THE ELECTION by Bob Ejike

THE ELECTION

By BOB EJIKE

Louis Farrakhan Crescent opens with the desolate Indian Embassy at the immediate left, giving isolated stares at the aristocratic After Hour Restaurant that pampers foreign diplomats, oil magnates and the folklorized Nigerian super-rich at prices that kept away unwanted guests, gaping at the resplendent blue lagoon that surrounded the rear side of the restaurant. The large overcrowded parking lot immediately after the restaurant, beside the lagoon, is utilized as a recreational and information-gathering field by the ever-increasing multitude of visa applicants. Touts daily make fast money from parking unsuspecting motorists and selling (mostly false) information, from visa speculations, phone numbers of embassy personnel, fake western visas, stolen passports, travellers cheques to dollar bill rentals, and any form of value that could camouflage the debilitating poverty that the applicant is trying to escape, when he presents himself for the interview. An iron bar separates the park from the Italian Embassy Park whose vehicular use is strictly restricted to the staff and invited guests of the embassy. Four armed mobile policemen attached to the grandiose official residence of the Italian Ambassador, within the large compound of the embassy strolled around the few cars left in the park. A lanky photographer, with an old Polaroid wait-and-take camera, garbed in outdated, slightly undersized clothes prayed loudly, heatedly stamping his feet for patronage by the makeshift dark room under a mangled tree at the entrance of the park that shrivelled in the excruciating tropical heat. A caterwauling mass of desperate humanity milled around. Two elite women with oversized buttocks defecated in the lowered bay of the lagoon at the end of the park without a care in the world about the men whose eyes may be invading their most intimately guarded privacy. The tree-lined road between the foreign missions and the green lagoon-front ran straight, passing the embassies of Finland, Bulgaria and the long stretch of land that housed the imposing U.S. Embassy, Louis Farrakhan Crescent curved at the large Napex Shopping Centre, the detached monumental structures of the German, British and Swedish Embassies immediately followed by the modest Lebanese Consulate. Some multinational companies occupied the rest of the street before the Italian embassy that stood opposite the gigantic Russian embassy at the T. junction where Louis Farrakhan Crescent, like a dog eating its tail, finally terminates its circle, facing the car parks and the lagoon at its beginning. Chuddy hurried past, turning left at the T-junction, towards the mission’s entrance.

 The expression on the ambassador’s face when Chuddy arrived the next day after traversing the rigorous security control was something between hopelessness and frustration. He waved the visitor into a seat and pushed back his hair with both hands, a gesture that the young man understood as a prelude to crisis, then he cleared his throat and started solemnly, ‘Chuddy, I have two problems. First the votes of the presidential election are being counted now, I just received a letter from the President of the Italian Republic, he wants Italy to be the first country to congratulate the neo-president, whoever it turns out to be. Now I must know whom the winner of this election will be before the counting of the votes is completed. So you see because I am not a fortune teller, I need a black magic man who is able to tell the future’ he trailed off into mild dry uncomfortable laughter, ‘ you see I have to advise our president so that he will know which of the candidates to address his congratulatory letter to. If we have to succeed in being the first, the congratulatory letter must be sent before the election result is out, and it must be addressed to the winner of the presidential election, not the loser. You understand that I must not make the president of the republic look like a bloody fool’.

Chuddy’s eyes shifted to the portrait of the dignified white-haired octogenarian Italian president on the wall. ‘I understand’. He replied thoughtfully.

‘Chuddy I just arrived here and I hardly know anybody, I am relying on you because your facts are detailed and accurate. Tell me, who will win this election, Falae or Obasanjo ?’.

Chuddy inhaled generously and exhaled slowly. ‘Both Falae and Obasanjo are products of different military administrations, but Obasanjo, as a retired General is is more intimate with the military establishment which is holding and distributing power and authority. Obasanjo has presided over the affairs of the nation as a military head of state, while Falae functioned as finance minister for the General Ibrahim Babangida government. Both men are Christian Southerners of Yoruba ethnicity. Falae’s main drawback is that he is generally perceived as a Yoruba candidate, because he is virtually unknown outside the West.’.

‘One moment, please’. Dr Milani pressed the buzzer, and Mrs Lee’s soft silky voice came on the instrument. ‘Your Excellency, Sir’.

‘Cancel all my appointments for today’.

The high pitched voice took on a sudden urgency, ‘but Your Excellency, you have an appointment with the Former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Her Excellency, The Deputy Governor of the state, the honourable senator who studied in Italy…’

‘Postpone all of them, I am tackling a very serious problem’. His tone of superior authority outweighed her voice of reason. She surrendered. Dr Milani continued, ‘something else Mrs Lee, direct all staff who wish to have audience with me to The Chancellor, tell him I said he should take over my duties for today’.

