HostF O R T H E N L N G H O S T C O M M U N I T I E S

bUMpERAnniversAry eDiTiOn

BonnyMakingOfUltra-Modern

pERSONaLITyEze Ekpeye:

When a people lose their language,

they lose their culture

page 12

Skill Acquisition for Global RelevanceChoristers for peace

Isam Trade Alive Bonny seeks

football talent

Bountiful harvest

It has been a while. We had a good reason though. I think it was Sir Winston Churchill who said that Courage is what it takes not just to stand up and speak, but more importantly, to sit down and listen. We thought we had

spent enough time bringing you what we could of-fer, but we have also spent time listening to you. We needed to fine-tune your magazine to incorporate the constructive criticisms and comments you’ve so graciously proffered over the years. The final product, this issue, is still very much work in progress, but one we plan to continue improving on, as you continue to prod us on.

I cannot recall which of the Host issues, but some years ago, I did say in one of them that ‘NLNG argues long and hard, but correspondingly delivers’. There we are again, as the fact is once again buttressed. On Friday, 3 October, 2008 the projects promised in the MOU between the Joint Industry Companies (JIC) operating on Bonny Island in Rivers State, comprising Nigeria LNG Limited, Mobil Producing Nigeria Un-limited and Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), and the Bonny Kingdom were commissioned and handed over to the Kingdom.

The partnership between the Bonny Kingdom and the JIC began on November 5, 1998 with the sign-ing of the MOU to provide Bonny with two major roads, improved electricity, water supply and acceler-ated future development of the Island through the design and implementation of a Bonny Master Plan. This edition takes a look at the deliverables (some achieved beyond agreement) on the MOU and their impact on the community.

A lot of people in the country are lamenting the dearth of good and certified technicians and crafts-men, an institution on our own island of Bonny is churning out a crop of professionals, set to take the country by storm, putting Bonny Island square on the map of Africa as a reliable source of high quality artisans. Come with us into the workshops NLNG’s Bonny Vocational Centre (BVC,) the only accredited City and Guilds Centre in Nigeria.

…And long before NLNG established the ER Division, there reigned an ER. (Some say he influ-enced our choice of reference indicator, but I’ll rather not debate on it). What’s two letters between two friends? Eze Robinson (ER) is officially the Eze Ekpeye Logbo II of Ekpeye Land – HRM Chief, Flight Lieuten-ant Robinson O. Robinson, CON (JP). Ubeta, one of our two node junctions falls under his kingdom. More importantly, Eze Ekpeye is our friend, because we always count on his selfless support. He chides us when he thinks we’ve erred and eggs us on when we support the community. He is part of our bouquet of intriguing true life stories.

Now, what’s the use of a bumper harvest, if it cannot be eaten and tasted? Please have a good read and keep sending us your feedback.

Siene Allwell-Brown

contentsfrom the editor-in-chief

3 Preface - Town and firms, hand-in-handState of the MOU ten years after signing

4 Roads, wide, smooth & thickThe story of Bypasses A1 & A2

9 Water, water, everywhere... JIC makes sure Bonny gets potable water

14 Power to the people Interview with John Ebinum, GM Bonny Utility Company

18 For peace in our land, sing The Royal Male Choir grows from a sitting room

23 ‘Baby of Hope’ on two feet Bonny Vocational Centre comes of age

29 At home with Eze EkpeyeHis Royal Majesty speaks

33 Isam trade trailSelling periwinkles

38 Back to land and prosper N-Agenda aids agriculture in Finima

42 Empowered!Photo gallery of NLNG’s Empowerment Day

44 Oh YES! Benefits of the Youth Empowerment Scheme

46 When drums beat in Amadi-Ama Legends of traditional wrestling

48 Bonny Seeks Football Talent

HOST (ISSN 1119-7676) is for the people and host communities of Nigeria LNG Limited. The views and opinions within the magazine however do not necessarily reflect those of the Nigeria LNG Limited or its management.Editor-in-Chief: Siene Allwell-BrownManaging Editor: Ifeanyi MbanefoEditor: Yemi AdeyemiDeputy Editor: Elkanah ChawaiWriters: , Emma Nwatu, Glory Joe, Anne-Marie Palmer-Ikuku, Effiong Henshaw, Dan Daniel, Emeka AgbayiGuest Writers: Tam Fiofori, Boboye Onduku

All correspondence to: Yemi Adeyemi, Editor, Host, Nigeria LNG Limited, C&C Building, Plot 1684, Sanusi Fafunwa Street, Victoria Island, PMB 12774, Lagos, Nigeria. Phones: 234 1 2624190-4, 2624556-60, 2804000. e-mail: yemi.adeyemi@nlng.com.

Editorial consultancy, design and production: Taijo Wonukabe Limited, 2 Anifowoshe Close, Surulere. Tel 01-6283223, 08023130829. e-mail info@taijowonukabe.com, web http://www.taijowonukabe.comPrinted in Nigeria by PrintPro Projects Limited, 2 Anifowoshe Close, Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria. Tel: 01-6283223

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hand-in-hand

town and firms,

preface

“What is the purpose of government?” your young child might ask. Your

most likely answer: “To provide social amenities and infrastructure and to main-tain law and order.” This idea is inscribed into our psyches when we are barely able to string two thoughts together. Be that as it may, it is not a strange sight when members of a community (individuals or corporations) come together to lend a helping hand to the government’s ef-forts. The over 3,000 libraries donated by Andrew Carnegie around the world and the hundreds of community meeting halls, water wells and schools delivered through community efforts around Ni-geria stand as evidence that development is not achieved via the government alone. As corporations have begun to execute development projects in the societies that they operate, it is seen as good corporate citizenship and is referred to as corporate social responsibility. Even so, most of these projects are not the core reasons why the companies were set-up in the first in-stance. As such, community involvement is key to the success, sustainability and maintenance of projects after completion. Involving communities in the projects not only confers ownership, it also ensures sustainability and reduces the cost of such projects to companies and enabling them to do more.

A new chapter was opened in the his-tory of business-community partnership in Nigeria in 1998 when the Oil and Gas companies operating on Bonny Island in Rivers State, comprising Nigeria LNG Limited, Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlim-ited and Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), formed the Joint Industry Companies (JIC) to partner with the local community to carry out developmental projects. With the goal of actualising community rela-tions programmes, a multi-billion naira projects Memorandum of Understand-ing (MOU) was signed between the JIC and the Bonny Kingdom aimed, among

others, at pooling resources together to execute bigger projects and eliminate du-plication of efforts through the JIC. The collaboration has borne projects of enor-mous financial outlay that would ordinar-ily not have been possible to execute indi-vidually, with Nigeria LNG bearing 50 per cent of the cost while Mobil contributes 30 per cent and Shell the balance. Accord-ing to NLNG, its partnership principle has found expression in joint efforts to build, maintain and sometimes renovate classroom blocks, bore holes, town halls, roads, etc, on Bonny Island.

The partnership between the Bonny Kingdom and the JIC began on 5 Novem-ber, 1998 with the signing of the MOU. The MOU was to provide Bonny with two major roads, improved electricity, water supply and accelerated future develop-ment of the Island through the design and implementa-tion of a Bonny Master Plan. The MOU expressed both community and industrial

commitments and specified the projects for which these commitments were made. The JIC’s contribution was mainly financial and technical expertise, whilst the community’s contribution was mainly in making land available, taking ownership of the completed projects and maintaining them, and providing la-bour, when required, at reasonable rates. Thus, no compensation is paid on land acquired for community projects.

The Bonny Kingdom Development Committee (BKDC) was set up by the Bonny Chiefs’ Council, charged with managing, coordinating and facilitat-ing planning and development for the society and the lives and culture of the people of the Kingdom. The Committee has been a partner of the JIC in ensuring timely delivery of the projects. History was made on Friday, 3 October, 2008 when the projects were commissioned and handed over to the Kingdom. All the agreements on the MOU were achieved. Some were even surpassed! It’s a win-win for all stakeholders.

Samuel Babatunde, an engineer, was on secondment from Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to NLNG, where the NNPC has 49% share-holding, as Projects Engineer, when the MOU was signed in 1998. Currently Ex-ecutive Director, Operations of National Engineering and Technical Company (NETCO) Limited, another NNPC sub-sidiary, he has this to say about Bonny today: “What happened in Bonny is what we refer to as grassroots to brown field development. In

a nutshell, we have a complete transformation of the island from a small village in the jungle on an island to a city where you have motor-able roads, potable water, un-interrupted power sup-ply and other facili-ties which

makes it easy not only to sup-port the industries on the is-land but even those around the island such as in Port-Harcourt and beyond. This impact is not just to the local community but to the entire nation. Bonny Is-land today is on the global map, most especially because of the Nigeria LNG project.”

In the next few pages, you will read about some of the fruits of the MOU.

below: amanyanabo

of bonny, hrm, king

edward asmini william dappa

pepple iii con Jp (perekule xi) signs the mou;

handshake: king pepple

with former nlng md andrew

Jamieson

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& thickroads,

wide, smooth

by yemi adeyemi

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Interstate 80, the second-longest U.S. Interstate highway, runs from California to New Jersey and is acclaimed as one of the best roads in the world. The surface is smooth and driving on it is an experience that most people find difficult to express in words. Federal roads in Germany, popularly referred to as

Autobahns, are in this category too. Here in Nigeria, our own Bonny Island, if you close your eyes whilst being driven (please do not attempt it whilst you are behind the steering wheel) on the Bonny Bypass Road A1, you may be forgiven for thinking that you are on the Interstate 80 or an Auto-bahn. Bypass Road is what a road should be: wide, smooth and thick, almost unsinkable. The kind of road that tyres die for!

A few years ago, driving through Bonny especially during festive seasons such as Christmas was quite a task. Why? Going from one end of the town to the other could only be achieved through narrow roads. But not any longer! Taking off from the Mission Road in the northern part of Bonny Is-land is the Bonny Bypass Road A1. It connects the Mission Road with the Hospital Road which is in the south-eastern part of the Island. The road is approximately 1.5 kilometres long, hardly a world record, but what is amazing about it is the engineering required to construct it. Constructed by Julius Berger Nigeria through the mangrove swamp, the road is 225mm thick and concrete grade C30 (which can carry 3,000 kilogrammes per square metre) was used for its surfacing. A bridge with total length of 32.4m had to be constructed, enabling the road cross a creek. The road had to cross four pipelines, belonging to Shell Petroleum Devel-opment Company of Nigeria (SPDC), which added to the challenges of construction.

Mr Agha O Omaka, a regular user of the Bonny Bypass

Road A1 witnessed the construction of the road and says: “The road has brought succour to motorists, cyclists and pedestrians as it has not only made it easy to travel from one end of the town to the other but also do so quickly without incidents.”

However, the Bonny Bypass Road A1 is not the only notable road on the Island; the Bonny Bypass Road A2 is another beauty to behold. Constructed through the heavy built-up area at the western part of the town, bypassing Mission Road and William Dappa Road with a total length of one kilometre, it was constructed using interlocking pave stones and has four culverts crossing it. According to Wilmar Bliek, Head of Infrastructural Projects in the Production Division of Nigeria LNG Limited “using a pave stone surface for roads in a sand-filled terrain ensures easy flow of water and prevents flooding of the road especially when it rains.” Interestingly, this road was delivered, using the services of local contractors - Vitex Interbiz and Trisen JV Limited. The Abalamabie Road is another pave stone surface road on the island. Almost three-kilometre-long, the road takes off from Community Town Square and termi-nates at Hospital Road, Akiama. It also has a large round-about at the Community Town Square end to enhance easy flow of traffic.

When the MOU with the Bonny Kingdom was being signed, the Joint Industry Companies (JIC) – Nigeria LNG Limited, Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited and SPDC - no doubt had an idea of what they were taking on, especially the roads to be constructed. But many people did not. The challenges were enormous, especially with the Bonny By-pass Road A1. Oscar Okonkwo, Projects Engineer in the Production Division of Nigeria LNG Limited shared the con-struction story with Yemi Adeyemi.

