Where The Serpent Is King

Nembe Creek

Photo Credit:ED KASHI for PBS/Frontline World.

In this tenth chapter of his new book, Royal Mail, Nengi Josef Ilagha undertakes an exploration of the factors which indicate that Nembe in Bayelsa State, Nigeria, is in fact Eden, where the first man and woman were created. The strongest proof is that Nembe is the only place on earth where the first child to die in a family is buried face down, as indeed happened to Abel, killed by his brother, Cain. Nembe is also the land which still honours the serpent as king. These revelations are all the more noteworthy as Nigeria marks her 50th anniversary as a nation that was once under the imperial authority of Her Majesty The Queen of England.

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Where The Serpent Is King

Who so beset him round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound; his strength the more is
There’s no discouragement will make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim…
– John Bunyan

THE COUNTRY YOU left us with, Your Majesty, is full of suspicion, full of fear, full of scorpions and serpents. Everyone is wary of their neighbour. The country you left us with has practically gone astray. Let’s face it. You were no more than a poor guide on a long pilgrimage to nowhere. Things could have been better if you saw your colony as your own estate, the way the French did — constructing roads, building bridges in more senses than one, erecting durable infrastructure that would leave evident marks to say that, once upon a time, Britain was the great overlord of Nigeria.

Such a prospect might have given the average citizen a stronger sense of belonging, a wholesome sense of personal responsibility. But when you rule a people by division, they end up being divided, each one for himself. That is the behaviour of serpents. That is the reality of present-day Nigeria, an attitude that has literally allowed Maduabebe to be enthroned as king, in the spiritual realm as in the physical.

Today, the leadership of the nation is the butt of every joke. And the few philosophers, the few men of goodwill amongst us, have done well to take note. Chinua Achebe, our foremost novelist, whom you so graciously granted a prestigious Order of the British Empire, OBE, ranks as one of the few men of conscience in Nigeria. In 1983, this is what he had to say about his country, as self-deprecating as could be:

Nigeria is not a great country. It is one of the most disorderly nations in the world. It is one of the most corrupt, insensitive, inefficient places under the sun. It is one of the most expensive countries and one of those that give least value for money. It is dirty, callous, noisy, ostentatious, dishonest and vulgar. In short, it is among the most unpleasant places on earth!

Achebe is right, Your Majesty. Nigeria is possessed by the spirit of the devil. Why do you think the police changed its uniform from the bright colours that Lord Luggard introduced — to black beret, black shirt, black trousers, black belt, and black shoes? It is an indication of the dark heart of evil that inhabits the very agency that is expected to enforce law and order. Has anyone ever told you that a policeman becomes a toll gate once he puts on his uniform? He simply stands in the sun, gun by the side, and takes a bribe in the bold view of conscience. He knows it is wrong. It is against the law. Yet he does it with impunity in daily traffic along the roads, at the airports, at the stadium, at the market place, at the gate to government house, in the houses of assembly, at the courts, in the corridors of power.

On the morning of Sunday August 15, 2010, twenty people were crushed to death on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. According to an editorial in 234Next, one of the nation’s more popular tabloid titles, a trailer apparently lost control after a brake failure. In the bumper to bumper traffic, the monster crashed into a line of other vehicles that had been stuck in the gridlock created by a police checkpoint that ought not to be there. “It is a common occurrence,” says the paper, “for policemen to create roadblocks, ostensibly to check vehicles but most often using their uniforms and weapons to extort money from drivers and other road users. Transporters and private drivers prepare for it. The practice has developed a sub-culture of its own.”

Imagine for one moment, officers of the London Metropolitan Police mounting a checkpoint at both ends of Vauxhall Bridge, with nails sticking out of plank boards laid across the road, and importuning motorists to part with a one-pound coin per car! What is more, the serial carnage occasioned by a show of routine carelessness in the last fifty years provides statistics that can only be described as mind-boggling.

I am reminded, Your Majesty, of how I lost my little sister. Tonfie Joseph Ilagha was recovering from a Caesarean section, following the birth of her first and only child, Chiemerie, on January 7, 1999. On Wednesday May 5 of that year, she left the four-month old baby girl in the care of her house-help, and rode on a motorcycle over the slopes of Suleja, Niger State, heading for a Christian fellowship. She did not return home. According to eye witness accounts, a trailer was parked at a curious angle on a slope. There was no driver at the wheel.

