By Kanayo Esinulo

As I was growing up, Nigeria was a country to behold. It was peaceful, beautiful, and free from rancour, and represented a land with great promise for its people. Primary and secondary schools were there for aspiring pupils and students, and teachers were well trained, well paid and paid promptly too. There were recreational facilities and open fields where we could, on our way back from school, play our hearts out in football before reaching home. Drivers were extremely careful because they knew the consequences of knocking down anyone. Policemen were civil and polite and were headed by white colonial police officers. There were no armed robbers, but there were few petty thieves who were usually caught and handed over to the police – not incinerated, as is often the case today.

The city of Aba in today’s Abia state, where I was born and raised, I saw sanitary inspectors carrying, on their back, heavy equipment with which they sprayed insecticides into gutters around our schools; and often, they visited homes to ensure that healthy standards were observed. Landlords stood the risk of being penalised for allowing their premises to be dirty and untidy. As pupils and later students, we were promptly attended to at General Hospitals, at no costs. Nurses were civil, polite and extremely courteous. It is not these days that they seem to have lost the most important aspect of their professional training. Our mothers had their babies at these hospitals at costs that our parents easily afforded. There were no cases of patients being ‘detained’ until payments were made, because the charges were affordable and life was considered precious. Road accidents were very few, even though they were face-me-I-face-you, and no one dared to drive without a licence. Licences were never purchased. The colonial police officers in-charge insisted on driving tests, before granting one.

As a child, I saw the government of the day build cottage hospitals and dispensaries in towns and rural areas. Our villages had wonderful vegetation and scenery – everywhere looked almost natural, and there were food of all sorts in abundance. If we got a penny from our father, as we headed to school, my kid brother and I would have had a bazaar that day. That sum would fetch us items that would sustain us between breakfast and late lunch at home. We grew up among children of our neighbourhood –Owerri and Erondu roads, Aba. These adjoining streets had an admixture of Yoruba, Urhobo, Calabar and Hausa boys and girls whose fathers worked with P and T, Railways, Federal ministries and parastatals, etc. We walked to our schools together, were always together at school and after, our parents knew themselves and interacted intimately. Among our parents were civil servants, local government staff and traders and, in many ways, encouraged our closeness. There was peace and harmony at their level and at ours, too. As children, we hardly knew which part of Nigeria we came from. We were just Nigerian children growing up in an area. Our future was bright, as children elsewhere in the world. We played together and visited ‘European Quarters’ together in search of mangos and ‘ube-bekee’ and were often chased away by dogs owned by white men. We would run to safety together, only to stage a come-back through other routes to escape the violence of the naughty dogs.

As we approached secondary school age in early 60s, we knew of entrance examinations from our teachers. They prepared us for the examinations. Some of us left for CGS, Awo-Omamma, Zixton Ozubulu, Government Colleges in Owerri, Afikpo, Ibadan and Umuahia. It was benign dispersal and there were pre-departure socials which our parents organised for us. Schools of those days resumed and vacated the same day. There was harmony in everything and there were smiles on faces. Our school principals – except in very few cases – were whites: Reverend Fathers, Reverend Sisters, great pastors, professional educationists and American Peace Corps members posted to Eastern Nigeria. We were in the same schools with children of ministers, ambassadors and parliamentarians. They didn’t need to send their children to special schools because our schools were good and teachers were happy with their employers and with what they were doing. We knew the names of our ministers – S.E. Imoke, P.O. Ururuka, I.U. Akpabio, J.U.Nwodo, P.E. Okeke, P.O. Nwoga, etc. Great men of history who piloted our region to greatness before the military halted the momentum on January 5, 1966.

Today, I remember the early 60s with nostalgia, desiring to re-live the sweet period all over again, and also wishing that my children could grow up in similar atmosphere and circumstances, a peaceful, organised and progressive Nigeria. But, this is becoming a tall dream. Since July 1966, the military made it possible for us to think less and less of Nigeria. It is now fashionable to put forward our ethnic identity first, before even realising that we are Nigerians. Now, it seems it is only the children of the poor that attend public schools because teachers are no longer treated with due respect and are usually the last to be paid by the treasury, and are no longer considered strategic contributors to national development. Although there was no free education in Eastern region, it lasted for just a year or so, poor and low middle class parents easily afforded the fees. Our teachers were great men: Obi Okoye, Mark Onyejiaka, Teacher Ogu, Teacher Mbakwe and Mrs Essien whose husband was, I remember, a District Officer, DO. Our teachers were usually early to school and would ‘arrest’ late comers who got punished, usually by flogging, before being allowed to their class rooms. Flogging was allowed and was common, and no parent would have the courage to question a teacher for flogging a child for an ‘offence’. Our Head Master, T.I. Uwakwe, who later went on to read law and after years of practice became a Magistrate, would resist that. Such move was inconsiderable because there was discipline in society, in schools and among our parents.

Taps had water in them and we queued in an orderly manner with our buckets and got them filled up, turn-by-turn. Street fights were rare because police would swiftly move in and make arrests. In those days, contractors were few. It was difficult to find any child who would tell you: ‘My father is a contractor’. It seems that this class became visible and dominant and even aggressive after the civil war in January 1970, and with it came corruption and its associates. In those days, most construction works were undertaken by the Ministry of Works. They were called the Public Works Departments – or PWD for short. The department was popular and did good jobs. White colonial officers were then fully in charge.

Police made arrests only of reasonably suspected criminals, because no colonial Divisional Police Officer would tolerate the excuse that the order to arrest ‘came from above’.

As a child of eleven, I often accompanied my father to campaign venues, most times at CKS, Aba field, to listen to the great politicians of that period: Mrs Margret Ekpo, S.G. Ikoku, F.F.B.C. Nwankwo, Ubani Ukoma, Felix Okoronkwo. I hardly can remember any of them using foul or offensive language against political opponents. The main concentration was on the manifesto of their parties and what the electorate should expect as they cast their votes.

Going through this memory lane is painful to me. To compare those sweet days with what Nigeria has eventually become can be ulcer-promoting. But I am convinced, beyond doubt, that Nigeria, this beautiful country, was not this bad. It is the hope of most Nigerians that this new government would move us nearer sanity and decency in society that some of us grew to know and love. This piece appeared first in a Nigerian publication on February 29. 2004 under the same title.

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