MY DESERT AND I (2)
–Return of the Desert Lord
By Basil Okafor
Saturday April 1, 2006

Dusk was beginning to set in as the sun began its final crimson plunge down the western horizon. The sandstorm that overtook Tamagasset earlier had rendered the tracks to El-Meniaa very sandy and made further progress rather difficult. It was still a long way to Algiers, well over a thousand kilometres away. Time to make camp and finally call it a day. The adventurer finally spotted some picturesque rock formation, pitched his tent around there, made and fed himself a generous dinner and turned in.

It was the little hours of the morning when, later, the sounds of galloping hooves and neighing horses drifted in from the distance, as if in a dream. Roused from his slumber, the adventurer drew his flashlight to ascertain it wasn’t another desert illusion. Bandits!
“Asalam alaikum!” he called out, “I am alone and not armed…” he declared, raising both hands in the air.

Chief Newton Jibunoh had been through similar risks three and a half decades earlier, as a greenhorn. Then, it was just to satiate the adrenalin flow of a young adventurer. But, even more than that, on his second trip, the man had a mission. The Lord of the Desert was back, to draw world attention to and help stem the devastation of the encroaching sands that threatened the livelihoods and lives of millions of his fellow humanity.

In the desert, there is no roof over any head. Out there, in the vast wilderness, the sun comes down hard on all heads, man’s or animal’s, unrelentingly and without mercy. Jibunoh had had this experience, first hand, in his first trip and wanted to do everything he could to help. Having been orphaned at the tender age of two and never knowing the tender care of a mother, he wanted to give back something to the society that helped nurture him to adulthood.

Writes the chief in his desert memoirs, ‘Me, My Desert and I’: “With all humility, I would say that I lived a good part of my 62 years wanting to make a meaningful contribution towards improving the lives of the people around me, especially the less priviledged members of society. This is because of my peculiar experience during my childhood days, but above all, because of the immense assistance I had received from others in my life.”

On the day of his final flag off to embark on what could easily have become a one-way trip away from home, the parting was very emotional. Having arrived Babura with his wife, daughter, a few others and the NTA news crew, in tow, it was now time to say a final goodbye: “This is it,” he said, “I have to be on my way and let you fellows return to civilisation.”
They all hugged him, one after the other and then held hands, as his wife began to pray: “Lord, you created Chuka like all men, but made him different, obstinate and selfless. And I know You have Your reasons. If it is Your Will, take him in Your Hands, lead him all the time and bring him back to me.”
At the end of the prayer, Uchenna, his daughter, was crying. Jibunoh choked on his own ‘Amen’. After the final hug, as he made to go, barely hiding his own tears, his wife removed her scarf and wrapped it round his neck, saying, “this will keep you warm at night”.
Recalls the adventurer, “Speechless, I walked to my car in a daze and drove off, away from the dying sun and into the desert, completely alone.”

Please, read on:
Did you get into a situation where a sand dune was going to swallow up your car?
Of course, yes. It covered my car and it was dug out. I had breakdowns, attack from bandits, everything that you can think of, just name it. Attack from wild animal, especially during the first expedition.

What sort of animal was this?
It was what they call desert bull.

What about snakes?
I didn’t see a lot, I saw maybe, just a few. But you know snakes are among the most docile creatures you could find. You never see snakes go on the attack. It is only where a snake feels threatened that it strikes. A snake would usually run away on seeing you or on hearing some sound, so I never really worried about snakes. I worried about those scavengers that eat flesh, that go for human beings.

Were you armed with any gun, or anything?
No, I wasn’t. But I had some grenades (even though the security, people may not want to hear this). I had six of them and through the journey, was forced to use two, out of the six grenades. This was during my first trip, but the second time around, I had absolutely nothing like arms.

From the studies I had conducted before embarking on the journey, hardly anything lives in the desert now. In the middle of the desert, all life forms, as you know them have simply vanished. Everything is gone – the oases are no longer there, the vegetation are all gone, the waterholes, everything.
But I found an absolutely fascinating phenomenon. As you can see, from the photograph on the cover of my book, I found this blooming plant in the baking sand dunes, with fresh, green leaves, three or four hundred miles away from any life, in the middle of the wilderness.

How did it get there?
Ask me! That indeed is one of the great wonders of nature.

With all that dryness, how did you manage with water all through your journey?
I carried all the water I needed for the entire trip. The distance you do, without encountering any human being, without any life, or any kind of facility is about 1,700 miles. You are required to carry everything you need to journey through this vast wasteland. Normally, you should calculate that this distance should take you between eight and ten days. So, you must carry food, water and everything else, to last you for 10 days.