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Why road construction?Let us talk about the bypass roads first. I

think one of the most important objectives of the project was to decongest the existing roads so that whenever we have more peo-ple on the island, especially during festive seasons, they can go through the bypass roads. In fact, that is why they are called bypass roads. One is A1 and the other is A2. The third road is the Abalamabie road.What challenges did the construction team encounter?

The A1 was the most challenging of the roads. Besides that we have a bridge that crosses a creek, with a span of about 32.4metres. We also have four Shell pipe-lines that we crossed during the construc-tion. I think three crude oil and one gas lines. So that made the construction a bit technical, beyond just road construction in a very dense mangrove forest.Can you give us an idea of how the project was carried out?

The first step was to ‘degrub’ the place – this involves removing all unsuitable materials from the site. You need some specialised equipment to achieve this, such as Swap Boogy. Thereafter, we excavated the area. The excavation involved digging out the soil to a depth of about 1.5metres. That means you have to dig out until you get very clear sand. Then we moved to sub-piling, which involves filling back the road with sand. Before construction, we had stock-piled about 280,000 cubic metres of sand. This was done with the service of a dredging company. Because it is a heavy duty road that was being constructed, what we did was that after filling the excavated area, we overburdened it. Overburden means piling sand on top of the road to a height of about two metres. So, though we excavated an average of 1.5metres, we filled the 1.5m, and then added another 2metres on top. This made it about 3.5metres and we left it for three months to consolidate. The aim of this was to stabilise the ground before the construction starts as weight of the sand would have compacted the area. Does this mean that when it stabilises, the sand filled would have reduced?

It would have reduced but before con-struction we still removed it. We removed it to the desired sub grade level. The whole process that I explained earlier is called pre-load and it reduces the probability of the road sinking later. The thickness of the sand cement is 250mm, compacted in layers not exceeding 100mm.

Thereafter, we proceeded to the surface dressing using 225mm institute concrete grade C30 with double layer A 193 BRC (i.e 7mm thick wire mesh). Normally for some roads they use 150mm but this is built to be a heavy duty road, so we used 225mm. A typical step in a stairway is 225mm, so you can imagine the thickness of the concrete on the road.You explained that some pipes were crossed whilst constructing the road. What challenge goes with this?

There are four pipelines that the road runs across. The pipelines belong to the SPDC. Because they are high pressure pipes, the construction method became quite deli-

cate as we had to be extremely careful. Be-fore we started, we had to meet with SPDC to draw up a pipeline crossing agreement. This meant that for any work we had to do near the pipes, we had to make a special design for that place and they had to see our designs, agree with them and approve of them for execution before we could pro-ceed. Their men also had to be on site and because it is their facility, we were subjected to their permit to work system. No me-chanical equipment was permitted to work within 2 metres of the high pressure pipe-lines, so all excavations and related works within this area were done manually.You said that the A1 road project was con-cluded ahead of schedule. Kindly explain what you mean by this?

This is actually one of the projects we finished ahead of time. There was an initial set back in mobilisation. Just after the con-tract was awarded, we had the first shooting incident in Bonny and the security of the JBN workers could not be guaranteed. So, they had to delay their mobilisation time. But eventually they got through it by em-

cover story

from top: terrain of bypass a1 before construction; culvert construction on bypass a2; bridge construction on bypass a1

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ploying more security measures on site and with that they were able to start the job. The project was to last for 18 months but they finished by the 16th month and within budget. JBN was awarded the contract for the construction of Bonny Bypass Road A1 with bridge in August 2006 and the con-tract duration was 18 months. Mobilisation commenced in November 2006 and the construction works commenced in January 2007 due to the security situation, the con-struction work was completed in May 2008.We understand that in every JIC project the community has a role to play in terms of mak-ing land available and ensuring the safety of workers on site. On the aspect of the security, did the situation get so critical that the commu-nity could not play their own part?

The situation was one in which militants were shooting at the police and the soldiers. What could the community do? The secu-rity situation is not the one that miscreants will come and make noise. No, that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the high tension security situation in the Niger Delta at that time, so it had noth-ing to do with the community.Can we get an idea of how much it cost to build this road

Yes, of course! The entire project gulped about $19.2 million, due to the challenges posed by the terrain and all the technicali-ties involved that we discussed earlier.Does this road have a life span?

Yes it does. All other things being equal, its expected life span is about 20 years. Every road has a projected lifetime. But that depends greatly on usage and maintenance. With that, the life span could be shortened or extended. Roads are built to carry a spe-cific axle load and if such load is constantly exceeded, especially by parking heavy duty trucks on the road or if oil and other chemi-cals are constantly spilled on the surface, the life span of such road is shortened.Now, let us talk about the Bypass Road A2 and the Abalamabie Road. Interlocking pave stone were used for the surface of both roads. What is the reason behind this, or is it just styles in designing?

No, it is not style but maintainability that influenced this decision. Interlocking pave stones are used for roads in sand-filled areas to reduce flooding and damage to the road. They are also easy to replace when you have a bad spot on the road. All you need to do is identify the area and replace the stones there. Concrete or asphalt roads are not this easy to deal with. But you should note that the terrain of the area where the road is being constructed is also a great decider of the material to be used for the road. For instance, the A1 Road cannot be done using pave stones because it was constructed in a swampy area. If you use interlocking, that means that you will be having depression most of the time and once there is a depres-sion that means you have to remove the area for replacement. Initially, we intended using asphalt to construct it but we revised the plan as we discovered that concrete will perform better in that terrain. We have what we call the expansion joints to take care of expansion and contraction of the material during hot and cold weather respectively. If

you have a problem on the road, you may take out the entire bay from within the ex-pansion joint, especially if there is consider-able failure. If not, the failure or repair will be localised. For asphalt you have to cut and scrap out the area to repair. Moreover, con-crete is readily available than asphalt.Were there any remarkable incidents that occurred while these roads were being con-structed?

I can’t recall any apart from technical is-sues like the pipeline crossing on the Bypass A1. The unique thing about the pipeline crossing was that no one had done it before, at least not in the country. It was a difficult job for us crossing a road on top of a pipe-line. The fact that it is a concrete road in a swampy terrain made it quite challenging. In normal construction on dry land, it is easier to just build a culvert over pipes. But in this instance, the pipes are high pressure pipes and some of them have been there for over 20 years. They have consolidated. So, the construction method was to exca-vate, fill the sides with sand bags and place concrete slabs on top before you now start the real construction. We were all scared, because of the consequences of dislodging

any of the pipes. That is aside the indemnity of over 10 million US dollars that the com-pany would have coughed out. So when we crossed the first pipe without any incident, we were all in a jubilant mood. The realisa-tion of what we achieved was very fulfilling as we proved that it was possible. It tasked the ingenuity of everyone on site as we were all proposing tactics for going about it.One gets the impression that, with that con-struction you guys actually performed some engineering feat in that area?

Yes! That we did. It was a difficult thing to do but we thank God that we were able to achieve it.And those pipes (if they have to be main-tained) are still accessible by the company?

Exactly! In fact the construction gave them an opportunity to evaluate the integ-rity of the pipes. So it was a win-win situa-tion. The locations of the pipes are clearly marked out for them now, ensuring easy access at any time.Were there any mishaps during the construc-tion?

The HSEQ department can confirm that remarkably, we did not record any major HSE incident on the field. You can only

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top a pipe culvert on

bypass a1; above: bypass

a2 with its interlocking

paving stones

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cover story

understand the magnitude of what I am saying when you consider that all those heavy equipment like the tower cranes, bulldozers, wheel loaders, excavators, many dumper trucks, trailers etc. had to move from the NLNG Industrial Area to Bonny town everyday for 16 months. I want to make a conclusion here and I want you to tell me whether you agree with this con-clusion or not. After building this road in such a challenging terrain, does this mean that your team can build any kind of road in the rough-est terrain ever in any part of the world?

With proper support I don’t think there is any road we cannot build. The support must be there because it is essential to the success of any project. I use support here not to refer to just the monetary aspect but also having the applicable equipment, cooperation with relevant stakeholders, especially the local community. We had a lot of support and goodwill.Goodwill? From whom?

From the community of course! We had community interface team that ensured there was no community problem. They say success has many friends; I tell you it’s true. I would say that it was not just our technical ingenuity that made us achieve what we did. Those soft issues like goodwill and support from all relevant stakeholders did. Soft is-sues are part of projects, if you look at some projects that are stalled or abandoned; it is not always because of the technical issues. The soft issues also contributed to it. For instance, if we had not had the right of way provided by the community, we couldn’t have constructed the road up in the sky and if community had insisted that the road will not go on and had stood in our way, we would not have had any option but to abandon it and then people will refer to it as another abandoned project.That is quite an interesting perspective.

Yes, but an accurate one. I think that is one thing we should take home as our les-son learned. For every project to succeed, all the stakeholders should be engaged prop-erly and commitment obtained from them. That commitment is very important. For as long as you have that support from every stakeholder I don’t think there is anything that cannot be done.What was the level of cooperation/collabora-

tion between your department, other compa-nies in the JIC and Julius Berger?

All of us had one goal and that was to deliver the road. All the JIC companies, Julius Berger, our contractor, the Bonny Kingdom Development Committee; I think we all had a cordial relationship with mutual respect for each other which is part of the reason for the success of the project. We had our men on site working round the clock. The construction team was led by Moses Adepoju and the site engineer Alex Kulakowski who had his office right there on the site making sure that the work is car-ried out according to specifications. We had the community relations department try-ing to handle any issue from the communi-ty and even the BKDC were on ground with us to provide proactive community inter-face. So you see that everyone was working, once in a while the Bonny Chiefs Council would come to see the progress of the work. So you see there was total involvement of all the stakeholders.Did the Bypass A2 give you as much challenge as the A1?

No. The A2 was constructed where peo-ple are living. It is just like upgrading an un-tarred road, putting drainage by both sides and ensuring stabilisation of the road with 7% sand cement mix. The thickness of sand cement stabilisation was 300mm,

compacted in layers not exceeding 100mm and laying interlocking pave 225x112x 80 as the surface finish. So it was a normal construction. One point about it though is that it was done by local contractors namely Vitex Interbiz and Trisen JV Limited. Actu-ally that was the first time we tried out local contractors in handling projects of such magnitude. Now, I say magnitude not in terms of the cost involved which is enor-mous by the way but rather the expertise required.

We had to do this because of our com-mitment to local content, engagement and development. This requires us to make sure that we use local contractors for projects that they can handle and also make efforts to develop them for bigger projects. We had to monitor their progress and development. So it was a challenging project from our supervising point of view in that our su-pervisors had to constantly look over their shoulders to ensure that things are done right and in line with best practices. Eventu-ally they did a good job; if you go there, you will be amazed with the quality of the road. The interlocking is about 80mm thick.When you refer to local contractors, are you talking about Bonny-based contractors?

Yes.How did the decision to use local contractors sit with the local community? Any issues?

Yes. You know that the antics of a lot of Nigerian contractors after winning contracts, especially in the construction industry, has affected the faith that people have in them. So, initially the community was a little bit cold towards the idea as they did not believe that local contractors could do it. But we gave them assurances to that effect. In fact, one of the trade-offs was that if they agreed to let local contrac-tors deliver the A2, we would then bring in a high profile contractor to deliver the more challenging road, A1. I think that worked out because if you drive on the A2, you will be happy with the construction. So, apart from delivering the road, we were also able to enhance the capacity of the local contractors with proper support, especially training.

wilmar bliek, head of infra-

structural proJects, nlng,

and oscar okonkwo

school children of

the public using the sidewalk

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everywhere...water,water,

by emma nwatu

In the past, water-borne diseases were prevalent on Bonny Island, simply be-cause there was no source of water fit for human consumption. Thus, the Bonny townsfolk, when drafting the Memo-randum of Understanding with Joint Industry Companies (JIC)– comprising

Nigeria LNG (as the driving force), Shell Pe-troleum Development Company and Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited – made the provision of potable water top priority. It was spelt out as: ‘provision of high pressure PVC water supply line from NLNG site to Bonny water tower’ and ‘refurbishment of water dis-tribution network and installation of water tapping stations.’

The agreement also called for ‘commis-sioning of existing water plant via negotia-tion with original vendor’ as well as ‘provi-sion of small bore water line from NLNG water well to Abalamabie’.