‘Okay Your Excellency’. Replied Mrs Lee.

Dr Milani picked up his pen and paper and started jotting, his gaze returning to Chuddy ‘as you were saying?’ The telephone rang and the ambassador took the call and spoke calmly with the director of Agip about the sponsorship of an Italian drama presentation and an exhibition of Benin arts and craft at the Muson Centre. The envoy replaced the receiver with a satisfied expression. The phone rang again and he spoke with a sour expression about entry visa to somebody. He brought the call to a quick termination and put down the phone. His focus returned to Chuddy and the volume of his voice reduced to a confident whisper. ‘I hold lots of meetings here daily with very important Nigerian personalities. They take appointments to welcome me and pay their respect, but before long they change the subject of their visit to entry visa, either they need a visa for their wives, their children, relations or mistresses. In all my years in the diplomatic corps I have never seen anything like this. No matter how highly placed and respectable Nigerian VIPs are, once they come into this office, they begin to solicit for visa for somebody, and I always tell them to go and apply in the visa office’.

Chuddy kept silent, not knowing how to respond. Dr Milani continued.’ The biggest problem that we have here is visa…..and migrant prostitution. The Nigerian economy is in a bad shape and the most unlikely people want to emigrate; yet we cannot allow one hundred and twenty million Nigerians to transfer to Europe and take over. Please continue what you were saying Mr Mokelu’.

 ‘ Yes, Obasanjo is nationally popular because of his position  as an ex-head of state, and indeed the only Nigerian  military ruler  who voluntarily handed over power, and the fact that although he is a Westerner, he handed over to a Northerner makes Nigerians see  him as  detribalised. This fact earns votes for him countrywide, even though he has little followership among his Yoruba kinsmen who blame him for handing power over to Shehu Shagari, a Fulani Northerner, after his reign as military Head of State, instead of his fellow Yoruba Chief Obafemi Awolowo who contested Shagari’s slight victory in the law court, and because he did not support Abiola’s battle for the highest office. Obasanjo is supported by the Northern caliphates, who have controlled Nigeria’s administration since independence, he has been greatly supported by top   Northern billionaires like Dangote, including Babangida with his estimated enormous   8 billion dollar fortune and his fellow military officers who are still very influential in vital political circles within the country. His chief campaign manager is Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, the former director of military intelligence. Internationally he is endorsed by world-class statesmen like Nelson Mandela, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter, Andrew Young and European leaders. Because he went Abacha’s Gulag and lived to tell the story, Nigerian citizens see Obasanjo as a symbol of freedom. I have no doubt in my mind that Obasanjo will win. Reply The President and tell him to send a congratulatory letter to Obasanjo.’

Dr Milani gripped his glasses in thought and allowed a weighty silence to pass as he weighted the risk, staring meditatively at the African strategist.  Eventually he spoke in whispers ‘Chuddy you speak from a fountain of knowledge, obviously you have a profound understanding of your country, but you understand that my job is on the line?’

‘Yes of course I do Your Excellency’ Chuddy replied meekly.

Dr Milani cupped his mouth with his left hand, absorbed in total contemplation. After a prolonged pause he said ‘You’re sure?’

‘Absolutely’ Chuddy assured him.  The ambassador scribbled on a sheet of paper, made corrections and pressed the bell on his table. The secretary came in. ‘type this letter’ he instructed, handing the paper to her. She returned to her office.

‘My second problem is that an Italian woman resident in Aba in Abia state came here last night shaking with fright, requesting that we help repatriate she and her children because Ibo youths are angry about the non-nomination of former vice president Alex Ekwueme and are preparing to start another Biafran war. Tell me, Chuddy, do you think Ibo people are ready to go to war because of the failure of this candidate to get his party nomination?’