Is it in this wilderness that bandits still attack travellers?
No, no, these attacks happen at the peripheries of the desert. The 1,700-mile stretch is actually a minute part of the entire desert. Before you get to that point, you would have gone two, three days in the desert. Also after the wilderness, likewise. In those areas, you have inhabitants. The only thing is that these settlements are usually separated from each other, by distance of three or four hundred miles.

Now, let’s talk some more about nature. The last time I talked with you on the telephone, you were somewhere in Kano State, planting trees. What motivates you to that point of taking you away from your livelihood and busy schedule. Are you that concerned about desert encroachment, or are you just doing it for the joy of it?
Both reasons and I tell you why. Some of the trees I planted just a little over a year ago, which were commissioned by the governor and the emir of Kano, during which we also invited people from the international funding agencies, have started flowering. It was a very big event when we commissioned the Wall of Tree programme and I still go back there almost every month, to monitor the progress.
You won’t believe this, but I stood in the middle of the Wall of Tree (actually infinity, on both sides) and I said to Abdulazeez, the gentleman who went with me from the governor’s office, actually, the permanent secretary, “look, I don’t have millions in the bank, but I have millions of trees.” (laughter)… and as far as I’m concerned, nothing could be more than giving life back to the earth. It gives me so much joy.

And you know what we’ve done? We’ve planted three walls of trees. The first wall is made up of agricultural trees – orange trees, mangoes, guava trees, nimb trees, and so on and some of them are already fruiting. This was an area already deserted by people running from the fast encroaching desert, but we will put cottage industries that would process the fruits and seeds of these trees in order to bring back the settlements.

In addition to this, we are bringing in fruits from elsewhere because this industry is going to be such that you could process oil from there, you could process juice from there and you could also process soap and chemicals from those same fruits and seeds. People are already being trained to man those industries and the settlements are coming back. Our objective is to re-populate the areas that were hitherto taken away by the desert. That is the joy for me. It is my pleasure indeed.

Now, let me go to the other aspect. Yes, it was the expedition that lad me, exposed me and pushed me into this whole series of present activities. There is no way anybody could go through the desert twice, 35 years apart, like I have done and not get concerned about the encroachment of the desert on our continent. It is driving people away from their communities and homelands, it is pushing the water table further down to the point that they can no longer find water that we all take for granted over here, anymore. The vegetation is all going and thus makes grazing of animals difficult, thereby engendering population drift, in search of greener pastures – and you also know the problems of conflict associated with this.

So, if you can re-settle people and begin that process of recovering the land that has been taken away by the deserts, you would have made a hell of a lot of difference in the lives of people. This was way, when Professor Wangai Mathari was awarded the Nobel Prize, I popped champagne and drank with my family. I celebrated with her because it was as if I was the one receiving that honour. I really knew what it meant.

Is this what your life is about, just helping and touching people’s lives, from your hometown, to everywhere else?
I am just discovering this… I am just discovering this. I spent my life working – I had worked for 45 years – and do you know I didn’t realise I had worked for that long, until I was about to retire? (laughter)…

You have retired now as chairman of Costain West Africa?
Yes, I have… and this was when I realised that I had worked for 45 years. I was busy, trying to live up to my professional calling as an engineer, trying to raise a family, trying to be part of society, not knowing that I was missing out on what God has brought me to this world to do. And that is what worries me because I don’t know how much longer I am going to live. As you well know and like my friends would say, at my present age, I have gotten into the “injury time”… (laughter)… when you’re about 70, you are into “injury time” and then, after that, it would be sudden death… (more laugher).
So, that is my worry. But what also gives me joy now, on the other hand, is that this passion of mine, has extended, not only to my family, but also to a lot of my friends. So, I have this feeling that even if I depart this world today, work would continue from where I stopped.

I tell you, if I get to Kano now and I’m headed for Makwoda, you know what? People would be looking for buses and vehicles, to accompany me to where I am planting my trees. If you see the crowd of people that goes with me to Makwoda, it is unbelievable. Even when I get to the palace of the emir, I am received like a hero.
So, I said to myself, what was all this struggle over the years about? If only I had known this, 10, 15, 20, years ago, I would have been working a little and doing this, a little.

Well, you can afford to give of your resources and time now, because you have something to fall back on, isn’t it?
Oh yes, I wouldn’t say I regret too much. Indeed, before I started to get some funding, the entire project was entirely at my own expense. But now, just last week, the British government, through its embassy, gave me 10,000 pounds, to support the Wall of Tree programme.
I have also been invited by the presidency – the Millennium Development Goals Office of Amina Ibrahim – to come and discuss how we could work together. So, you can see the way things are turning out. For me, I have reached my heaven. Honestly, I have reached my heaven.