It further requests for ‘provision of man-agement consultancy services to assist the utilities board in the preparation of business plan.’

The JIC went to work immediately. Al-though, there were hitches at one time or the other, the companies have delivered on the scope of this agreement between 2003 and 2007.

A borehole, with a pumping capacity of above 90,000 litres per hour, in Bonny, was drilled to replace the collapsed Rivers State Water Board (RSWB) borehole.

Another borehole was also drilled in Finima with a pumping capacity of

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55,000 litres per hour while Bonny and Finima water facilities were upgraded with automated pressure filter system.

Other areas of intervention on provi-sion of potable water on the Island were:1. Drilling of second backup borehole

complete with well pump in Bonny2. Drilling of deep borehole in Ab-

alamabie3. Reticulation of water distribution

network to the new developing areas in Bonny

4. Repair of two collapsed boreholes with the capacity of 45,000 litres per hour in Finima.

5. Installation of stand taps at vari-ous locations in the new section of Bonny.

6. Construction of water tanker load-ing bay at Bonny and Finima water treatment plants to improve tanker delivery to the community.An elated Andy Odeh, Community

Relations and Development Manager, says: “A lot has been done on water. The original scope was to change out the old pipelines and ensure that the Bonny water treatment plant is refurbished or refitted. To that extent I will say that what was agreed in the MOU was done, completed as specified.

By December 2007, water was handed over to Bonny Utility Company, the independent utilities company, which also manages a reliable power supply on the Island. This came as a relief to every party.

Four years ago, nobody was responsi-ble for ensuring that the tap stand you had in Bonny town were operating at an optimal state. We have usually about 180 tap stands built, not managed or owned by anybody or handed over to anybody so once in a while, things go bad. Once this happens, JIC representa-

tives, led by NLNG, will go and get it fixed through their different depart-ments. Now, we have BUC doing that round the clock - just like they’ve done with power. Also in a long term, the local government will have a role to play. BUC also ensures that the water is of the best quality,” Odeh said.

Concurring, John Ebinum, General Manager of BUC says his company ensures that water in Bonny meets the highest acceptable standards of potable water.

“The sources of raw water are bore-hole water. The underground water from these boreholes contains very high iron content. The raw water is treated to achieve a safe and quality drinking water that meet World Health Organisation standards. The treated water produced is stored in elevated tanks and distributed by gravity through pipe networks of vari-ous sizes to the end users. Of course, the water plants are powered by electricity distributed by BUC. 

To confirm the water fit to drink, BUC does a test in the NLNG labora-tory.

Like you know, NLNG lab is of world class standard. And the lab usually shows the standard of the water. On top of that, we also invite an external body, the Rivers State Ministry of Water Re-

top: water tanker

loading from the finima water bay;

above: nlng water tanks

at finima

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sources, to confirm whether the water is portable. They usually take a sample of the water and do a confirmatory test.

In Finima, we distribute water for three hours in the morning through the pipe network and three hours in the evening. Then the tankers are also run-ning through the day. In Bonny, it is two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening and the tankers are also run-ning in between.

We have 20 tankers at the moment that run every day. Each tanker will run four trips per day. So, the areas that have not been reticulated are covered adequately by the tankers.

However, wastage of water is a serious challenge.

We have cases where the people just leave the taps open, when the water comes in the morning, the taps will be running and water wasting away. This is because there is no control.

In power, a pay-as-you-consume sys-tem was put in place to minimise the tendency to waste electricity. This has contributed in making power available by over 98 per cent, sustainable for over six years period.”

Ebinum said discussion is under way to introduce a sustainable measure in a planned second phase of water.

bonny water phase twoBy 1999, the MOU did not envisage

the level of development in the King-dom in ten years. The scope of water has therefore exceeded the original concep-tion because of increasing population and expanding infrastructure as well as damage to some installations.

JIC has acted. A massive expansion project is cur-

rently being configured and this will provide a lasting solution to water in Bonny.

Just last year, a cadastral survey of Bonny and Finima was done and a new project known as water project phase two was conceived.

What does this phase two entail? Odeh explains:

“It entails changing out the pipe

cementation work in progress: right: finima water storage facility

11HOST

cover story

network; identifying right of way for the pipes to pass through. It also entails building of water fetching kiosk in Bon-ny town and in Finima town and con-struction of about two new treatment plants and over head tanks.

The most comforting thing is that the quality of the network of pipeline is such that you can’t just go and tamper with them. Part of the challenges BUC is fac-ing now is, from time to time, some of the pipeline mainline are punctured. So, we are going to have a very high grade pipe-line that one can hardly puncture.

I see in long term a situation where the fetching kiosks are there for the general pub-lic but (just like in power) if you want it con-nected to your house, then, it will attract fees.

I don’t have all the technical features but in a very short time, the second phase is supposed to ensure more efficient water

distribution in Bonny, such that you are confident that the kind of standard that has been associated with power can also be said to be in water in long term.

It is more like a tripartite thing. Before now, you have the JIC and BKDC. In utility for phase two of water, we have JIC and we have also engaged the local government, capturing the responsibility of the govern-ment to grant right of way.

By the way, part of its responsibility is to ensure proper development control. It is only proper that even the design of the pipeline network must be signed out by the local government because every drawing in a locality or utility of an infrastructure must be warehoused through the local government.

We have passed that stage. Local gov-ernment has endorsed, BKDC has also endorsed the pipeline design. Finima devel-

opment committee has also endorsed it; so, the next thing is to actually work through what the pipeline has for you and accept the design. That will lead to granting of right of way for the project to be done.”

Oscar Okonkwo has been in charge of detailed scoping on the project.

He notes that the second phase was so imperative because population pro-jection for Bonny by 2018 would hit about 147,000 at a daily consumption level of 1oo litres of water per person. This would translate to 14,700,000 cubic metres of potable water which will re-quire nominal storage capacity of 14,700 cubic metres.

The target of the JIC companies is to achieve the same standard they achieved in power and ensure that Bonny King-dom fully takes ownership.

Host learnt that the water kiosks are to be located within walking distance of about 300 metres.

Ebinum gives further insight on the nature of the second phase:

“There will be a discussion to make sure that water is sustainable. Because what we are doing in water is to control wastage; just like we did in electricity. We are ensuring that those who want to waste electricity will waste it at their own cost. So, it’s the same strategy in water.”

Although operators of the project kept sealed lips on the likely cost. Inves-tigations showed that the project would be in the excess of US$40 million or about six billion naira, though detailed scoping may unveil more costs.

It is also expected that the project will be completed within three years of its commencement.

Part of the Millennium Development Goals is to halve, by 2015, the propor-tion of people without sustainable ac-cess to safe drinking water. Bonny and Finima have beaten the deadline.

top: finima water treatment plant; above: finima council of elders and the buc team at the commissioning

12 HOST

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They may not have proclaimed in protest-speak - “All we are say-ing is give us some light” – but the importance the representa-tives of Bonny Kingdom attached to electricity supply when the MOU was being drafted, surely matched the significance of electricity to a people’s prosperity. There can hardly be any

meaningful progress without electricity--no production, no manufacturing, high cost cost of business, grounded economy, stalled growth....

Just as well, the JIC took the supply of electricity very seriously. Their charge: To upgrade the electricity supply system in Bonny. The result: the Bonny Utility Company was formed, in partnership with

Bonny Kingdom, the state and local governments, to ensure the manage-ment, operations and maintenance of utilities in Bonny which included un-wavering electricity supply.

The initial target was 3,000 customers and a fairly reliable system of elec-tricity supply. John Ebinum, General Manager of BUC, said the target has been surpassed three times. Currently, an estimate of 9,000 customers with prepayment electricity meters are connected to the BUC grid through two 11 kilovolts (KV) injection substations, more than 500 high voltage concrete poles, over 2,000 low voltage concrete poles and hundreds of kilometres of overhead conductors forming the power grid distribution network.

Ebinum added that with a growing capacity to deliver power, in March 2009, BUC phased out all diesel-fuelled generators which, at its peak, have cost the JIC over $4 million to fuel in 2007 alone. This has also contributed to making the Bonny environment cleaner.

If that sounds like gibberish, here is what it means in real terms. Louis sells used television and air conditioners in Bonny. He left

his shop, Tony Electronics in Alaba, Lagos to come and set up a branch in Bonny. In Lagos, he used 10 litres of fuel for four days to power his small generating plant which he switched on “just to test goods for customers.” Since he opened a business in Bonny, Louis doesn’t want to go back to Lagos because of the electricity he enjoys. He uses N1,000 worth of electricity every two weeks.

Abraham, a barber, agrees with Louis on the availability of electricity but wishes that he could get more business to utilise the power he gets. He spends N1,000 on electricity in two months. According to him, a number of business owners in Bonny want to leave Bonny because of a lull in business but have been held back because of the constant electricity. Says he: “Na light dey hold people back, but na light we go chop?”

Dat na another matter.key figures as at november 2009• Supply Capacity: nlng: 12.5mva,

spdc: 10mva• 40 low voltage distribution trans-

former substations • over 500 high voltage concrete

poles • over 2,000 low voltage concrete

poles• two 11 kilovolt (kv) injection

substations • Energised: 9,080 households• Availability: 98.7% six months

average• Consumption: 6300 mwh /month• Peak load: 12.7 mva• LTI recorded: none @ 2,203,711

hours• Workforce: 94% bonny indigenes

uplight

13HOST

cover story

Who contributes what to the electricity that JIC is giving to Bonny?

Our two main suppliers are Nigeria LNG Limited and Shell Petroleum Devel-opment Company (SPDC). NLNG has an installed feeder capacity of about 12.5 MVA of power while SPDC has a supply capac-ity of 10 MVA. When combined, we have 22.5 MVA capacity from these sources. The power is received at an injection station. That power is conditioned and distributed to the community in a safe and reliable way. The infrastructure within the communities are provided by JIC—it is what we call the distribution network. What is the current consumption of the com-munity? Does it take up all the capacity?

It takes up 50 per cent of that depending on the time of the year and the number of people in the community. What is done with what’s left?

If the community wants 20 MVA today, we can deliver 20 MVA. It is what is needed that we deliver. If I give you a transformer and you connect a small radio to it, it will be that power of the radio that you will get out of it. What counts is the capacity that is available and your ability to deliver power to the people. What is installed is the maximum you can give as the demands grow. If they demand lower, that is what is given out. We are very comfortable with the spared capacity but we keep on monitoring the demand profile.

Availability has to do with having the power; but if your distribution system is not there, then it is not available and it does not get to the end user. So you can in-stall 22.5 MVA but if your network or your power distribution is not available, like if a pole falls or there is a severance of a cable,

the power does not get to the people. Therefore it is not available. That is

where BUC comes in. We ensure that the power that comes in from the

JIC companies is really getting to the houses of the people.

Are the transformers there to take it down to people’s

houses? Are the poles extended to people’s homes? That is why BUC plays a very im-portant role in ensuring that this power gets to the people and that it is available 24 hour to a

reasonable percentage.Even though the supply of

electricity is very good, there are interruptions intermit-

tently. Why is that?Our availability is 98.7%. It keeps chang-

ing depending on the month. This means it is not 100 per cent available. For inter-ruptions to happen, it is possible that some operational maintenance work is being carried out and within a particular area, we could switch off a sub-station that supplies that area. It is also possible that there is a fault somewhere and the maintenance team wants to rectify it. It is also possible that once in while our suppliers can also trip off for one reason or the other. So all these periods of outages are recorded and that is what contributes to the shortfall instead of the 100 per cent that we are supposed to have. If for example, I have 40 sub-stations and if one sub-station is affected, it is just one out of 40 and it is very small percent-age compared to the overall power supply in the community.How much did JIC spend on electricity supply?