The vehicle, apparently in free gear, began rolling back on its own momentum, having been nudged by another vehicle whose driver was attempting to park properly. Commotion broke out as the trailer without a driver trundled down the slope. Tonfie clung to the back of the motor cyclist as he tried to manoeuvre his way around the on-coming vehicle. But as it rushed backward like a furious monster on parole, gaining velocity with each zig-zag swing of its giant tail, she became too frightened to hold on.

Summoning all her will power, and with the name of Jesus Christ permanent upon her prayerful lips, she jumped off the bike and landed hard on the tarmac. On account of the broken stitches in her torn belly, she was already in unspeakable pain. Dazed in the fall, try as she might, she could not get up quickly enough. And so the heavy-duty trailer, wayward without a driver to control it, reversed straight for the wounded woman, and came to a stop only when it had crushed her underneath its huge tyres, leaving a mess of blood and bones. She was 28 years old.

In my close-circuit family, we fondly called her “Antiseptic Disinfectant” on account of her cleanliness. In the quiet of my heart, I called her Pentecost. For one full decade, I have been haunted by her tragic death. The only way I could get the horror of the experience off my mind was to write about it. In a world that still sheds blood willfully, the pain of that ghastly loss in Suleja returned to me with a renewed power when our immediate past President Umar Musa Yar’Adua died on Wednesday May 5, 2010, the same day of the week, the same month, the same date ten years apart. I will be only too glad to let Your Majesty have a copy of Sand House & Bones, my humble tribute to my younger sister.

In the end, Tonfie was summarily buried in the public cemetery at Amasara Polo, Nembe. Being the first child from my mother’s womb to die, she was buried naked, laid face down amongst nails and thorns, periwinkle and oyster shells, carcasses and bones, brambles and broken bottles. The coffin which conveyed her body from Gwagwalada Teaching Hospital on the outskirts of Abuja was ripped apart and thrown in jagged bits and pieces upon her remains, alongside all kinds of offal. Then mounds of earth were piled into the shallow grave until the corpse was lost to view.

That is one custom in Nembe that has continued to confound me, as silly and unfortunate as it is bizarre. But it happened to Tonfie as it happened to Abel, Your Majesty. In a recent book, Epistle To Maduabebe, I went so far as to posit that this ancient practice is only traceable to the Garden of Eden, where the body of Abel was consciously hidden from the face of God by his brother, Cain, in a desperate bid to escape being found out. There is nowhere else in the world where this practice obtains, and I stand to be corrected. Added to the fact that the python is the national god of the Nembe people, I have come to the inevitable conclusion that Nembe is in fact Eden, the first parcel of land upon which Adam and Eve were created from the mud of the earth; where God passed the breath of life into the nostrils of man, and he became a living soul. Nembe is Eden, Your Majesty. Eden is Nembe, where the serpent is king.

These postulations led me to call upon Dr Edmund Maduabebe Daukoru, the cultural overseer of Nembe, to abolish the practice of face-down burials and the worship of the serpent, if indeed he professes to be a true Christian. Instead, he sent soldiers after me on Monday January 12, 2009, who dutifully accosted me along the highway, stampeded me out of my car, shoved me into their truck, bound me in handcuffs, and rattled me to their heart’s content before releasing me on the excuse that it was all a matter of mistaken identity. I am yet to recover fully from the experience. As I write this, I am scheduled for an appointment at the King’s Oak & Cavell Hospital in Middlesex, where I am undergoing diagnosis for a recurrent heart condition.

I have since been branded a rebel, hunted and hounded out of my town and country by Maduabebe’s loyalists, maligned by his school of sycophants and, in the end, publicly denied and rejected by my own family members acting under intolerable duress from the proverbial serpent who insists on seating as king of Nembe, in spite of the fateful loss of his staff of office. It is time to exorcize the evil spirit that afflicts Nigeria, time to bring Seiton under foot. It is time to crush the head of the totem serpent.

I have taken the trouble to tell you all this, Your Majesty, because you have a right to know. As a fervent Christian, you ought to partake of the mission declared by your Lord and Saviour, namely that you bring the serpent underfoot. Now is the time to do it. You have a duty to correct the mistakes of the past. Things have not changed for the better in the Niger Delta because you are yet to call for action in your own small way, to push for restoration where it matters most. I enjoin you to take another look at the initial recommendation put forward by Henry Willink. When you do, I have no doubt that Your Majesty will be struck by a fresh idea.
Just do it.

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