 Chuddy’s Brain flowed through the matter for a moment, distilled the facts, and as he pontificated the ambassador listened with wide-eyed attention. ‘to understand the position of the Ibo man in Nigeria  is difficult. The Ibos lost the Biafran war and came out like beggars. Financial policies were enacted to permanently eliminate them from big business, ethnic quotas where introduced in all the sectors of the economy to bastardise their industry and enterprise, ethnicity rather than merit became the constitutional vehicle for upward mobility. The lack of employment opportunities for Ibo graduates led to low college registration as the youths rush into trade, where their future will not be determined by a quota system that denigrates merit. With the most industrious group in the nation falling back to illiteracy, and those that leave university finding no opportunity, have no choice but to join the brain drain and emigrate to develop the already developed Western countries, little wonder   national development is stalled.  In the military Ibo officers are retired once they attain the rank of colonel to ensure that no Ibo man becomes a General and as such wields sufficient influence to threaten the polity, therefore as at today, no Ibo officer commands a brigade in the Nigerian army. The few who get past the rank of colonel are those who proved their loyalty to the hegemonic Northerners by fighting on the Nigerian side during the civil war. In no part of Iboland is there a single Federal government industry, or even a road that is not bedevilled by erosion, a natural calamity of the area that the federal government has refused to address. In spite of these orchestrated efforts at marginalizing the Ibos, once you enter Iboland you know from the sheer level of commercial and industrial development that you are there. It is interesting to know that virtually every building or industry in Iboland was put up by individuals without any assistance from the government. On the contrary sometimes the federal government refuses to grant the communities permission to embark on some development projects, which are deemed capable of rescuing the people from their predicament. Every now and then Islamic fundamentalists in the North declare a jihad with one flimsy excuse or the other and kill off a crop of enterprising Ibo merchants and professionals living among them. The older generations of Ibo’s who witnessed Biafra treat this anomaly with caution, and this attitude further angers the youth who believe that their fathers lost the Biafran war to the British, not to Northern Nigerians. Nevertheless, the fact that Dr Alex Ekwueme has been outmanoeuvred in the party presidential primaries will not propel them to war, but any further attempt to massacre Ibos in any part of the country will be met with reprisal attacks, and if the political marginalization of the Ibos is not curtailed in the foreseeable future, no one can predict the reaction of the youths, but Ibos will not go to war because a candidate from their ethnic group did not win the party’s nomination’.

‘Are you certain Chuddy?’ Dr Milani was visibly disturbed.

‘Certain’. Chuddy assured him. A fat Italian with a broad chest and tiny waist shambled into the office with a shapeless swagger, sneered in return to Chuddy’s greeting and proceeded to discuss some complex technical problems with the ambassador.  When he left, Dr Milani prompted Chuddy, ‘Tell me, this much-talked about Ogoni, is it in Ogun State?’

Chuddy was amused, but he stifled the laughter before it reached the surface. ‘ No Your Excellency, it is in Rivers State’.

‘Since the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa, much has been written in the international media about Ogoni, and I think it is important that I understand that problem well because next week the Chairman of the Italian Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights will be here on a fact finding mission’.

Chuddy nodded comprehension, and commenced. ‘Ogoni is a modest piece of land, that is inhabited by half a million people. Since oil was discovered, six hundred and thirty-four million barrels of oil have been extracted from 96 oil wells in Ogoniland, from this Shell BP and N.N.P.C have raised over thirty billion dollars and Ogoni people are left with nothing but poverty, ignorance, disease and strife. Three percent of oil revenue was supposed to be going back to Ogoni natives and other oil-producing communities, but various military governments reneged on this arrangement and this led to the destabilizing phenomenon of angry youths ganging together, arming themselves and insisting on compliance to this agreement in the most violent manner. The umbrella organization representing Ogoni towns, MOSOP, under the leadership of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Legun Mitee rose up against military dictatorships, Saro-Wiwa having distinguished himself as an international environmentalist’. Mrs Lee returned the typed letter, the ambassador appended his signature on it ‘fax it to The President of The Republic’, he directed.