I can’t give you exact figure now but we are talking of hundreds of millions of naira. At the moment, we have two injec-tion stations. These stations take up the power from the sources and send it to the community. We have one sub-station in SPDC premises, Bonny and another one in Finima. We also have tens of kilometres of network. Then we have the final dis-tribution transformers that actually step down the voltage to manageable level that people can use. We are talking of 40 of such final sub-stations. The infrastructure cost quite a lot of money. A typical con-crete pole has an overhead conductor and an interface box that interfaces between the overhead line and the end user. People don’t connect their wires directly to the line which guarantees the way the power is distributed. At a glance, you will know someone who is trying to steal power. This alone cuts wastage and illegal con-nection. From these boxes, it goes to the pre-payment meters which are also a very expensive part of the project. We have the pre-paid meters that serve as interface between our lines and the users. The cus-tomers enter a token number purchased from us. The numbers are generated through the pre-payment system. The cus-tomer goes to the bank to pay an amount into BUC account. A customer may want to play smart and bypass the meter. He or she may get some power. But we have another control in the interface box. If a customer bypasses a meter for one year and he or she is caught, we can go to our interface box and check what they have stolen in that year. The customer will pay and will be penalised. Where did BUC get this style from?

BUC operates at an international utility standards. Everything from the network to the system is of international standards. The pre-payment meters we use come from a company in South Africa. This is the only way you can control customers of this mag-nitude, ensuring there is very minimum level of electricity theft.How affordable is the electricity?

For the residential users, it is about one-fifth of what Power Holding Com-pany of Nigeria (PHCN) charges on the

John Ebinum is General Manager of Bonny Utility Company. He spoke with

Elkanah Chawai on achievements of the JIC

companies in the supply of uninterrupted electricity supply

to Bonny Island.

powerto the people

14 HOST

cover story

pre-payment tariff. But for the commercial people, the subsidy will be going towards zero because you don’t want to subsidise for big time banks and all that. I understand that PHCN has a fixed payment charge for pre-payment users, so if you have a meter, you are paying a fixed charge every month whether you have power or not. BUC doesn’t charge that fixed amount. And as I said, it is much subsidised. The BUC system is in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The arrangement is that there is free electricity that is given in such a way that somebody at a very low economic level or has nothing to pay for electricity will get electricity. They come to BUC to get free electricity token. We call it Basic Electricity Support Allowance (BESA). Everybody gets it every month. We have about 20 per cent of our customers who are really able to use BESA, getting the power without paying a dime. That is why it is in line with the MDGs. The very poor in the community can enjoy themselves. But then if you start consuming beyond the BESA level, you have to start paying. Is BUC looking at alternatives to sources of power?

BUC does not generate power. The JIC companies generate the power and contribute it to BUC which operates it and distributes to the community. It is true that the world is looking at different sources of energy other than the usual one that comes from oil and gas. There are a lot of advantages from solar energy and a lot of researches and progress have been made. We hope that with time, it is going to become cheaper because it is possible for people to have their own solar gener-ating system. But coming back to BUC, we have gone a long way to ensure that we are not wasting energy and money. You must have heard of what we call the carbon footprint and global warming. If you are able to reduce the fumes that affect the global system and beat global warming, then you are really saving a lot. What has happened in BUC recently is that in March 2009, BUC phased out all the diesel generators. In the past, BUC had a lot of diesel generators in areas where the electricity from gas-turbines could not extend to. In 2007 alone, the amount paid by JIC to fuel these generators was more than $4 million. It was a lot of money in fuelling it; it was a lot of problems in maintaining them. So since March, we phased out diesel generators. That way, we have contributed to ensuring that global warming is reduced. What it means is that the gas is now used to generate power. The gas would have been flared anyway and when it is flared, emission gases are also generated as well but that gas is used to power the community. It may be at a very small level but at least we are contributing to that goal. Does BUC buy power from JIC?

We have not been paying for that power but the amount of power given to us by JIC companies through SPDC and NLNG is known. The amount of energy in kilowatt hour or megawatt hour is recorded. One thing you have to remember is that BUC

was set up by the JIC companies because, among others, they wanted a system where-by available electricity will be provided to the community at an affordable rate. We want these services to be available in the community and it should be very cheap. The electricity is highly subsidised because the companies are based here and they are socially responsible.Is there an exit strategy for the JIC companies, leaving BUC as a sustainable utility company?

That is very much in the front burner because one of the aims of setting BUC is that the model company should be sustain-able. If it is not sustainable, then all the efforts are wasted. It should be something that should last for a very long time and be able to provide the service without disrup-tion. In terms of the availability of power and the infrastructure we have in place, we can say that the system is going to last for a very long time. In BUC set-up, there are two kinds of expenses: the infrastructure that is put down by JIC companies like the concrete poles, transformers etc. They are sustainable. The next thing you need to think about is the dedicated people work-ing in BUC and how to ensure that from what they do, we are able to generate a certain amount to pay their salaries or take care of some minor operational expenses. BUC is working towards that. Now, the rev-enue we are generating is able to take care of 50 per cent of those expenses. By the time we achieve 100 per cent, it is going to be a very big stepping stone. But it is something that is going to be attained in the long run. We have the tariff and there are so many ways to go about it, but there is a plan for sustainability.Are there challenges in trying to make electric-ity available to end users?

BUC distributes power to communi-ties. We have what we call the boundary of supply or the contour of supply. If you want more people included in that supply, it means you have to extend the grid to that community. The main challenge is trying to convince people about paying some kind of token. It is sometimes met with resist-ance. People think that they should get it free since the companies are here. We need to convince and engage them. That is where we really have challenge with community

people. But I want to say that those areas that have started paying now think it is a very good arrangement. They like and sup-port it because they know that the system is sustainable to ensure that people don’t waste the power. If it is absolutely free and all paid for by the JIC people, the power will not be available because all kinds of com-mercial people will migrate, and overload the supply and blow up everything. So once people start paying, they are happy to be in that system. Have you had challenges with vandalisation?

I won’t say we don’t have cases where some people try to damage the system. But it is not pronounced. What we do in the system is make people pay for damages they have caused. If anybody causes damage ei-ther by driving into a pole or cuts a tree and severs a line, once the person is known in the community, we assess the damage and give a bill to that person to pay.

from top: new inJection

station at finima;

one of the transformers

installed at bonny; small

business owner

enJoying electricity supplied by

buc

15HOST

cover story

Leaking roofs. Caving walls. Peeling paints. Falling louvres. Scarce drugs. Yet there were throngs of patients. They had nowhere else to go.

The good news: the Bonny General Hospital is getting a

new lease of life – on all fronts – courtesy Nigeria LNG Limited and the Rivers State Government. The journey of rebirth started three years ago as renovation work for some of the dilapidated structures in the hospital. The scope of work kept increasing as more demands were accom-modated.

Today, if you have not been to the hos-pital in the past four years, you will miss your way.

Besides landscaping the entire premis-es, which is on-going, all other building constructions and reconstructions have either been completed or are being fin-ished.

Quarters for doctors, nurses and other staff and the Chief Medical Director’s house have been built from scratch. All the wards have been fully reconstructed from foundation to finishing.

The objective is to turn the hospital to a world-class medical centre that will be fully equipped and ready to handle high profile medical cases including emergen-

cies.Although the hospital was not part

of the Memorandum of Understanding between Bonny and Nigeria LNG, the company sees its upgrade as an impact mitigation measure.

But in keeping with its policy of stake-holding and sustainability, NLNG is pulling resources together with the Rivers state government.

Part of its major challenge is how to make the hospital sustainable to consist-ently deliver quality healthcare services to the people.

Apart from the extensive rehabilita-tion work it is undertaking, Nigeria LNG is expected to build capacity for general practitioners, obstetricians and gynae-cologists, general surgeons, paediatricians and mortuary attendants.

The company has also employed and deployed a consultant medical personnel, Dr Charles Whyte as the hospital’s chief medical director for a three-year period.

Andy Odeh, Community Relations and Development Manager, said the Chief Medical Director shall draw a framework for a world class practice in the hospital.

“Part of his responsibility, with NLNG support, will be to identify gaps in hospi-tal administration in Bonny General Hos-pital; put the appropriate institutional

framework in place with regard to proc-esses and governance systems; - do a com-petency gap analysis of all the workers in the hospital; identify appropriate develop-ment and training for them; ensure that every worker in the hospital who is a staff of Rivers State government working in the hospital has specified tasks and specific targets acceptable on an annual basis.

And of course there is a commitment to put a top up scheme in place where all the workers will experience some boost to their allowances from NLNG. Bonny is considered to be a remote area, despite the presence of a number of major com-panies.

That is supposed to help again in keep-ing the hospital’s hardware. When we are looking at the equipment in the hospital, the building in the hospital, we just want to ensure that people deliver healthcare. As part of the partnership, government is to ensure specialists who are required for a hospital of this size are always in place to deliver services.

There will be a dedicated account for the general hospital for sending money to the hospital.

There will be hospital management committee made up of representatives of Rivers state Ministry of Health, NLNG and representatives from the kingdom and friends of the hospital. The reason for all of this is to ensure that everybody – government, companies, community – has ownership of the project, post-delivery or post-hand over. It must work. We really see it as a model.”

Nigeria LNG has also undertaken to equip the hospital emergency room with basic life-saving equipment.

To avail the hospital of experienced medical practitioners, the company shall also release doctors in RA hospital to give some consulting and other support services that may be required from time to time in the General Hospital.

“All these, again, are to support an aspect of our community relations and development which is integration. So, while we are integrating within the nor-mal engagement, our doctors will be there to provide services.

It is done not for the purpose of pub-licity; it is done out of a genuine desire to improve health care delivery in Bonny,” Odeh said.

drugs and consumablesIn the past, the no-drug syndrome had

hunted many health institutions. Hos-pitals had become prescription centres while patients were made to buy sub-standard or expired drugs in pharmacies, patent medicine stores, or anywhere else. This has been a major cause of mortality and low life expectancy in Nigeria.

This issue was considered as very im-portant and captured in the agreement between the Rivers State government and Nigeria LNG.

Rivers State government undertook to procure drugs, reagents and other hospi-tal consumables.

makeoverextremebgh:

chief medical

director’s house

16 HOST

cover story

A memorandum of understanding, by common consent, is a declaration signed by two nations or their leaders that has the force of a treaty,

but is not legally binding. It is a well accepted type of legal instrument in

international law and practice. Indeed, it was recog-nised as such by Lord McNair, the British legal expert, who in his classic work on the law of treaties identi-fied the MOU as “an informal but nevertheless legal agreement between two or more parties”.

In the six decades of post-war co-operation be-tween Britain and the United States, for example, the two countries have entered into numerous memo-randa of understanding in the defence sector alone.

Countries frequently use such MOUs as ways to give political but not necessarily legal force to agreements reached after negotiations, codifying and clarifying the points agreed. Britain signs hundreds of such agreements every year with countries around the world.

In the hierarchy of international negotiation, an MOU comes above the most informal agreement, known in diplomatic parlance as a “note verbale”, but below the full treaty, which has usually to be ratified by a country’s legislature. The Foreign Office does not regard it as being legally binding, though it does sig-nify the political commitment of both countries. michael binyon, TIMES ONLINE, 8 JUNE 2007

understanding mous

A drug-revolving scheme is to be in place, and with the plan to unbundle all aspects of the hospital, including the pharmacy, ‘a no-drug syndrome’ shall not affect the hospital.

Rivers State government shall also deploy medical practioners of different category and also provide a take-off grant to the hospital.

And while the government shall equip the hospital with basic hospital equip-ment, Nigeria LNG has promised to look at the possibility of upgrading some of the existing equipment.

Dr T A T Allison, a medical doctor and Chairman of Bonny Kingdom Develop-ment Committee (BKDC) says the King-dom is happy with the massive recon-struction and upgrade of the hospital.

BKDC has in fact been collaborating with NLNG and the state government every step of the way.

Even so, Allison believes the job ought to have been long completed.

Odeh explains the apparent delay:“What has been happening is that the

scope kept increasing. We had to take a decision in 2008 to freeze the scope. This is because when you are building without specification, you notice that to do the road you need to do the roof then sud-denly you found out that the electrical system is bad. You go around the build-ing; you found out that the drainage is bad. What we have done is that for the entire project, there is a plan; but the key thing here is that you must say to yourself whether you are going to x or y. Wherever you stop, it becomes another phase all to-gether. Even now, we can say that we have completed what we set out to do. But as soon as the Head of the hospital resumes, we can begin further discussions on the next phase. So, when there is a team on ground, we will begin to decide what is critical; what is essential.”

