nothing then.

“No!” One man would stamp his foot on the floor. “We can no longer take this insult from the Ikwerres.”

“But what can we do? We are stuck in this godforsaken state with them?” another would say within gulps of lager.

My grandfather’s lines were consistent and unmistakable.

“This Rivers State was created for us, the Ijaws, in 1967. Was that not why we went to war to protect it? How come scoundrels are dominating us now? Even the Ogonis, imagine!”

Then the rage would burn Colonel Musa Shehu, the military administrator of Rivers State. Then Ibrahim Babangida would get some knocks for the annulled, botched 1993 presidential elections. It was said M.K.O. Abiola of the Social Democratic Party could have been the winner, but for some reason, my grandfather and his drinking gang didn’t particularly like Abiola. They appeared to root for Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention.

But months later, in that same bar, on a rainy night, I saw the men jubilate over the creation of Bayelsa State by Gen. Sani Abacha. The feeling was more than that of the Super Eagles scoring a goal. I couldn’t grasp all of it that night. But the image of my grandfather dancing and singing eulogies of Abacha, with tears in his eyes, has remained with me through the years.

It was some phenomenon, an ethereal salvation of sorts.

The exodus began almost immediately. Marine Base and its environs tumbled into this new Jerusalem of the Ijaw Nation, as former Governor DSP Alamieyeseigha put it.

I remember our family’s journey in the harmattans of 1996. Our belongings precariously strapped behind a truck. My mother, my siblings and I squeezed into the front passenger seat beside the driver. The road was tiny and dusty and the journey was long; it would seem every journey is long in a child’s imagination. The pervading air of positivity excused the discomfort, and there was this magical belief that we were journeying into utopia. This was to be home, real home in more than a million ways.

READ ALSO: Opinion: Niger governor and his sleeping cabinets

When we arrived at the capital, Yenagoa, she was green, sleepy, with a narrow road that ran from Igbogene down Yenagoa in a linear collage of bush and concrete. You’d walk almost half a mile of peopleless flora before you reached our house, a face-me-I-face-you just across a small lake with a wooden, monkey bridge over it.

Despite the awkwardness of the capital and the debilitating slow movement of time, the aggressive absence of infrastructure and commerce, there was still the feeling of excitement and the energising hope that this green, virgin expanse of promise was all ours to own and to harness.

Everyone felt that way.

Those you’d meet at the capital’s single market; oyoyo and the faces at the Universal Primary Education school compound. From churches in makeshift wooden structures to taverns, to the influx of Northern and South-Eastern traders, to the cackling radio announcement of Navy Captain Philip Ayeni, our first military administrator.

I am 36 today, and Bayelsa State has only become 30. Sometimes there is this odd feeling I get when I think that I am older than my State.

I live in Abuja now, and there is an underwhelming feeling I get whenever I visit Bayelsa. While that green mass of solitude has transformed into a growing maze of development, there is still much to be desired. Cities elsewhere have grown at a greater pace with far less finances. More than ₦4 trillion in federal funding and 13 per cent derivation should have, quite frankly, been more expressive.

I have been in regular discussions with all age demographics about Bayelsa State and our development . The older generation, my grandfather’s generation, or the founding fathers’ generation, have almost all departed. Those remaining, though they feel they are given less credit than they deserve for the state’s creation, are all the same appreciative that there is a state exclusively for the Ijaws at all. They were the most hit in the pre-Bayelsa economic displacement of the Ijaws.

The generation after that have ruled the state since 1999, broken loosely into the class of Port Harcourt, those who resided in Port Harcourt prior to Abacha, and the class of Lagos, those who took Lagos as home before the mid-1990s.

My mother, a veteran nurse and now deceased, belonged to both. My grandfather too. And, in fact, statistically, the modern southward movement of elite Ijaws actually began from Lagos, to Port Harcourt, then to Yenagoa after creation.

In terms of expectations from the state development-wise, my generation has been by far the most idealistic. We are the transition children who saw glimpses of Port Harcourt and took part in the great migration. The state is maturing with us, like we’re peers, and although disillusionment is beginning to set in, there are still those of us, many of us, who are still starry-eyed, who hold on to that great dream and manifesto of our founders, who believe, passionately, that there was and still should be a dream that is Bayelsa.

…..

Julius Bokoru is an acclaimed, award-winning author, socio-political analyst and media consultant.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by contributors and columnists do not necessarily reflect First Daily’s position. First Daily is not responsible or liable for the accuracy of their statements or opinions.

The post There Was A Dream That Was Bayelsa appeared first on First Daily NG .