The secretary returned to her office, the fax machine rolled with its all so familiar whine. Chuddy resumed his narration. ‘The writer, a humorist, a playwright and novelist Ken Saro-Wiwa never attained the literary heights of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka or Ben Okri but he was known as the producer who modernised Nigeria’s soap opera culture with his weekly television series Basi and Co entertaining the entire nation and improving the standard of entertainment. At his Ogoni home he was recognized as a   charismatic orator with a great talent for articulating the needs of his people, so when he discussed the Ogoni debacle, the entire nation and the international community gave ear, both locally. In the pursuit of his cause of the emancipation of his people, Saro-Wiwa was pitched against brutal military dictators that pillaged the nation, and avaricious oil company’s intent on the unabated exploitation of Ogoni, without compensating the indigenes for the pollution of their   environment and damage of their farmland, rivers and sea, their major means of livelihood. Ogoni is constituted by six kingdoms of aggressively independent people, whose fierce suspicion of outsiders restricted intermarriage with other ethnic groups. This attitude also brought them spite and prejudice, for their neighbours accused them of incest and cannibalism, and generally kept them at arms length. In 1914 during the amalgamation Northern and Southern Nigeria the erstwhile slave route came under British control. The destruction of the Ogoni environment began with the initial discovery of oil in Bomu in the Dere part of the Gokana Kingdom of Ogoniland. An intellectual trailblazer and rabble-rouser, Ken Saro-Wiwa attended the African prototype of Eton, Government College, Umuahia. In 1965, at 24, Ken Saro-Wiwa graduated from University of Ibadan. He applied for a job with Shell, but a scholarship award to study in Britain changed that prospect, but even the dream of a fulfilling overseas academic pursuit was deferred by the outbreak of the Nigerian civil war. During the war, Saro-Wiwa took sides with Nigeria against his Biafran neighbours, accusing the Ibos of internal colonization and exploitation of his Ogoni people. In return he was appointed divisional officer of the crude oil centre, Bonny, Saro-Wiwa’s choice of sabotaging Biafra’s war efforts however predisposed his Ogoni people and other ethnic minorities living within the Biafran territory to war-time reprisals and starvation, and many of them lost their lives. At the end of the war, he assisted immensely to the rehabilitation of his people. He was later appointed commissioner for education in Rivers State, and he used that opportunity to award numerous government scholarships to Ogoni youths, among others. In 1977, a failed attempt to be voted into the Constituent Assembly had him blaming the military government and some Ogoni elites. His attention was thereafter directed into business, and his enterprise grew as he made contacts like the Lebanese Chagoury brothers, General Abacha’s business associates, for whom Rufus Ada George, who became Rivers State Governor, and one of Saro-Wiwa’s greatest foes worked. In 1983, at the onset of the General Buhari and Idiagbon dictatorship, Saro-Wiwa made a literary come back, writing and publishing books like Sozaboy, A Forest of Flowers, Prisoners of Jebs, Basi and Co, and On a Darkling Plain. In 1987, the Babangida administration appointed Ken Saro-Wiwa Executive Director of MAMSER, a government arm charged with the responsibility of the promotion of patriotic virtues and civic responsibilities. He quit after one year, dissociating himself from Babangida’s human rights abuses. Saro-Wiwa began scripting Similia, a hilariously critical column of the Sunday Times, but the column grew in controversial dimensions, especially in its portrayal of the Ogoni problem and his ill-advised justification of the post-civil war confiscation of Ibo landed property in Rivers State, an evil condemned by most statesmen. Eventually, Similia was scrapped as it had become rather disquieting for the powers that be. Ogoni leaders congregated in Bori, the capital of Ogoniland, on 26^th August 1990 and adopted The Ogoni Bill of Rights, said to have been scripted by Ken Saro-Wiwa………’ The intercom buzzed, Mrs Lee announced a call from the Muson Centre. Dr Milani raised the receiver, spoke briefly about the cultural event and dropped the phone.

Chuddy proceeded. ‘The Ogoni Bill of Rights accused The Federal Military Government and the Multinational oil companies of plotting the extermination of the Ogoni indigenes. The written declaration asked for political autonomy for Ogoniland, the control of their natural resources and the protection of their environment from pollution, among other demands. For the purpose of advancing their requests   MOSOP, Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People was constituted with Saro-Wiwa elected publicity secretary. The journalist, author and fiery orator went about his duties with dispatch and within the five years that followed, brought the Ogoni issue to the fore of the national and international conscience. Nigerian Television Authority discontinued the airing Basi and Co, and Saro-Wiwa concentrated on the perils of MOSOP and Ogoniland. The 1992 meeting of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation celebrated Ken Saro-Wiwa and tabled the Ogoni problem to the world. In October of the same year British Television Channel 4 televised The Heat of The Moment, a documentary covering the Niger Delta crisis, making the Ogoni issue a burning international problem. Back home the Ogoni aristocracy who could not stomach the fanatical deification of Ken Saro-Wiwa by the youths formed ganged up against him. Saro-Wiwa tabled two bills of four billion dollars and six billion dollars to the oil companies for the pollution of the Ogoni environment and oil extraction royalties, and gave them thirty days ultimatum for the payment. During the Ogoni Day celebration of January 1993, Saro-Wiwa  told the  Ogoni people to rise  and battle for their land. Five days later, half a dozen distinguished Ogoni chiefs who were also signatories to the Ogoni Bill of Rights, issued a statement in favour of dialogue as opposed to confrontation, in solidarity with the government’s proposed solution of the problem, thereby destroying the unity of MOSOP and creating a split within the ranks. In February 1993, Shell directors held a meeting in London and the Hague to decide on new modalities for curtailing the international furore amounting from their outrageous and inhuman exploitation of the Niger Delta people, and the decision was taken to mount surveillance on Ken Saro-Wiwa and other MOSOP leaders. In short, they had delivered an indirect death sentence on the environmentalist. An ogoni man Mr Agbarator Friday was killed in a shooting that also wounded eleven people by mobile policemen dispatched to end a demonstration of Biarra villages rioting over the destruction of their farms by Wilbros, a Shell subcontracting company which was laying a new pipeline. A week after the police shooting, eight powerful Ogoni chiefs including former Biafran ambassador to London Chief Ignatius Kogbara presented a public apology for the demonstration and called on security forces to control MOSOP.  NYCOP, the militant arm of MOSOP invaded the homes of some of these chiefs in Port Harcourt, compelling them to escape from the city. The government of Rivers State and Shell negotiated with MOSOP on compensation for the victims of the Biarra incident. Shell undertook the payment of a miserly one million naira to the families and  individually compensate them for the destruction of their farmlands before proceeding with the pipeline project’. But Saro-Wiwa interrupted the agreement until an environmental impact assessment would be carried out’.  The Commercial Attaché, a fat blonde-haired good-natured gentleman knocked and entered. He laid a document before the envoy. Dr Milani read through it, appended his signature, and he left.