Meanwhile, following the transforma-tion witnessed by the hospital in the past three years, the Rivers State Ministry of Health has upgraded it to a complete HIV/AIDS site.

A complete site is where counselling, testing and treatment of HIV can be done and cases of the infection referred.

Many organisations and companies have also keyed into the project, providing some services.

Recently, NLNG RA Ladies association donated five plasma TV sets to the wom-en and children’s wards of the hospital.

Shell has also embarked on final fin-ishing work in general, male, female and children’s wards.

When each party fully meets its terms of agreement, expectation is that serious medical cases that used to be referred to RA hospital can easily be handled in Bonny General Hospital.

Interests are growing and hopes are being raised. Projection is that within the next year Bonny General Hospital shall be a model to visit in Nigeria. As one Bonny indigene jokingly put it: “it will soon be a good thing to be ill.”

completed hospital staff

quarters; right: ra

ladies donate plasma tvs and other

items to the hospital

17HOST

singfor peacein our land,

feature

18 HOST

by ifeanyi mbanefo

Sixteen years down the line, Enitoun Iyalla and Bara Igowari Brown should be singing “Count your blessings, name them one by one...” even as they would have wanted the song to be Handel’s “Halleluiah” chorus, or a similar local chorus.

They may not yet have their dream school of music or hall of fame, planned as part anniversary of their Royal Male Choir, on 14 Decem-ber 2003, but significant milestones have been recorded.

the blessingsToday, for those who live within the South-South geo-political zone of Nigeria,

the Royal Male Choir (RMC) now needs no introduction, while those who live out-side that catchment area, -- considered the playground of this all-male singing choir – needs only a reminder or a jog of memory. By far the most effective way to intro-duce this choir outside the South-South zone is to say “the singing sensation that graces Nigeria LNG Limited’s events.” For years, the company has been its major benefactor.

Today, the RMC has become such a fixture of secular and religious circuits on Bonny Island, in particular, and Port Harcourt, that no event is complete without it. More than that, the group has contributed to the upscale in choral performances in the state and beyond.

Today, the group has produced a crop of professional choristers and effectively engaged youths of the state; on its roll, are 415 choristers, 102 of whom are regular attendants at practices and events. And, in response to the divergent interest groups seeking membership and promotion, a second group of mixed membership – The Rivers State Choir – exists; launched in 2008. At the initial practice session, at least 250 young boys and girls were registered. Interestingly, this group entered for and won the 2009 Niger Delta Choir competition and would be inaugurated on Decem-ber 18, 2009.

Today, the group can claim credit for sponsoring at least 48 choristers through tertiary institutions.

Today, the group not only has a fully equipped and staffed office, it also has in its kitty sophisticated opera and other musical instruments.

Now, the government has demonstrated interest in sponsoring this group. The

feature

19HOST

hope is that it can convert this interest into action.

Even more corporate bodies would have to weigh in. Pledges made are not redeemed.

Funding has been largely through per-sonal contributions, performance fees, do-nations and goodwill gestures. The group has an investment portfolio through which it supports its members in tertiary institu-tions. It also supports charity and orphan-age homes. It also leased a Coaster Bus to earn additional income.

The original bus donated by the state government was retired last year after 10 years of active service. It is no longer on the road. However, the group was presented with another bus by NDDC in 2008, which is still road worthy.

shoe-string budgetFinance remains RMC’s challenge. According to Brown, RMC’s musical

director: “We do not generate enough money from our performance to finance our numerous projects, including getting our own office. This will take lots of money. For instance, we are currently working on the music of Harcourt White, an Abonema man. People used to think that he is an Igbo man. He is one of the best musicians that ever lived in Africa. So, it will take us a lot to perform his music. Remember he was a leper and our costume should reflect this.

“I am seeing a choir that should be independent. Already, we have a manager that is preoccupied with repositioning the group to an international standard though I believe there is still more to do here before we move abroad. The choir is already incor-porated and our legal adviser is currently reviewing our constitution. So, we have dreams,” he added.

let not the dreams dieIf in Nigeria today, there are several very

highly funded, major, colleges of war -the Nigerian Military University, Command and Staff College, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Nigerian Army School of Infantry (NASI), Nigerian Naval College, Onura, NNS Quorra, Apapa, NNS Akaso near Port Harcourt, Diving School at Navytown in Ojo, Navy Technical Training Centre, Sapele, and a host of others of less significance, then why not one college of peace of equal calibre or levels of funding or seriousness. How is Nigeria supposed to have peace when its best minds study war and those who can learn from the streets and creeks are budding militants?

This must have been the kind of thought that provoked Iyalla in the first place.

According to him, the choir’s ultimate objective is to reform the youths: these youths that are trained could have been en-gaged in assaults, killings, pipeline vandali-sation and the likes. They strive to nurture leadership skills and character among the boys, in addition to looking after their fu-ture, especially their education. By the way, 48 choristers have been sponsored through tertiary education by RMC.

These goals should not be mistaken for the all-time objectives of the group, for the Royal Male Choir, despite its giant strides is still at heart and indeed a provincial group that cherishes self and group discipline, musicianship and progress of its members.

Since it sang its first note at Iyalla’s house at 22 Port Johnson Street in Port Harcourt, the choir has continued its march through the years and has per-formed on several hallowed grounds includ-ing the Mecca of Nigeria’s political power, “Aso Rock.”

golden voicesA typical appearance. Young men file

unto the stage, decked wrappers and big long sleeved white shirts, the type popularly called etibo by Rivers folk. They form a semi-circle and a few of them clear their throats and come to attention in anticipation of the conductor’s cue.

This is the public face of the Royal Male Choir. The real action takes place out of view, in the bare halls of St. Cyprain’s Church, Port Harcourt where its over 400 members practise twice every week, hon-ing their skills to perfection, learning new songs, new verses and making the uplifting good music that has become its hallmark.

The boys, sorry, men, mould themselves in this hall. It is the job of Iyalla and Brown to work with the members to straighten the kinks in their voices.

Yet, unless you are admitted into the rehearsals, you will not appreciate the rig-ours and the demanding, repetitive rehears-als, which produce the perfect symphonies, signature tunes of the choir.

The choristers still practise at the St. Cyprians Church Hall. But they plan to build their own hall shortly as the present hall is not meeting their immediate needs.

cannot thank nlng enoughIyalla is grateful to Nigeria LNG for

the push the company provided. Says he: “NLNG has been our strongest promoter. It has really helped in publicising us and through this they linked us to Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, AGIP and Shell.

“I can still recall the last managers’ night NLNG organised in Bonny where we were invited to perform. It was fun! We also trav-elled by air to Abuja for one of our shows, courtesy of NLNG. We are really grateful to the company.

“We have also been guests to the Riv-ers State Government and other reputable organisations. We were guests to the former first lady, (late) Mrs Stella Obasanjo, during the launching of Childcare Trust. We had a folklore performance at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. We were also guests to the Riv-ers State government during the 2000 Inde-pendence Day anniversary in Port Harcourt.

“The governor was so impressed with our performance that he donated an 18-seater bus to ease our transportation problems.

“Of course, through NLNG, we got to know Dr. Gaius Obaseki, former Group Managing Director of NNPC, who invited us to a requiem concert as part of obsequies for Dr. Aret Adams, a former group manag-ing director of NNPC.

“We were also guests to the Aman-yanabo of Bonny during the burial of his father. We have had so many interesting performances! We were guests at the birth-day of (former) Governor Donald Duke. His wife, Onari is our grand patron. There are just too many to remember.

facing the musicFor those who might doubt the impact

of the orchestra that lives, both literally and figuratively, in the hotbed of youth

feature

below: royal male choir members dance to the stage at a performance

20 HOST

Nine youths formed the Royal Male Choir. They are: E. Iyalla, Barasua Igoniwari Brown, Onis Warmann, Tonia Anabrama, Godswill Green, Tekeena Senibor, Finibor Georgewill and Bricks Ibubeya

Iyalla, in whose sitting room, the choir sang its first note recalls its early beginnings.

“When I completed my secondary education in Stella Maris College, Port Harcourt, I started teaching music in the school. That was around 1993. At that time, Shell was organising a choral competition for secondary schools in Port Harcourt. I saw musical talents in me because I was really doing well in my youth choir, which I joined since 1984. I have been a good soloist, and this made me win the admiration of fellow youths. So, when this competition started, I invited seven other youths to my house and we started this choir.

“We started in my living room and moved to Township Primary School when the landlord felt our practice was disturbing him. We later moved to Stella Maris College, before St Cyprain’s Church offered us its hall.

“I see music as a way of redirecting the minds of the youths to positive ide-als. Through this, they will not have time to engage in vices, which are preva-lent now. We also aim at using music to convert many souls to God. Also, one of our goals is to foster love and brotherliness as well as assist members solve their financial and other problems.

“We are grateful to some organisations that have given us one form of assistance or the other. We are grateful to NLNG, particularly Siene Allwell-Brown. NLNG has awarded scholarship to some of our members who are either currently in tertiary institution or have graduated.

“Like I said, our target is to engage the mind of the youths so that they will not just be entertained by the music but redirect their minds to positive ide-als. Our strategy is to catch them young, position their minds towards good ideas and keep nurturing them against anti-social behaviours.

“We have recorded reasonable successes in some areas including Otuedo, the hometown of the Chief Judge of Bayelsa State.

“You know that Bayelsa is notorious for this restiveness, but after our con-cert there, things have never been the same again. Many of these youths were really excited and we recorded more followership. Many of those boys are in our band and for some, we send a music director to them regularly to guide them in their practice.

“We also have similar arrangement in Bonny. The king is interested and one of us will settle in Bonny to train the boys. In fact, we have designed a programme on how to carry the music crusade to all parts of the Niger Delta. We scheduled to go to Warri on the heat of the recent crisis, but we were ad-vised against it. The relationship with the King of Bonny resulted in the launch of the Perekule Royal Ensemble.

“We do not just go and perform and leave the community the same day. No! We spend days whenever we go to any new place, learning the people’s dialect, recomposing our songs and redesigning our concert to suit the peo-ple’s need. That is why we usually carry them along.

“However, we do not really have money to execute most of these pro-grammes, so I hope the government and even the oil companies will assist us because what we are doing is very good for the government.

boys club“We are no fewer than 200 because many who left to further their studies

are still our members. We currently have around 72 active members. It remains their overarching objective to engage over 1000 youths across the region in choral performances. However, they are constrained by finance. So long as you are a male of seven years and above, you are qualified to be a member. There is no other restriction.

“We recruit only men, because the moment women are allowed into it, so many problems will set in which may tear the choir apart. Besides, the practice is too rigorous for women. So, interested women can only be honorary members.

“Singing is a matter of age. We get youths below 10 that have not got to puberty stage to sing the part of women, while the mature ones sing tenor and bass. In fact, we discovered that young boys from Finima and Otuedo are en-dowed with female voices, so we use them.

As part of the programme for its 10th anniversary, RMC proposed a hall of fame, to be dedicated to music maestros. That dream, like some others, was deferred till September 2008 when it was launched with fanfare. Attendance at the ceremony was overwhelming. The level of support was also quite positive. Sadly, only less than 10 per cent of the monetary pledges was redeemed.

“We started as a solo choir and soon expanded to classical, trio, quartet, and instrumentals and opera performance. We began with providing solo performance to homes, widows, prison inmates and destitute homes. Soon, people began to invite us to functions like marriage and funeral ceremonies, chieftiancy titles, house opening ceremonies, etc.

“Currently, a choral performance takes at least N10, 000, depending on your status. English opera performance takes N400, 000, while African opera takes at least N760, 000. Individuals do not invite us to African opera because they cannot afford it.

“We are still not generating enough money for our needs, but the little we get goes into financial assistance for our members. Our major preoccupation is to assist our members with their education. We usually buy GCE, NECO or JAMB forms for them.”

regretsIt has been 16 happy years for the choir, despite some major setbacks,

chief of which was the loss of a 26-year-old member, Sunny Nnamdi Dike, who died in a boat mishap on his way to Port Harcourt after attending a burial in Nembe.

