OLOIBIRI 1955 by Binaebi Miedri Oyeghe Amidst shots of whisky which the oilmen had given Ezuwotie, the elders spoke at length conjuring up intimidating vision of what Oloibiri would become in the not too distant future. The drastic transformations that would besiege Oloibiri would be so monumental that few places in Nigeria and Africa at large would be worthy to be compared with it. One of the elders had said the liquid black gold under Oloibiri’s earth is more than the water that flows in its creeks. “How much would a calabash of the liquid cost?” Eruani asked, hoping to compare the price with palm oil. “It is not measured in calabash but gallons,” Azibalua said. “No, it is barrels!” Eluan chipped in. “If they drill this oil very well there will be so much money that every family in Oloibiri will live in a big brick house complete with the white man’s toilet and kitchen that has a place for smoke to escape through the roof. Every man will drive a motor car as well.” “Ha! Glory has come to Oloibiri!” Ariwera said, pouring the remainder of the drink in his gourd as libation to the ancestors. “How come we don’t know this liquid is there under our feet till the white man came and found it?” “How do you expect us to know when we have not read the white man’s books and did not practice his witchcraft?” Eluan said. “They call it discovery.” The young and erudite Ebifie said. He sat away from the elders and they stared at him. “And it will descend down the bottomless pit of history that the white man discovered crude oil in Oloibiri in 1955. We wouldn’t have known what to do with it even if we the people of Oloibiri had found it first. In the thinking and understanding of white people, we Africans can’t discover anything. That was why they said that it was Mungo Park that discovered the River Niger in I805 even though Africans had navigated that river long before Mungo Park was born. See, it was the same white people they said discovered coal in Enugu in 1912” If only Africans had shouted every find in the skin of a cowhide drum or on the restless mouth of the cannon that spread the message of an eternal call. If only Africans had scattered the details of everything that popped its head before their uncultivated eyes like wandering weeds to all the shores of the earth. If only Africans had sang and danced before those who came to see the nakedness of Africa with the glories of our primitive discoveries, the white man’s canopy of darkness would not have swallowed our bright sunshine. Ignorance is a disease in an age of enlightenment. Ignorance is cancer and tuberculosis. Ignorance is all the diseases in Africa. Africans are not even capable of creative, rationalistic or philosophical thought, where would those soft heads find the pad to bear the weight of the intellectual rigors of science and invention? We found a fossil remains and dig it up to decorate our shrines instead of calculating its age. We saw a bicycle and call it an iron horse, an automobile a moving hut, an aeroplane a giant iron bird! The Father Snows and Miss Smallings had been here trying to change all that. And have the gut to call them names and pray for malaria to massacre them all. Ingrates! Thou ungrateful bastard of darkness! May the devil harvest your kwashiorkor souls to hell! No point. We are the devil himself and that as why you taught your children to draw us with tails. Black is unclean, ugly and evil. Wash us in the waters of the Jordan and Galilee and we shall be whiter than Father Snow and more beautiful than Queen Elizabeth. Stick and stones, guns and bullets but insults are hurting. And like you we wear a thin sensitive skin not a buffalo’s hide. When you designate yourself into a classified buffoon and call us baboons, it shatters the heart, break the bones on which our humanity stands. The iroko here had learnt to bleed because you sucked the strongest of black blood to feed the plantations in the Americas. But Father Snow had often taught about the brotherhood of mankind. Love your neighbour as you love yourself: Golden Law. Christ loves the world and died for the world. The details matters not. Some people were born to be slaves: the descendants of Ham. We woke up too late and saw the white man’s nakedness in every field and every valley of our so-called dark continent. While you woke up too early, yet not soaked by the dews of life and cursed us with your venomous mouth that held no love but salvation in its tongue. Your God is love you said but your mouth dripped with hate, blood and domination. How much blood you split in the conquest of Africa? You failed to measure. How much treasures you stole to Europe from our darkest caves and shrines? How many of our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters you carted away in your slave ships as human cargoes: the millions torn apart from flesh and root. You had lost count. They are beyond your mathematical skills. The pain and torture of your civilization you didn’t teach us in your colonial history. Your missionary teachers never taught the Horrors of Slavery and Colonial Crimes. They only praised Mr William Wilberforce and Britain for abolishing slavery. May God save the Queen and pour damnation on every subjugated person in the British Empire. May God and his ancestors keep him alive to see the birth of Nigeria, Ebifie prayed. Culled from “BARRELS OF BLOOD” by Binaebi Miederi Oyeghe All Rights Reserved.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 07:21:34 +0000
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