‘Obviously the monetary compensation offered by Shell were outrageously ridiculous, but the negotiators, MOSOP president Leton, and an ex-minister Chief Edward Kobani, felt humiliated by Saro-Wiwa’s intervention. On 18^th April, 1993, Ken Saro-Wiwa was stopped and detained at Port Harcourt International Airport for sixteen hours. En route to England the following month, his passport was confiscated at Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, although President Babangida’s National Security Adviser Aliyu Mohammed released it the following day for the trip. On the day before Abiola’s election, June 11^th, Saro-Wiwa’s passport was again impounded on his way to Austria for a United Nations Human Rights Conference in Vienna.  Leton and Kobani showed interest in contesting for elective offices, Saro-Wiwa stressed that in the interest of MOSOP’s objectives; no senior official of the movement should be involved partisan politics.  MOSOP degenerated into division and conflict. On June 11^th, just before the election, Saro-Wiwa talked MOSOP into boycotting the election. The boycott was total, but Saro-Wiwa’s opponents lamented about harassment and intimidation by NYCOP. On June 21^st Ken Saro-Wiwa was arrested, paradoxically, for organizing the boycott of an election whose result was bound to cancellation. His detention was followed by spontaneous demonstration, which disrupted life in Ogoniland. The military governor drafted the Second Amphibious Brigade to Bori, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s hometown. In the meantime pamphlets making the rounds in Ogoniland declared that Leton and Kobani had been bought over by Shell with a bribe of 4.5 million dollars to disrupt the activities of MOSOP. The pamphlets called the chiefs ‘vultures’. Kobani put the blame for the circulating pamphlet on Saro-Wiwa’s. The unfolding crisis led to the resignation of Leton and Kobani as they were forced to relinquish their positions in MOSOP, paving the way for the emergence of Saro-Wiwa  as president, with Ledum Mitee as his deputy. But the development turned tragic with Ogoni’s neighbours, envious of the their international recognition becoming violent to her. On 9^th July, one hundred Ogonis on their way home from Cameroon by boat on the Andoni River were massacred with grenades and machine guns, and within a month   another massacre of Ogoni indigenes took place in Kaa village. Evidently the oil companies and The Federal Military Government were behind the fratricidal butchery. Local fishing villagers did not have access to explosives and automatic rifles. Okrika youths fought the Ogonis in December 1993, and on 3^rd April 1994 Ndoki people battled the Ogonis, at the cost of twenty lives and eight Ogoni villages. On 31^st August 1993, four days after Babangida’s resignation, and Chief Ernest Shonekan’s installation, Abacha dispatched an air force plane to bring Ken-Saro Wiwa and Ledun to have lunch with him in Abuja. It is believed that he was considering appointing Saro-Wiwa  oil minister in his future administration, but was discouraged by the activist’s extreme positions on the Ogoni question. Three months later Abacha removed Shonekan and took over the presidency. Despite Saro-Wiwa’s initial support of the Abacha junta, the brutal dictator sent troops to Ogoniland to disband MOSOP and protect Shell operations in their homeland, leading to the deaths of hundreds of people while thousands became refugees. Rivers State Governor Lieutenant Colonel Dauda Musa Komo and the Commander of the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force Colonel Paul Okuntimo unleashed an unprecedented massacre in the area, and MOSOP and NYCOP reacted by burning “witches” or government supporters. As fate had it Sani Abacha set up a Constitutional Conference and again Ken Saro- Wiwa was running for a seat. On 21 May 1994 Saro-Wiwa and Mitee  were on their campaign trail in separate vehicles driving to Ogoniland, when they were halted by soldiers Kpopie in Ogoniland and turned back. Nearby, Edward Kobani and Alhaji Mohammed Kobani, his younger brother, an erstwhile Commissioner of Rivers State, Chief Samuel Orage, his brother Chief Theophilus  Orage and Albert Badey were holding a meeting at the palace of the Gbenemene or King of Gokana. As Saro- Wiwa drove back to Port Harcourt after a brief discussion with Mitee, a furious mob of his fanatical fans attacked the Gbenemene’s palace and butchered Edward Kobani, Badie and the Orages. Alhaji Mohammed Kobani escaped into the   sacred shrine and hid there for four hours pending the arrival of the police. The next day Ken Saro-Wiwa, Ledun Mitee and three Ogoni people where nabbed and prosecuted in the law court. The state prosecutor claimed that Saro-Wiwa told his rampaging supporters  ‘deal with the vultures.’ In spite of this, Ogoniland was militarised as the army embarked upon reprisal attacks killing fifty people and devastating sixty towns, under the control of Lieutenant Colonel Okuntimo who had once boasted about his knowledge of 204 ways of killing a human being. In November General Sani Abacha inaugurated a Civil Disturbances Special Tribunal constituted by two judges and a military officer, with the power to deliver the death sentence, with no option of appeal. On January 22, 1995 Saro-Wiwa, Ledun Mitee and three others were brought before this tribunal while the other eleven were charged the following month. The accused persons were refused access to their solicitors, Ken Saro-Wiwa was brutalized in detention and in June his lawyer Chief Gani Fawehinmi, the greatest human rights lawyer in Nigeria withdrew in protest of the kangaroo nature  of the tribunal. The two major witnesses were later to confess that they had been bribed to falsify their testimony. All the same Saro-Wiwa refuted the accusation. The style of the tribunal was pointedly criticised by legal luminaries and international jurists. In October, six months later, the tribunal condemned Saro-Wiwa and eight others to death. Eight days later Abacha’s Provisional Ruling Council confirmed the capital punishment and on the third day after this ignoble ratification Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other eight convicted Ogoni indigenes were hanged in the Port-Harcourt penitentiary under a siege of surveillance tanks and troops. I think Your Excellency knows more than me how the international community reacted to the legal frame-up and atavistic murder’.