Sharply poetic and unsettlingly direct, the choir’s lyrics are written with the objectives of obliterating ignorance and healing, rarely veering from their favourite themes of peace, justice, love and praise. With the release of their album, RMC continues to detail, in song, the history of the Rivers people, the deep wounds to its resources, and especially to its native people. Its melodies bear traces of ancient roots; combined with the trademark waist wriggles of riverine people.

RMC has been asking the big questions for nearly over 16 years, ”how can we have enduring peace” and “when shall we make peace making as profit-able and as honourable as war mongering?”

marvellous things grow from one sitting room

restiveness in the Niger Delta, the accom-plishments of this choir serves as a forceful reminder of the soothing effects of inspired and well-balanced singing, on a deprived people.

Fostering young people’s enjoyment of music is one of the orchestra’s important contributions to the region. But its most im-portant, urgent, assignment is turning the youths away from violence.

“The key difference between us and other choirs is that while others sing only classical, we sing other types of music and engage in opera musical performance. We are made of talented youths that are engaged in promot-ing and projecting African culture.

“Most importantly, we are engaged in evangelical work aimed at saving the Niger Delta area from the problem of restiveness and its attendant problems.

“We use godly men to appeal to the

youths. In each of our performances, we normally have a dramatic group that per-forms and the performance is usually meant to drive home a point. So, we make our point through this means. We are actually steering a middle course. We agree that the youths are not well treated, but they will make things worse by resorting to violence.

“Before oil, people were surviving, so there shouldn’t be this violence. At the same time we are calling on the oil companies and the government to assist in provision of infrastructure like road, water, education, electricity, healthcare and the likes. So, we are not like other groups that sing and go; we engage in fasting, prayers, bible teach-ings and the likes that can win the heart of these youths For peace, and progress in the region, and Nigeria at large,” he says.

Perhaps, one day, too, that elusive Hall of Fame will become a reality.

feature

21HOST

Set on the outskirts of Bonny Town, on the Akiama-Oguede road, the Bonny Vocational Center (BVC) strikes a bland and rather unremarkable pose against its background. Yet inside those jaded walls, like a well-trained cast performing a masterpiece script, the staff and students play out their roles with a professionalism that betrays this first impression. Nigeria’s only accredited City and Guilds Training centre, the BVC does not seem like much at first, yet beyond the simplicity of what now has become an enigma to the community, the centre is slowly turning into the proverbial stone the builders rejected and could well and truly prove to be a cornerstone of the community’s progress in the future. The Host Magazine caught up with a number of staff and students to find out more about the centre once tagged ‘the baby of hope’ for the development of ‘modern practical technology’ in the Bonny Kingdom.

22 HOST

by daniel emeka daniel

Standing at about four metres high and two metres wide in the Nigeria LNG (NLNG) main-tenance workshop, the Umaro metal resurfacer is an imposing workshop tool by any standard. It is used for the final stages in the fabrication of valves at NLNG’s plant on Bonny Island. These valves are so large you could fit a full grown man

inside one of them. They control the flow of the liquefied gas as it passes through the different stages of production in what is an incredible number of pipes and chambers in the LNG plant. LNG is maintained at -161°C, very cold when you con-sider that the average temperature at Antarctica is only -50°C. Because metals contract when cooled it is important that the valves are built with precision, the margin of error is about

1/1000th of an inch. It takes a trained technician, highly skilled and dedicated

to a world-class work ethic, to create such critical components. These instruments are vital to the successful operation of the LNG plant in Bonny and the safety of all the operators work-ing at the plant. And as the company prepares for its last ex-pansion phase after which it looks to the next 30-50 or so years of operations and maintenance it will require an army of well-trained and dedicated technicians and artisans to carry out these tasks. Considering the planned life-span of an average LNG plant, it is safe to expect that at least three or four gen-erations of such men and women would have passed through the plant, their numbers increasing as the plant ages, requiring more and more maintenance. So where does the company go looking for these people? Enter Justine Fombo and Obieboma Pepple, two young male welding and fabrication students

hope’‘baby of

ontwo feet

23HOST

from the Bonny Vocational Centre (BVC). NLNG is already looking to men and women like them to meet its present and future needs.

As soon as you meet them, you can tell there is something very different about these two young men. Both subdued, both careful in their dealings with people, it is immediately obvious that there is much to be emulated in these young men. They dart around the NLNG workshop with a quiet sense of objective, carrying a lot of self-dignity about their work as if to say “what next, what next?” Similarities not-withstanding, their individual personali-ties shine through quite differently when you eventually get to meet them. Pepple, 29, seems to approach the world with quiet content and yet behind all of that you can detect a huge sense of optimism and hope for better things to come. Fo-mbo, also 29, has eyes that seem to regard all with suspicion, questioning everything, revealing little, yet his stance indicates

his openness to direction, waiting for the next task to attack with everything he has. These young men, and others like them, could one day take over from some of the expatriates who operate a lot of the delicate tools (like the frightening Umaro resurfacer) in the workshop. They came to NLNG as part of an internship arrange-ment with the Bonny Vocational Centre (BVC) and are currently completing their City and Guilds diploma (Level II) in Welding and Fabrication. A measure of how valuable these men are to the industry is seen in the fact that even though they are still studying with the BVC, they are now employees of Baker OTS, an engineer-ing contractor for Nigeria LNG, at the workshop.

I heard about (BVC) and immediately said ‘I will join,’” says Pepple. ”The first opportunity came and I missed it because I was working with a construction company. I was still keen and so when I heard about it again at a house meeting I put myself forward. I travelled to Port Harcourt and returned so I missed the exams. I eventu-ally got a chance to write it and had the best results from my house. Among the four that went from my compound I was the only one who made it in… I said to God be the glory.” His is a sweet tale of triumph against all odds and gratitude for every opening and every opportunity he has been given to move closer to his dream of becoming a mechanical engineer. He continues: “Along the line it came up that they needed six machinists, so I indicated my interest. Even when my instructor was calling the names, I was the last person to

be called. I had already lost hope by the time the fifth person was called, so I was grateful to God. Eventually they decided to take two only. We all wondered who the two lucky persons would be. As God would have it they called me and Justin. After about six months (with them) we were hired as staff of Baker OTS. I was very happy because it signified something good if after my six months at Baker OTS I was eventually made a staff, both I and Justin.”

Pepple shows no sign of a flagging mo-rale as he continues to add to the building blocks of this grass to grace story. His jour-ney began when as a construction worker he was taken-on to construct what would eventually become the first building of the Bonny Vocation Centre. “I had no job and had written JAMB without much success, so I had to obtain menial jobs to sustain myself. If there was a job, maybe a con-struction job, I would seek employment and work. So an opportunity cropped up at the BVC construction site. They were looking for steel fixers. Although I wasn’t one, I managed to gain employment as one. Back then in the BVC they were handling the drainage and the roads and all the cast concrete. During our lunch breaks, a staff at the venue would tell us how well-equipped the school was. It ex-cited me much and I said ‘no I’m going to be a part of this’.” His determination paid off and if you hear him talk about the future you realise he obviously is not done yet. “I hope to look for something higher, which is everyman’s dream. If there’s room for growth here then I’ll stay on, if not I’ll be looking for something more. I know I

above: students at catering classes

24 HOST

need to do one or two things to enhance my knowledge and skills e.g. writing exams or getting into a part-time mechanical engineering course.” And as for how his future is looking so far, “I think it’s bright. I’m hopeful, with God.”

Fombo seems to be doing quite well on the job too. His supervisors at the BVC are optimistic about this meticulous and highly intelligent young man. When asked for his story, he says “I worked with a ship-ping company, doing logistics services, clearing and forwarding. I was there for about three years and I went from clerk to secretary. I prefer this new line because there’s a career to pursue. Secretarial (work) is something that’s easy to do. I value this one more.” Fombo comes across as a person who is never shy of a challenge, so we tried to find out if he had found any of this responsibility too daunting. “We’ve learnt a lot. We’ve seen various machines that we wouldn’t have seen at BVC, other staff have been very encouraging and they’ve shown us many things… what’s there to be afraid of? Fear is not part of me; I keep fear aside in everything I do. You just have to be cautious and all that matters is interest.” Working for less than he earned as a secretary he believes it is because he is not fully regarded as a com-plete machinist but expresses equal hope for the future, saying assuredly, “we’ll get there someday.”

the guiding handsBVC was set up in 2005 to train young

men and women to fill up that middle belt of skills which seems to have become non-existent (or at best only crudely practised) in Nigeria today. BVC is now an accredited City and Guilds Centre and is in fact the only vocational training centre open to the public in Nigeria that deals directly with City and Guilds of London. Starting with an initial staff strength of four (three Filipino technical trainers and a British technical coordinator), the centre now has a total of 30 academic and support staff. Student numbers have gone from a modest 47 in 2006 to 230 in 2009 and cur-rent projections for 2010 put the student population at 300. A hardened English man, Harvey Smith, BVC’s technical co-ordinator, is responsible for putting it all together. There from the very beginning Smith tells of how he and his three Fili-pino colleagues fitted-out the workshops with their own hands; doing everything from mortar-work to wood and metal work and all the wiring and finishing. It is a story of blood and guts, hard work and sheer audacity. It is also a story of hope. These men have since set their energies to the task of passing these same skills on to new staff and students of the centre so that they can one day hand over the opera-tions of the centre, leaving it as a legacy to the men and women of Bonny Island and indeed the nation as a whole.

Hearing Smith speak, it is impossible to avoid the passion and emotion he has for what he considers his life’s work and perhaps his final curtain-call. At 62, it is no wonder why, but you could not tell his

age by the sheer amount of energy and work he puts into each day. A typical day for him involves quite a number of trips around the island and he seems to con-stantly be moving in and out of an incred-ible number of meetings. He constantly walks at a half-trot, even at 8pm in the evening; his sense of urgency is palpable. He believes that there could not have been a better time in the history of the Niger Delta, and Nigeria at large, to set up the BVC. “There’s a general consensus here,” he says “and not just here but other places too, that you have got to attain qualifica-tions of the highest level. But in doing so you then have this void in Nigeria of this middle band skill level: welders, plumb-ers, electricians, etc. they are not there! You look at any plumbing work and it’s a disaster. When we first had the centre built, we had nothing but problems; we still have problems because the plumbing is so poor.” It’s no surprise why he feels this way. Even the ancients considered it criminal for a workman to deliver services poorly. In the Babylonian empire, King Hammurabi’s code of laws dictated that “if a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death…if a shipbuilder builds a boat for someone, and does not make it tight, if during that same year that boat is sent

away and suffers injury, the shipbuilder shall take the boat apart and put it to-gether tight at his own expense” and so on it goes. Yet in present day Nigeria it seems that the idea of being an artisan and delivering services properly are immiscible realities.

Porfeiro (Junior) Milano is one of the original three Filipino instructors who “created” the BVC. He has lived an inter-esting life (as a technician and a vocational studies instructor) that has taken him from the Philippines to Angola, Brazil and Saudi Arabia before coming to Nigeria. He is one of hundreds of other Filipinos that are in obviously high demand for their technical skills around the world. When quizzed about the state of vocational education in the Philippines, he explains that vocational training is free of charge in Manila (the capital city of the Philippines) and most students would go to school twice a week to acquire the practical and theoretical know-how that would enable them get jobs in Asia’s booming industrial sector. These skills, coupled with a will-ingness to travel for better pay prospects, have seen the rise in the Filipino workforce outside the Philippines. In Nigeria, a good number of them work in Oil and Gas in-stallations across the Niger Delta because of the difficulty in finding well-trained Nigerian artisans to fill the industry void.

On the issue of a skilled labour force,

right: front view of

the bonny vocational

centre; below: harvey

smith’s team in 2007

25HOST

“the point is that if you’re going to run a sewage pipe, there’s a skill level to be able to run a sewage pipe properly,” says Harvey Smith “as there is for an instrument panel (at an oil or gas facility) to make sure that all the connections are done right, it’s (all) within this band of middle skill learning…. and it’s getting recognised. Like I said, you see a civil technician getting (lots of) work locally now, a mechanical technician get-ting work locally, it’s because (people now) recognise their skills. Too often, you see a welder working with no goggles, noth-ing! I can remember 2004/2005 I drove to Finima, just outside Finima was a weld-ing shop; the guy there did his welding without eye protection. So a week later I bought welding glasses, goggles, and gave them to him. Two days later he was back to his initial ways. Where were the goggles? He’d sold them. Down the line he’s going to get blind. It’s just ignorance and not having understanding.”

