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| L-R: Firsts Baba Isa and late Dominic Modey |
Firsts Baba Isa|2 July 2017
He begged them not to kill him. He explained to them that he wasn’t a cultist. They shot him in the chest. Modey fell down with a pathetic cry. In the pool of his own blood he lay.
His murderers stepped away from his half killed body. They discussed and argued for a while. Then they came back. They came back and shot Modey point blank on the head, splashing his brains on the streets of Abakpa.
The smart brain Modey used to hustle and survive on the Streets of Abakpa was shot out of his head onto the same streets, in bloody desecration of hustle and our memories of the beautiful Abakpa.
There was rampage. Bones broke, houses burnt, hearts stopped beating but Dominic Modey never smiled again. I’m still waiting for him to ask me his usual “Isa, how you dey?”
Under our watch Abakpa has become a theater of blood. In the beginning it wasn’t like this.
In 1902 Thomas Welsh took a small steam boat and started tracing his way to Ogoja from Calabar. He landed at Bansara before tracing the Aya River to Ogoja and landed where the present Ogoja water board is. Thomas Welsh is the first white man to step his feet in Ogoja. In 1904 he repeated this visit and in 1907, he came with the commissioner in charge of Eastern Province; and on the 13th Day of March 1908, Mr F. Hives was appointed the first Colonial Administrator of Ogoja.
The appointment of the Colonial Administrator came with the establishment of a legal system with police, prison, courts, army, etc. And a housing unit or camp for pioneer staff of this colonial administration sprouted up where the present post office is today. A military garrison was also stationed there. This camp was known as the African Quarters. This camp was very close to the European Quarters and Divisional offices in present day Local Government Secretariat and GRA.
The boisterous activities in this camp attracted all sorts of persons including traders, prostitutes, gamblers and drinkers to it with the accompanying loud noise and higgledy-piggledy. When this became unbearable to the Europeans, the African Quarters was closed down in 1914. The military garrison was also disbanded and moved to Cameroon.
That was how Abakpa was born.
The people and businesses dislodged from the African Quarters moved to Agboja, to the present site of Abakpa and a flourishing town was born. Thus began the glorious rise of Abakpa.
In 1917 when Ogoja was created a third class township by Order in Council No. 25 of 1917, Abakpa was the settlement with the biggest and brightest prospect of becoming a mega town or minor city. In 1915 the first native court in Ogoja was established and it was situated in Abakpa.
Then disaster struck.
In 1948, a mighty fire ravaged Abakpa and burned the town to the ground. Properties worth millions of naira were destroyed and the people became refugees. This wasn’t the first time this fire was happening in Abakpa but the fire of 1948 was the biggest and most ravaging. That marked the fall of Abakpa.
The people couldn’t take it anymore. They were tired of a town that seem to attract fire outbreaks. They started looking for a new settlement. That was how Igoli was born. The Ogoja Native Authority mapped out and surveyed Igoli as an alternative modern town to Abakpa. This survey and layout was carried out in 1949 by one Henry Eta, a surveyor from Ikom.
The Ishiborr community set up a committee to allocate land in Igoli to traders, workers and general victims of the Abakpa fire outbreak. The Ishiborr community also helped in clearing and preparing the site for building.
This was how Abakpa lost its glory. Majority of business activities and evidence of development shifted to Igoli. Even as I write this, there is no ATM machine in Abakpa, no major supermarket, no eatery, no bank. Recently some good hotels have been built in Abakpa and a campus of the Cross River University of Technology, CRUTECH, is in Abakpa.
We celebrated when CRUTECH came to our town, we thought development will come with it. We were wrong. CRUTECH came with cultism. Abakpa has gotten it’s own fair share of stubborn youths but never blood thirsty cultists.
Maybe some youths were even cultists, but the coming of CRUTECH made it rampant and popular. Every Tom, Dick and Harry started getting initiated. It’s like the various cult groups are in a mad rush to outdo themselves in recruitment. The groups apparently started a catch-them-young program. Our brothers and children were cajoled and conscripted into cultism. Before we knew what was happening nearly every family has a cultist. Right now, it’s like a horror movie.
And now, to make matters worst, politics has glamourised cultism and cultists. They are now the big boys in town. They have political appointments and are czars of various revenue collection points and programs in our local governments.
Politicians use them for political thuggery during elections and after elections they create funny portfolios for them with funny names and give them the authority to collect all sort of rates from market women and motorists; inflicting untold hardship and pains to these genuine hustlers, thereby killing commerce and the spirit to hustle.
These cultists collect salaries for doing nothing and walk around with fat titles feeling important and breaking the law with impunity. From their salaries and ill gotten money from rate collection or emblem sales, they gather enough money to fund their bad habits and evil lifestyle.
And these cultists have become role models to our younger ones; because they can buy beer, buy sex, buy cars… This is the kind of fast money that appeals to most young minds. No one wants to spend 6 years in school to become a lawyer and then start earning a 50k monthly salary that he will never even get to see. No one wants to be FBI in Abakpa. They want to be a cultist who will be given a government appointment or a revenue collection point, make fast money and break the law with impunity. Wahala don wear cover shoe. The vicious chain of emulation has been activated. Who will save us from this doom.
Now, they have started shooting people. We were told Modey was gunned down because the Local Government Authority dared to collect the emblem sales assignment from a known cultist and hand over same to Modey, a non cultist. They blew out his brains for accepting to collect the source of funds for their cultist activities.
When I went to Abakpa after Modey was shot, for the first time in my life, I was scared of the streets where I was born and raised. I was scared of the streets where I hawked moi-moi and palm wine as a boy. I was scared of the road to church. I was scared of the road to school. I was scared of the night and terrified of dawn. I was scared of friends and of brothers.
Oh my God. Where was I when fear took over our streets? Where were you when gunshots overtook the sound of bangers? Where were we when blood from our brother’s head flowed on our street instead of palm wine from our brother’s cup to flow on the street?
We have buried Modey, but like a seed, he is still here. Men like Modey don’t die, they live in hearts they touched. His blood is not silent and the message is clear: let’s rid our land of cultism. Let’s do whatever it takes to stem this evil tide.
103 years ago when the founders of Abakpa set foot on that land, their dreams were to build a city brimming with business and flourishing with progress. Let’s make that dream come true. Let’s purge our land of this filth and build a mighty town we all can be proud of.
Let Abakpa rise again.
Rest In Peace Modey. Rest In Peace.
Firsts Baba Isa (FBI) is a Legal Practitioner and writes from Abuja.
07037162029.
