The Biafran Recruiters: Memoirs of the Nigerian-Biafra Civil War, 1967-1970

The town of Eziama was like England

From early morning people flocked in, some from far away, to hear him sing — ‘Eziama is a village like the rural areas of England—‘

From time to time, when he felt goodness in his heart, he would call out to his son, Lazarus, ‘Bring kola nut and alligator pepper.’ Laz knew where to find kola nut and alligator pepper, and how to bring them. Then Dad would invoke the ancestors, utter a few phrases in idioms, crack the kola nuts, and hand them out.

He never cared when the visitors challenged him, or even when they pointedly said, “Our father, Papa Sylvester Ughere, you sing about England even though you never set foot in it.”

‘Just because I haven’t been to England doesn’t mean I can’t imagine England; How many times must I tell you”—and he was pointing at the withdrawn faces of his visitors—“that an old man knows almost as much as God?

With their mouths busy chewing on nuts and pepper, the visitors would step back and continue to listen to the song of how the village of Eziama is so beautiful and how Eziama will remain beautiful forever.

It was not as if anyone doubted how serene the town of Eziama was. Although the houses were grouped together, small, dense bushes separated one group from another. Mango, pear, and cashew occupied Eziama like vagabonds, their branches and leaves crossing each other to lean over and kiss without permission.

Palm trees, coconut palms and breadfruit trees tower over their heads. Kola nut trees, groundnut plants, manioc leaves, cocoyam, and other creeping plants occupied the ground and spaces above.

From time to time, tall majestic trees called ‘orji’ would soar into the sky, adults calling for children to watch as their upper branches sway to the gentle movements of rarely seen African eagles.

Still, there were many places in Eziama where the termites found spaces to build mounds, from which they sent soldiers to roam freely.

From Papa Ughere’s sitting room, if visitors looked, even casually, through one of the wooden side windows, past some trees, they would see Kamsi Udumiri.

Kamsi was the man who married a woman so beautiful that the people of Eziama wondered if that being had any need to sit on the toilet. Together, Kamsi and the beauty had a daughter and four sons. Idoh was the first of the sons, and Gilbert the last.

Before the war, Eziama had generous soil, and all the men and women knew how to use hoes, machetes, and sickles. Men who did not farm yet did something practical; They healed with herbs, they healed the broken bones of children who had fallen from palm trees, and some became rainmakers.

A few years later, once a single lock of hair appeared under Idoh’s chin, Kamsi summoned him. ‘My son, this land is no longer as productive as it once was; furthermore, “no one stands still to watch a masquerade”.

With that understood, Idoh packed up and left Eziama. He settled fifty miles away, in the town of Onitsha. He soon achieved enough to do what all of Eziama’s parents could be proud of. He married, had children, and built a house, the front door of which was guarded by two ornamental creatures. Mouths open and blood dripping from the corners, people quickened their pace as they passed.

Lazarus knew his days in the village were over when Idoh left. “You are growing so fast, like a weed, that this house can no longer hold father and son,” Ughere told him one night, after the last guest had left and his voice was hoarse with admiring Eziama.

A week or so passed, and Ughere sent Lazarus to a missionary school. From there he later went on to Nigeria’s Nsukka University, where he learned the mysteries of European healing.

July 1967: Everything changed for Lazarus. Nsukka was shelled by artillery by an infantry battalion of the Nigerian armed forces. Doctor Laz was one of the last to leave, leaving only when the town was under daily bombardment from artillery shells and vultures began to descend from the sky.

October 1967 – Rumored that the Nigerian armed forces were firing from the city of Asaba and would attempt to enter Onitsha via the Niger bridge, Idoh first sent his wife and children home. The days passed and it occurred to him that he too should leave for Eziama.

Suddenly, Eziama became a melting point. Many years had passed since Idoh and Laz had seen each other. As friends do in unusual circumstances, they were eager to return to the past. At first they met very frequently, but then less frequently as the war drew closer, from towns to villages.

For many months after the war began, the young men who were the only ones fit for battle bled and died. In the absence of more young men, recruiters began recruiting teenagers before they could grow a single lock of hair under their arms. A few days later, they also began recruiting the elderly, already constrained by arthritis.

Every day they spent hiding from recruiters. Certain nights, Idoh would take the path in the back garden to meet Lazarus. They talked about Eziama when they were children. How they would fight in the forest; how they peeled the backs of coconuts and took turns pounding them into a hole dug in the ground, seeking who was strong enough to open it first; how they would walk down the narrow street in front of Idoh’s house, which wriggled like a long, coiled snake, and how their mission to reach the two low stone platforms that marked the end of the narrow path seemed endless.

Laz would remember how, on the low platform, they would sit side by side trying to figure out which way to go, whether to go down to Orie Market or to Iyiba Stream, but they still couldn’t make up their minds until darkness enveloped them. They would only react with a run home when a long staff at the end of an invisible hand struck first Idoh in the head and then Lazarus.