‘we don’t play around here’The BVC seems to be successful at

imparting these skills, as evidenced by its increasing appeal in the community. In 2009, it was swamped with applications for positions at almost a 10:1 ratio of ap-plicants to positions available. And it is not just the skills that get passed on; the BVC is working hard to inculcate a profes-sional and dedicated work ethic amongst the students at the centre. “They’ve come here to learn,” Smith says, “and you set that standard. And once you set that standard, kids will accept it because they’re starting to realise the value. If they’re more than 15 minutes late to class the door is shut. Absenteeism equals poor perform-ance, attendance equals better perform-ance and it’s the same the world over… I’ve tried to impress upon them about standards. It is so essential. Not just (work) standards, but standards also in life, how you conduct yourself, again it’s the same. And it’s also about having integrity, when you do something, always try to do it to the best of your ability. If you can’t, don’t bother. Don’t do it half-heartedly, do the best you can. And so I push the students and I push the staff. I feel I’ve got to the stage now where you have these new staff come along and the old staff ethos has rubbed off on them (and they pass it on) so there’s this feeling about the centre now that this is about business, this is seri-ous, we’re very serious here, we don’t play around. It’s important to ensure they have the right mindset, and out of that mindset will come the skill, from the skill will come the money to support themselves. One fol-

lows the other.”If ever there was a clear example of

Smith’s little dictum, then Kenneth Wilcox is it. Impeccably dressed very con-scientious, time conscious and punctual to a fault, Wilcox epitomises “the right mindset.” Currently completing his di-ploma (Level II) in Electrical Installations, this 26-year-old indigene of Bonny Island, from the Peterside community had a good feeling about the centre when he heard about it and was one of the centre’s first intakes. “I was trying to get admission to read electrical or petroleum engineering at UST (Rivers State University of Science and Technology),” he pipes with his ever-present smile, “on the other hand I got this information about BVC. At the same period I had admission to a school but I had to leave that of the school because my parents believed there was something promising in this… a lot of people warned me about it that I should go to university and that this was just the normal thing that Bonny would put up and it would vanish eventually. But I looked at it differ-ently. Even in the hall during the entrance exams, others threatened to leave the hall etc. If they knew then what they know now, they would have acted differently, now they are asking when the next en-trance exam is.” And rightly so.

After completing a six- month in-ternship with Baker OTS, as part of his practical experience at the BVC, Wilcox was offered a job with the company as a handyman attached to an electrical techni-cian. His job then was to assist the techni-cian with maintenance tasks around the

top: metal fabrication students; above: student using a lathe

26 HOST

NLNG Residential Area. Since then his performance on the job has impressed his employers and he has been promoted to electrical technician. He smiles shyly when asked about his remuneration. He is smil-ing to the bank for sure as his promotion has meant a 60 per cent pay raise for him. Wilcox exudes a tangible excitement at the possibilities that have been opened up to him because of his training at the BVC. “I’m enjoying working but combining the work and school together is very taxing for me,” he says. “Those days I’m not in school I try to keep up with the company’s policies and meet their standards; I try to solve their problems.” He has nothing but glowing praises for BVC and he is quick to point out that his training is far from over. “I had to learn a lot,” Kenneth continues “I learnt a lot from BVC. Also sometimes here when I have a few problems, I call my instructors and tell them the prob-lem, I draw diagrams and we look at the problems. They tell me what they think and when I come back and implement it people are surprised because these seemed like tough problems to solve before.” And to think that just after secondary school, Wilcox felt like his journey was off to a sputtering start because he did not pass all his WASSCE papers at the first sitting and had to re-sit some exams. The son of an electrical technician, he had always shown a keen interest in his father’s craft from a very early age. His early exposure to the trade has filled him with such confidence that he proudly boasts that he is “not afraid of anything electrical.” The BVC seems to have helped Wilcox find his voice and set him on a clearer path to a success-ful future.

skills payNot all BVC students are heading to-

wards paid employment. Hear Smith talk about the options available at BVC and you would be forgiven for believing one could do just about anything with a City and Guilds advanced diploma from BVC. “Perhaps after the advanced diploma,” he says “any student that’s thinking of completing his studies, we’re in touch with UME and Rivers State educational bodies to get the accreditation of five credits for an Advanced Diploma from the Bonny Vo-cational Centre. That way they can move into any University without having to sit for any exams.” Harvey continues: “Then there’s the other aspect of becoming an entrepreneur. Everybody in Bonny likes to be an entrepreneur. So if those trainees, say somebody is being trained as a welder, got the skill, we then give a pad-on about business skills to teach them about busi-ness, understanding money, to think about inflation and so on… I’ll give you an example. Now we’ve got our diploma students; some have already started their own businesses in Bonny, doing house re-wiring. They’re doing it now. I know a couple of people that are building their houses and they’re waiting for them to fin-ish one job for them to come and do their job because they know how good they are. There are people who’ve been through Lev-

els 1 and 2 and have been able to work on the shutdowns at the plant and the super-visors on the plant can ring them up and say ‘we need you’ because of their skills.” For non-technical courses, the centre also runs courses in catering and hospitality and business administration in addition to the courses in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering-related vocations. It plans to expand its course offering as soon as the expansion project is completed. Says Smith, “We can also do more courses like hair dressing, tailoring and the like. I’ve tried to ensure that all the courses we put on, they can do something with hereafter to sustain themselves. When you think of the economic climate that Nigeria is in, you’ve got to give people skills so that thereafter they can sustain themselves. That is crucial. So with a bigger centre, because we’re close to the river I want to do marine engineering and I want to do bikes. So if you think about it, somebody doing marine can always get a job. It’s a matter of thinking of all the different courses we can put up that makes the entire cottage industry of not just Bonny but Nigeria.”

One student with entrepreneurism firmly on her mind is Loretta Jumbo. At 31, Jumbo is obviously in a class of her own amongst the giggly, ‘bright eyed and pony-tailed’ girls in the Food and Culinary Arts course. A wife and mother, she spent the early years of her marriage in Benue State and has only recently moved down to Bonny in search of greener pastures for her family. She applied to join the BVC after trying unsuccessfully to get a job and recalls with gratitude that she was already considering moving to Port Harcourt to attend a catering college when she found out about the BVC and heard she did not need to pay fees or purchase learning ma-terials. Jumbo’s course group has just con-cluded their Level I Certificate exams and she is hopeful about continuing with the course. When asked about her plans for

the future, she says “during the entrance exam I was asked to write an essay on why I want to be here. I said ‘why? For self-employment! I want to be skilled! If you don’t want to be skilled, there’s no point coming here. I can just decide to look for any job to do.” She goes on to add: “It has improved my life, though I’m not known yet, by the time I finish from here I will be somewhere because I’ve learnt a lot and I’m willing to learn more. My coming here has made me realise many of my practices that were wrong. Initially I knew nothing about baking, today I can bake. I can cook some continental dishes. It has improved my life.” She also shared some of her entrepreneurial experiences and dreams with us. “Now when we’re not in school,” she added, “I go out to join with people to look for menial jobs. For example if there’s an occasion I cook with them, like yesterday in my church there was harvest, I prepared things for it. In five years time if I’m not working for any institution I should be on my own. I can have a shop somewhere, print cards and distribute to people. I should get a few customers that way.” As for the BVC she does not seem to have got over her excitement at being here. “The centre has been good enough to

below: students at the library;

bottom: students

eating in the canteen

27HOST

provide us with free education,” she re-peats over and over again, “the teachers are available, it’s now for us to make the best of it. Even at the end of everything they give us transport money. I have to show that I appreciate those paying the fees. My appreciation shows in my performance.” Jumbo’s outlook and determination are inspirational.

From course to course, the centre just seems to be brimming with inspir-ing students who have equally inspiring stories to tell and another one of such is Felix Ezekiel-Hart. Plain-looking unas-suming Felix seems at first to have few distinguishing features. He is a Level 1 Metal Fabrication student and one of the top performers in his set. One not-immediately-obvious fact that makes him very different from his peers is that he is a graduate of Mechanical Engineering from the Rivers State University of Science and Technology (popularly referred to as UST). At 26, he is becoming wary of job-hunting and is starting to get comfortable

with the idea of self-employment, which is what brought him to BVC. “I’m actu-ally here for competence, learning to do things the right way and to the best of my knowledge” he cheerfully informs Host. “If at the end of the day I have the practical experience and can set up something of my own, I would be grateful. At the same time if I’m called on for a technical job, something to keep body and soul intact, I’ll take it up as well instead of waiting for higher jobs that may not come.” Ezekiel-Hart is one of a growing number of gradu-ate applicants to the BVC. When asked what he thinks about having students like him at the centre, Smith explains that in some ways it could be a good thing: “I think it’s a very good thing., “If you think about it, first of all he or she has got to be motivated to decide that even though they have graduated they are making an edu-cational step backwards to come here… because this is about skill.”

‘Just good, good, good, good…’Smith adds quickly that although the

BVC is a good place for students to come in and gain a good footing when it comes to technical, business administration or culinary skills it is always best if they can give students some industry experience to crown it. His team is constantly on the look-out for good quality opportuni-ties for this to happen. “I see them going places,” says Mercy Ugochukwu about the students. She is BVC’s Exams and Records administrator “This place is about the number one for middle skill level people” she continues. “We’re sound theoretically and technically. An external verifier from City and Guilds comes in to audit us on a regular basis and we’ve had no complaints, just ‘good, good, good, good, good.’ Also everywhere they’ve gone for internships the companies have always been very hap-

py with them.”With such generous accolades, what

else is left for the BVC to aspire to? It almost sounds like they have been able to do the impossible, and achieve the unthinkable. The team does not seem to think so though, or at least not yet. “What we plan to do with the expan-sion,” explains Smith, “what we have now, which I think many other educational systems should have, is a very high turn-down rate at our entrance exams. There’s quite a bit of drop-out in the last year of secondary school so people don’t achieve a good basic educational standard. If you set the entrance requirements too low, nobody will pass the exit requirements (when they get in the programme) they might get midway, just, but can’t get much further. That’s about it. We’ve got some very, very bright students in here. And with our success, we’re no longer seen as low level, what’s being seen is the skill level. So when we first started out we had 97 applicants. This time around we had over 500 applicants (in 2009) and we only had 65 places. We had no fewer than 140 for our business administration course yet all we had were 15 places. We couldn’t take them. When we’re done expanding we should be able to fit a thou-sand students per level each year. What we’ve been unable to do is deal with the fact that those with a low level of learn-ing can’t get through the entrance test. We aim to set up classes to improve their standards of Maths, English, the basics. Once they meet the set standard they can then transfer to the mainstream and learn a skill.”

Bringing the City and Guilds accredita-tion back to Nigeria is definitely one of the BVCs epochal achievements. The teem-ing youth population on Bonny Island is beginning to reap the fruits of this move. Keeping-up with accreditation require-ments, and helping as many capable young men and women get skilled-up and out into the workforce ready to deliver the best standard of services, are going to be their major challenges going forward. The BVC is currently working on a number of ideas to ensure the sustainability of the centre. That too, if or when achieved, is also one of the major challenges the centre will face over the next few years. Setting up and sustaining a training centre that can house about a thousand young people from Riv-ers States and its environs, in perpetuity, sounds highly ambitious, but going by their set precedent it would not be much of a surprise to see them exceed these targets. As for Smith, surprise surprise, he does see an end in sight to his work. “I’m working to the point where we have this place fully built,” he says “and companies start ringing the BVC asking ‘can we have five welders when they’re done, can we have this, can we have that, can we send over a team for you to train?’ When I’ve reached that, my job is done, and I’ll go home.” He’ll be sorely missed by a very happy and more fulfilled community when that time comes. For now though, he has their best wishes.

feature

from top: loretta

Jumbo in interview with dan

daniel; porfeiro

milano

28 HOST

personality

at home with

eze ekpeye

You begin to get a feeling of his royal majestic presence from two streets away, about 500 metres to the gate of his palace. A long stretch of cars, of all makes and shades, line up on

either side of the road. That, indeed, is how to know that His Royal Majesty Robinson O Robinson, the Eze Ekpeye Logbo II of Ekpeye Land, is at his home in GRA, Port Harcourt.