Now, let me ask you sir, at 68, you still look like a man in his late 40s or early 50s. Is this a genetic thing or what, is it your state of mind? What makes you carry on like this? Even your wife, it is simply unbelievable that she is the mother of these big children. What’s the secret?
I think it is the environment. It is very simple, if you take care of your environment, your environment has a way of taking care of you. I have been telling people this for a long time but they don’t seem to want to understand this. If you equally abuse the environment, it has a way of hitting back at you. I mean, all this Katrina and tornadoes and hurricanes we’ve been having, are direct consequences of the anger of the environment because of the abuse we have extended to it. That’s why I plead with people to act properly and treat the environment with the respect it deserves.

Look at the Bar Beach, for goodness sake! Do you know that the other side of it has gone, completely? Why? And the Bar Beach is not the only beach. There are a dozen and one of them, but you know why the others are not suffering the fate of Bar Beach? Because of the shrubs the colonial people planted there, that’s why and they’re still there. It’s only at the Bar Beach that they have taken away everything. So, what is the beach now doing? Punishing us back, of course.

So, if it is true that my wife and I are looking young, (since we can’t see this) it is the environment that is giving this to us. That’s the only thing that I can think of, because what we eat is also what everybody else eats, isn’t it? The state of mind also comes from the environment, isn’t it?

You are also a great family man, a grandfather, what does family add to other spices of your life?
I think it is the same thing, as well. The environment has impacted on everything else, including the family members, themselves. Sometimes you wonder, out of the five children, is anyone of them going to go wrong? And you know human beings are not like machines whose spare parts you could always go look for when they go wrong. We worry about these things but we also see the hand of our God, which the environment happens to be part of, as well.

Everyone of them is protected. The youngest of them – the tom boys – are in their late 20s and they have all been employed in one calling or the other and they are all on their own. In fact, people come in here sometimes and say our home looks like old people’s home, but they’ve been so nice to us that they come in weekends and now and again, to stay with my wife, especially as I travel a lot.
This is the support I also get, to have a family like this. They were born in it. They were born with all the arts and the environment that we have so cherished and protected. Now, they have joined in it, so why won’t the environment take care of them?

You are in the museum business, what is your objective for this and what do you hope to achieve by this?
It’s all about following one’s own instincts and passion, what your mind and what your life is telling you about your environment.
Your environment is in the arts. How, indeed, did we preserve our historical developments? Through the arts, of course. How did we come to know about the religion that we talked about? Again, through the arts? And how did we come to know about those environmental issues that our ancestors lived with and for? The arts! All these were recorded in symbols, on sculptures, drawings and paintings.

Even though it must have been in me, I was exposed to it in the 60s, when I visited the British Museum as a student, taken there by the British Council that organised an excursion for us in London. It was there that I found that the Nigerian arts, especially from the part of the country that I come from, contributed immensely to the richness of the British Museum. I also found out there that our various historical developments, going back a few thousand years, which I didn’t know anything about in my 20s were well preserved in the British Museum.

That was how I became passionate about doing everything I could, to preserve the rich cultural heritage of our people. You and I are custodians of our culture so what are we going to tell our future generations, if we don’t preserve our way of life? If our ancestors did not leave that lot behind for the British to cart away, how would we know about the kind of education we had, the kind of civilisation we had, the kind of legal system we had and the kind of religion that we had? How would we know? How has it come to be that we could just sit back and allow other people to come and tell us that their culture is superior to ours? Whereas all we have to do is to go back a little bit, to see if we could find the missing link.
Sometimes, you find an art that is five, six thousand years old, from Igbo-Ukwu, from Ife, from the Nok culture, etc. Then, suddenly, you gravitate from the sophistication of five thousand years ago, to the emptiness of the present. Any thinking person should ask: where did the gap between then and now, go? Sometimes, you hear people say we are just 300, 400 years old. That’s pure fraud, madness!
I have personally stumbled into artefacts, in my research, from the part of the country where I come from, about the divergence in our cultures between the Edo and the Igbo, which has made Anioma into what it is today. I stumbled into artefacts of events dating back two, three thousand years. So, how could anybody just wake up one day to tell me we are two, three, four hundred years old?

These are the things that have pushed and spurred me on to this great passion. And like you said earlier, my brother, all the missing links are locked in secret symbols, etched into the artefacts. This is the wonderful link between the arts and our wonderful and great past and most people don’t know this fact. Our priests and artists held great knowledge, wisdom and inventions and these were locked in the esoteric language of symbolism in the artefacts carted away by the colonial masters. These inspirations helped build what we know today as Western civilisation.