A harvest of Fatherless
Children
By SHOLA OSHUNKEYE AND
FEMI FOLARANMI
Sunday, April
23, 2005
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Those who knew him before soldiers came calling on Monday,
November 29, 1999, say Pa Ismail Iti, an 84-year-old Ghana-returnee-turned-farmer
and hunter in Odi, an Ijaw community in the Kolokuma-Opokuma
Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, was ‘rich’,
confident and somewhat proud.
When you are husband to four wives, sire 10 children and own
a big house that could pass for a mansion in local standards,
you cannot but feel secure and sure. But as he sits on a white
plastic chair this breezy midmorning, he is everything but
confident.
Clad in a dirty khaki short and a tattered shirt that reveals
ribs on his concertina chest, he looks pale, taut and rheumy-eyed
as he stares blankly at the falling pillars and ruins of what
used to be his mansion. Tears welled in his sunken eyes as
he recounts his day of sorrow, the day soldiers marched on
Odi and his world took a wild whirl. Since that day, he has
become a reluctant roommate with his free-range chicken in
what used to be his kitchen and poultry but which he converted
to his habitation in the wake of the invasion.
“It met me here,” he said, pointing to what used
to be his sitting room but which has now developed into a
huge anthill from where giant ants busy themselves in a frenetic
but highly organized survival activities. “My people
ran into the school compound down the street as the soldiers
were shooting and demolishing everything in sight. Some of
them even slept with some of our women. My people said I should
run but I refused. Why should I? Why should I be afraid of
death at my age? Besides, I had no connection with the boys
making trouble. So, why should I run? But my people dragged
me out and we ran into the bush.”
Pa Iti may be considered somewhat lucky going by the experience
of Pa Andrew Edike, 78 , who lost his house and other belongings
, and he is now solely dependent on his children and brothers
for survival. “I did not bargaion for this type of miserable
living,” he said sadly. “They soldiers made me
like this. I don’t have anything to tell this government.
They have done their worst. I’m waiting for God’s
best.”
After the dust of the invasion settled, Pa Orogbaye Amagbare,
78, another senior citrizen of Odi, said he had only one pair
of trousers, a polo shirt and sleeveless singlet. Everything
he ever worked for, including valuable documents, was razed
with his house. Like Edike, Amagbare and Chief Deckboy Opalenti,
another senior citizen who suffered irreversible dislocation
from the invasion, bluntly refused to send any word to the
president. They would not pray for the country either. “Pray
for what?” Opalenti retorted. “The country can
pray for itself.” Such anger. Such sorrow.
Although it is over six years the world of Odi turned upside
down when the federal government ordered troops to flush out
the killers of some 10 policemen earlier dispatched there
to keep the peace, time, the ultimate healer, seems to have
failed woefully in healing the wounds inflicted on the people
during the days of blood. Everywhere you go, scars of war
still gape at you. Several of the victims are still dislocated
from what used to be their residence and fortress. Some of
those who fled during the three weeks the soldiers occupied
the land before the senate, then presided over by the late
Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, ordered them out, are yet to return. For
some, the injuries are not just physical but deeply internal
as everything seems to have fallen apart around them and their
centre of the existence has refused to hold.
Some of the buildings that were hit during the military exercise
are still in rubbles. Although some of the damaged buildings
have been rehabilitated, wearing new coats of colours, investigations
by Weekly Spectator however reveal that their owners, rather
than government, did the renovation. Residents allege that
governments, both state and federal, have not helped in rebuilding
the town and have generally reneged on their promise to give
the community palliatives to assuage the pains induced by
the attack.
Beyond the physical scars, however, King Shine Andrew Apre,
the Imgbela 12 and the Amananaowei of Odi was a study in sadness
as he recalled the day soldiers brought down hell on his subjects,
saying the invasion, though it happened some six years ago,
has midwifed another current of trouble for his kingdom.
Although he confessed to not seeing any woman raped, he said
he heard that some of the rampaging soldiers defiled some
of his female subjects. And some of those forced liaisons
had produced several children, whose paternity could not be
ascertained, at least going by the monthly registration of
births and deaths that is usually done in his palace. In fact,
he said some children had been brought that were registered
only in their mothers’ names, as the whereabouts of
their fathers were unknown. It is this rising case of fatherless
children , yielded by the invasion that is now giving him
nightmares.
“Some of our ladies can still not be traced,”
he told our correspondents who visited Odi recently. “Some
of those that left did not come back. “(We learnt) some
of them were raped but I didn’t see them myself as I
had run into the bush with my family. And to support that,
there are some people that now come to collect identification
(for their children) as members of my kingdom. And since they
didn’t know where their fathers are from, we became
suspicious.”
This development, he added, has brought sorrow to him because
it may never be possible to know the fathers of the children
concerned even as there is high probability that they are
products of the forced flings by soldiers while the occupation
of Odi lasted. Asked pointedly if it would ever be possible
to establish the paternity of the affected children, the Amananaowei’s
face contorted in apparent pain as he declared: “We
can’t. There is no economic power to embark on such
mission.”
Still, the monarch was not done. He cast one long look back
at the whole saga and expressed profuse regret that his town
and subjects had been abandoned to their fate like orphans.
“I am bitter that there is no assistance from the federal
government,” he said, adding that contrary to the government’s
position that the invasion was a direct consequence of the
alleged murderous activities of youths from his domain, “that
invasion, no matter the name you want to call it, was not
caused by the youths of Odi.
“I was told, and I know that some youths in Yenagoa(the
Bayelsa State capital) were driven away from where they were
living at the black market and they came to settle at Odi.
As at that time, the council was pressing to see that the
youths were sent away from Odi, because we heard government
drove them from Yenagoa. It was in the midst of these attempts
to chase them away that some policemen were killed and they
ran away. This was why I said I was bitter because we knew
it was not caused by our youths but the federal government
just decided to punish us.”
The interview took a dramatic turn as the king was suddenly
overwhelmed by emotion and asked the kingdom’s spokesperson
and a member of his kitchen cabinet, Chief
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