‘ Yes the incident ignited the repugnance of the whole world’ Dr. Milani said in a sorrowful voice.

‘ As the story goes, Ojukwu the ex-Biafran leader visited Saro-Wiwa in prison one evening while the latter was awaiting execution and the convicted activist narrated the tortures he was undergoing in the hands of his captors until night fell. When Ojukwu was leaving he saluted him with ‘good morning’, and the activist said ‘but it is not morning’, to which Ojukwu replied ‘ but you have just woken up’, referring to the warnings he had given him and his Niger Delta people during the civil war, that the Federal forces were fighting to take control of their oil, a warning that they did not heed, hence their general sabotage of Biafra’s war efforts. Perhaps Saro-Wiwa did not know until his execution that his struggle, and indeed the struggle of the entire Niger Delta was an extension of the Biafran war, and the reason why they are not succeeding is because they supported the Federal Government against Biafra, thus allowing the North to divide and rule the South. The poet died because there was no strong and sustained internal pressure from any of the majority ethnic groups for his exoneration. His Ibo neighbours would have stood brief for him, but he not only antagonised them, but also recorded the antagonism in his civil war autobiography On A Darkling Plain. In any event the hanging of Mr Ken Saro-Wiwa and his co-activists was General Abacha’s worst mistake, especially on the eve of the Commonwealth Conference in Auckland, Australia. A horrified President Nelson Mandela campaigned for Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth, which was followed by limited sanctions that confined Nigeria to the status of an international pariah nation, putting Nigerian Foreign Minister Chief Tom Ikimi in the awkward position of stating that Commonwealth membership was voluntary. The internal tension created by this state of affairs literarily sent Abacha underground. In his last statement Ken Saro-Wiwa declared, ‘nor imprisonment nor death can stop the ultimate victory, my ideas will live’.Ken Saro-Wiwa

‘Did his execution mellow down the agitation of his people?’ Dr Milano asked.

  ‘On the contrary, ever since, the entire Niger Delta has been engulfed in violence, virtually terminating oil exploration, with the debased youths equipping themselves with automatic rifles and ganging into armoured brigades, invading oil companies, kidnapping their staff and confiscating their property’,

Miss Silvana Vivan a slim petit visa officer knocked, Dr Milani admitted her. She came in carrying a tray of green Nigerian passports and completed application forms. The ambassador perused through the pages of the passports, his temper rising slightly ‘ why did you refuse visa to a candidate who is the good old mother of a Reverend Father, the parish priest of a church in Italy, do you think she would become an illegal immigrant?’

‘ Yes, Your Excellency’. Replied the slender Miss Vivan, her intelligent eyes glowing with self-confidence.

‘At seventy-five years?’ Fishing in Ogoniland

‘Yes Your Excellency, the woman travelled to Italy last year to visit her son, taking two of her children with her, a man and a woman, whom she presented to us as a couple. Both of them have not yet returned to Nigeria. They were given three months visas, so I told her that when I see her son and his wife, I would give her a visa’.

There was restricted laughter in the office. Dr Milani signed the visas and Miss Vivan packed them back into the tray and hurried away. The fax machine rang and excreted a sheet, the ambassador flushed it out. As he read the content, his face assumed a more serious aspect. ‘This is the congratulatory letter from The Italian President to Obasanjo, it is addressed Caro Presidente’. Dr Milani released a sly grin ‘but as you and I know, Obasanjo has not yet won the election. Chuddy please translate this letter for me, the last translation they did here in the embassy was so badly done that it nearly started a diplomatic incident’. He handed the letter to him, Chuddy read through it.

‘You can go to the library, get a dictionary if you need one’.

‘There is no point Your Excellency just give me a pen and paper’.

As Chuddy translated the letter, Dr. Giuliano Fermi, the Chancellor entered, he was a handsome middle-aged man of average height and impeccable sartorial consciousness who carried his upper-class background like a signboard of arrogance and supreme indifference on his snobbish sea-browned face. He was in fact asking Dr Milani with a smile of doubtful sincerity, in the most polite manner what the hell was going on. The ambassador replied in a very respectable tone that he was receiving vital information from the African gentleman sitting opposite him, and would therefore appreciate being left in peace. He eyed Chuddy as if to say what kind of information can these natives possibly have? There was everything but peace on his face when he left the ambassador. Chuddy completed the translation in a few minutes; Dr Milani read through it and nodded with satisfaction. He buzzed Mrs Lee. ‘Type this fast’ he instructed, when she came in. She left and he asked Chuddy ‘Do you have any idea how we can get hold of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo ?’

‘I know that he spends much of his time at his farm, Obasanjo Farms in Ota’.

Dr Milani punched the intercom. ‘Mrs Lee, get me the phone numbers of Obasanjo Farms, Ota’.

‘Yes sir’.

‘We’ve got to get him, it’s very important to The President of the Republic that Italy is the first country to congratulate him. When will the result of the presidential result be released?’

‘Tomorrow’ answered Chuddy.

‘Chief Obasanjo must get this message today’ Dr Milani insisted powerfully. They sat in brooding silence until the secretary brought the typed translation of the presidential missive and the phone numbers of the most famous farmer in Africa.

The ambassador spent an agonizing two and half hours attempting to breakthrough the jammed Ota Farm telephone lines, his face betraying the realisation that the farmer in question was not the one in the farm next door. ‘The whole world is trying to reach him’ he confessed resignedly, his inflamed face red hot and smoking, ‘Chuddy take over, I am tired’.

Chuddy moved over to the table beside the ambassador and started dialling the number. About one hour later a male voice responded. ‘ Hello, Obasanjo farms Ota, may I know who is speaking please?’

‘The Office of His Excellency, The Italian Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr Paolo Milani. His Excellency The Italian Ambassador wishes to speak to His Excellency, The President-Elect of The Federal Republic of Nigeria Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’. Chuddy’s tone was cultured and dignified. Dr Milani wiped the sweat that defied the official indulgence of the freezing air-conditioning of his office to sprout on his forehead, a look of relief illuminating his face.

‘ I am afraid His Excellency, The President-Elect of The Federal Republic of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is not here at the moment. He is presently at Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel, Abuja. Can I give you his suite fax and telephone numbers so that you can contact him there ?’.

‘Yes sir’.

As Chuddy wrote down the number, joyfulness glowered in the envoy’s visage. ‘Thank you very much sir’. Chuddy replaced the receiver and immediately dialled the Abuja Hilton number. The line was engaged so he patiently engaged the phone for another one and half hours while Dr Milani sat in the cushion, occasionally pacing up and down with his hands intermittently delving into his hair. At last Chuddy said with resignation. ‘I am sorry Your Excellency, the fact is that the whole world is trying to reach the president-elect, and our only chance is to keep calling, and that doesn’t guarantee that we will get through. Perhaps it would be wiser to try getting the message across in another manner’.

The diplomat exhaled heavily, ‘how?’

Chuddy propelled his brain to the frequency where solutions lay. Suddenly his face shone with the emergence of an idea.

‘What is it?’ asked Dr Milani.

‘We fax the message to all the major newspapers in the country, and the president-elect will read it in the papers tomorrow morning’.

A dint of elation manifested in the ambassador’s face transforming into excitement. ‘Brilliant!’  he exclaimed at the exhilaration of his wizardry, with the excitement of a school boy, his face glistening  with a satisfactory smile ‘but have you got their fax numbers ?’.

‘They are on the back page of the newspapers’.

Dr Milani nodded satisfactorily, ‘the newspapers are in the shelves in the reception just before my office. You can sit down there and copy the fax numbers’.

Chuddy stepped into the VIP reception with a pen and paper. He selected single copies of the various Nigerian newspapers from the shelves where they suffered the injustice of being unread. He sat down in one of the embossed cushions and started copying down the numbers. Suddenly heavy sounds of boots heralded the arrival of Giovanni, the Italian police sergeant. He looked awe-inspiring in his starched and over-ironed Carabinieri uniform, his service pistol dangling lethally in its holster. He was a picture of anger and spite as he regarded Chuddy disdainfully, his furious eyes boring into him. ‘What are you doing here, don’t you know that this is a restricted zone?’ he snarled

Mrs Muti who was passing by answered unpleasantly without being asked. ‘He came here the other day to beg for financial supplement, now I don’t understand why the ambassador is wasting official time with him’.

Dr Milani popped his head out of his office, and the two creeps became silent. ‘Chuddy hurry up there is no time to lose, we definitely must get the president’s letter to the Nigerian president-elect’. He withdrew to his office. Sergeant Giovanni and Mrs Muti left ingloriously. When Chuddy rounded up, he returned to the ambassador’s office, and started sending the fax messages. At the end he successfully sent seventeen fax messages to Obasanjo’s Abuja Hilton Hotel suite, Ota Farm and Nigerian newspaper editors. A few of the fax numbers did not get through, Chuddy tried hard to make them go, but the machines were adamant. ‘Your Excellency I will deliver the rest of them personally to the editors, I have many friends in the media’.

‘Is that so?’ Dr Milani was marvelled.

‘Former school mates and old acquaintances’ Chuddy added.

Dr Milani mentally added and subtracted. ‘ In that case you could be of further use to the embassy. Italy is the fifth most industrialized nation in the world, and the country with the richest artistic and historical heritage in the globe, but her position does not reflect here. It seems as if the only foreign missions in Africa’s most populous nation are American, British, French, German, and Japanese, and the companies from these countries are favoured with the fattest contracts. The ambassadors of these nations are on the front page of Nigerian national newspapers, on radio and television daily, expressing their opinions in all kinds of issues affecting the country while most Nigerians cannot remember the name of any past Italian ambassador, the average Nigerian knows very little about Italy, and this is not good for the mutual relationship that exists between the two countries. Under my tenure as ambassador this situation must change. Italy must take her rightful place in the diplomatic and socio-cultural life of this country. I have been meeting many very important personalities, but I know that their influence is restricted to their social class, and they cannot assist me in reaching the ordinary people.  I am also aware that the press has a vital role to play in my mission, but you see, I am very new here, and my friends are all politicians and bureaucrats, I need to reach out and relate to the ordinary people of this potentially great African nation and register a positive impact which can improve the lives of the people. I need a well-grounded Nigerian from the grassroots who has friends in the press, and I need him at my beck and call’.

‘I am at your service Your Excellency’. Chuddy replied enthusiastically.

‘Good, now go and deliver this letter to the newspapers, we see again tomorrow morning’.

Chuddy packed the letters and started making his exit. ‘ Good bye Your Excellency,’

He left the embassy gate bathed by the vicious eyes of the two Italian Policemen at the entrance cabin. It was already evening but he knew that Nigerian journalists started work at around midday and continued their news hunting until late. He chartered a taxi by the Indian embassy and spent the rest of the day traversing the city from one newspaper house to the other. By 8 PM all the major newspapers in the country had received the story.

The news of Obasanjo’s victory was on the front page of all the newspapers in the country.

BOB EJIKE

email profbobejike@yahoo.com for the entire book.