If you did not book an appointment to see the monarch, you would have to contend with the sheer number of folk, from all walks of life, as they say, waiting to have audience with this retired flight lieutenant of the Nigeria Air Force. Fortunately, we did; so being ushered before the HRM was not, er, a battle. As you enter the large sitting room where Eze receives guests, you will

be struck by the huge pictures on display; of the President, the Governor of Rivers State, the Oba of Benin and the Eze and his wife. The room is quite comfortable and the Eze makes it more comfortable with his friendly charge to you to tell his aides your preference for drinks – even before you have stated your mission. Now, this is royal treatment.

Behind His Majesty’s stool is a large portrait of a King in bright red royal regalia, with coral beads adorning his neck? That must be the Oba of Benin, you think. . Then a closer look shows that it is your host. What is he doing in a Benin regalia? Just relax, and you would find the answer and more in this exciting “brief chat” Yemi Adeyemi had with Eze Ekpeye Logbo II of Ekpeye Land, HRM Chief (Flt Lt) Robinson O Robinson CON (JP).

29HOST

Your Majesty, could you please tell us about your early life and why you chose to go into the military.

As a young man then in school, I used to read about soldiers and watch wherever I see them. I used to admire their uniforms, the smart way they march and generally the way they car-ried themselves. That was where the interest developed. By the time I was done with primary school, I had made up my mind to join the Boys Company, what is now called the Military School. The school is ex-pected to take boys through the second-ary education and also prepare them for military life. I met the District Officer (D.O) and was sent with other boys to Enugu to write the entrance test. The test was done regionally then. I took it and passed but, unfortunately, was dropped at the inter-views. So I had to stay behind but because of my performance in the test, the administrators who were white then, said they did not want to miss out on a bright chap like me and asked me to wait. I was then taken to Zaria to join the regular Army but I was too small then to undergo the rigours of the military training. So, what they resorted to doing was that when they finished training in the field, they would come back to the barracks to train me alone. That was how it went till we concluded the training and to their credit, I passed very well in both the written examina-tions and the practical. In fact, I performed brilliantly in the shooting aspect. So I started my military career in 1956. Then at some point, the deci-sion was taken for Nigerians to take over the Air Force from the Germans who were running it then. So in 1965, I was transferred to the Nigerian Air Force with some other Army Officers.Sir, how was life in the military?

Well, life was very interesting in the military. One had to put in everything because it calls for strict discipline. So, you just had to put your entire mind into it. Obey orders. Be hard-working and ready to learn. To those of us who spent our youthful life in the military, we will tell you that it is the best place to start life as it equips you with the tools to excel in anything you do.How long did you spend in the military?

I joined the army in 1956, spent nine years, and then the rest of my career life in the air force. In fact, I was

still serving when my people called me to come and serve them as Eze. This was in 1979. So I spent 14 years in the air force. That makes about 23 years of military life. This year marks my 30th year on the throne.How has the rigid discipline and value instilled in you whilst in the military im-pacted on your dealings with people now as a traditional ruler?

Maybe I am speaking as a retired military of-

ficer. But I share the view that the military is probably the best place to start life. This is because the military equips you with all that you need to survive in any situation. The training is wide and versatile. This ensures that as a military officer, you have an under-standing of all aspects of life and can hold your own in any discussion of any subject. We don’t pray for coups any more, but that was why whenever the army took over government, they didn’t go for any training on how to run the affairs of the country. They just start administering all the sectors. This is because of the fact that the army is very thorough and has experts in various fields. Though when they came in, they were expected to be a corrective regime but they lost that as they became more corrupt than even the civilians that they were expected to correct.So after the military, how has life been as a traditional ruler?

Very challenging but interesting. At

the beginning, I had it rough because as an officer in the military, I was used to giving orders and having them obeyed without questioning. But as a tradi-tional ruler, I had to learn to employ persuasion more. You have to talk to people; you have to persuade them to do what needs to be done. The truth is that it is not always easy. Sometime you have modernity conflicting with tradi-tion. You also might have the task of getting people who are older than you are, perhaps as old as your grandfather, to do things that you consider best for the community. I assure you that it is not easy but we are getting better at it.Does this imply that a traditional ruler should also be a good politician by possess-ing political skills?

Not really. The political skills re-quired for the traditional setting and that of our so-called politicians are not the same. The difference is in the tradi-tional setting, you are frank in talking to people unlike most of our politi-cians who speak from both sides of the mouth. They spice what they say with falsehood in order to get what they want and what they do at the end of the day is usually different from what they said at the beginning. In the tra-ditional setting, you tell people what you know is right and you will do, what is best for your people.As a young man, you were aware of your royal background and possible ascension to the throne. Didn’t that discourage you from stressing your self, trying to pursue a career and all?

No, not at all! In Ekpeyeland, the throne is not hereditary. It is somewhat similar to the Yoruba system. It does not pass from father to son. What happens is that when there is vacancy, as a result of the demise of a King, the ruling houses are informed

and asked to present candidates that will vie for the throne. So any member of the royal family can become the rul-er. I was not even thinking of becoming a traditional ruler. But my people asked me to step into that responsibility and as a believer in tradition, I dared not refuse. In fact, I was serving then in Jos as the ADC to the Governor of Plateau State at that time, Dan Suleiman. That was in the mid seventies.Your Majesty, there is this growing con-cern that societal values are being eroded and standards are dropping as young people no longer accord elders respect as it used to be. How do you react to this?

That is quite true. Social values are dying. These days, under the guise of religion, youngsters have come to disrespect the traditional institution and system. Everybody is talking of Christianity; you find that a bishop is more respected than a traditional ruler; reverends are more respected than the elders. The language is also dying as you find out that most of these young

personality

“In Ekpeye-land, when there is va-cancy, as a result of the demise of a King, the ruling houses are informed and asked to present can-didates that will vie for the throne.”

30 HOST

people can’t even speak their mother tongue. This is considered as being so-phisticated. Recently we had a seminar in Ekpeye language and discovered that most of our people don’t speak the lan-guage well. By the time they utter two sentences, they start to infuse it with English. The danger is that when a peo-ple lose their language, they lose their culture.Are there any efforts to reverse this trend?

Yes. We are doing what we can. We are encouraging parents to speak their mother tongues to their children espe-cially in the home. You find a situation where an Ekpeye man from Ahoada who lives in Port Harcourt – that’s just a few kilometres away by the way - has children who can’t speak the language. The small ethnic groups are mostly guilty of this. The Yorubas, Igbos and Hausas are not really suffering from this. I see it as complex. Maybe they are ashamed. Otherwise, why won’t you speak your language to your children? They can learn English at school but should grow with their mother tongue at home. So we are taking steps to deal with this. Recently, I set up a commit-tee to address the language problem. This committee has now produced the Ekpeye Alphabet. This will enable writers to write books and produce other educational materials in Ekpeye language. We have also keyed into the Rivers State Government’s directive that for the first three years of educa-tion, the native language of the area will be the language of instruction for all schools. It was passed when Hon. Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi was Speaker. Is this project getting necessary sup-port, especially from the council of tra-ditional rulers?

Yes. Everybody is disturbed. This erosion of traditional value is a great concern of all traditional rulers and this is why we are all giving neces-sary support to the project. I think the situation will improve very soon.What is the appropriate traditional dressing for an Ekpeye man?

Our traditional dress is Ijere or what is known as george. So you tie a george and put on a shirt, mostly etibo, long sleeve on top. That is our traditional dress.So when the Eze Ekpeye is not in his royal robes, what would he feel comfort-able in?

I put on woko or etibo with a trouser, when I am not in my regalia. I have two regalia. The Ekpeye people migrated from Benin so you find that sometimes, our traditional dress particularly for certain occasions is tailored to that of Benin. So you can find me tying a big wrapper or donning a skirt and putting a blouse on it, when I have a traditional function to perform. I also use beads as adornment. Our Ancestor, Akalaka

migrated from the Benin Kingdom in the 15th century. As I explained earlier, Ekpeye was his first son. In short, we are Benin people in Diaspora. So if you look at some of the pictures in the pal-ace, you would think that it’s the Oba of Benin. We are very close to him; we came from there and still maintain that connection. In the whole of Rivers, what is unique and special about the Ekpeye people?

Our way of life is very different, our language, behaviour, music, dances, marriage system and burial system, are all very unique and distinct from other ethnic groups in Rivers State. Except the Ogbas and the Ikwerres. That is un-derstandable because we came from the same source. The three of them were the sons of Akalaka. Ikwerre had the same father and mother with Ekpeye, they called him ‘iwuoha’, Ogba has the same father but different mother. So

they were all brothers. Which is

why the Ikwerres and the Ogbas are the only people whose customs are similar to the Ekp-eyes.What is the biggest festival in Ekpeye-land?

There is an annual festival called the ‘Ogwu Ekpeye’ which signifies the coming of age of girls in Ekpeyeland. During this festival, girls dress in very attractive manner and dance from one village to the other, so that young men can see them and take decisions on

whom their prospective brides would be. Note that only the choice is made, you don’t discuss marriage during the festival. Questions can be asked about the girl’s family, enquiries can be made about her village and all other perti-nent information to aid choosing. It is after the festival that the family of the boy will approach that of the girl to seek her hand in marriage. This is why we always have so many marriages after the festival.When does the festival take place?

It has no specific date. It depends on the oracle but is usually falls within September and early October. So once we consult the oracle, we get a date for it.Are there any notable wars, adventures or incidents in the history of the Ekpeye people where valour was displayed?

Yes. We fought wars with the Isoko. We also fought wars with the British when they first came. Ekpeye has two rivers that serve as its borders. River

Orashi at one end on the western side while River Sombriero on the eastern side. All the Ek-peye villages are located in the middle of these two rivers. So when the colonial people came in, they came in on water. Our people were afraid of them because they came in and started to condemn everything that we held sacred in our tradition. Our people resisted and as a result of this, our people had to fight them. There are still some historic sites and monuments where some white people were killed during such wars.

What vocations are the Ekpeye people known for?

They were mainly farm-ers and fishermen and until recently, the traditional religion was predominantly in our areas. But Christian-ity has now come and eve-ryone has been swept to the church.Kindly describe your childhood to us?

I grew up like any other local village boy. I was not

spoon-fed at all. I started life at the village school before proceeding to another village to continue my educa-tion. I was serving some of my uncles who were teachers as their boy and eventually ended up at Pupils Teachers College (PTC) where I spent one year before going into the army.If you had not gone into the army, which other vocation would you have pursued?

God destined that I would join the army. I am of the opinion that you

personality

“Our lan-guage, be-haviour, mu-sic, dances, are all very unique and distinct from other eth-nic groups in Rivers State.”

31HOST

do not choose your calling. It is what God wants you to be that you become. I don’t have command of myself. So I have not really thought of any other thing that I would have done if I had not gone into the army.On ascension to the throne, were there any goals that you set for yourself that you must achieve?

Before I became the Eze Ekpeye Logbo, Ekpeye as a tribe was not well-known. You had to say that you were from Ahoada which is just one of the towns in Ekpeye. So when I ascended the throne, I worked very hard to lift the tribe so that it will be known. I was the first chairman of the council of traditional rulers in 1982. There were other popular traditional rul-ers but because of my efforts towards improv-ing the conditions of my people, I was asked to lead the council.

My main reason for accepting to serve as tradi-tional ruler was to work for the progress of my people. And I am happy that to-day, we have our sons and daughters who are direc-tors in both the federal and state civil service. We have those who are doing well in business in various locations both within the country and outside. Also, anywhere in this country today, once you say that you are from Ekpeye they will ask you if you know the Eze Ekpeye Logbo. That shows that we are no longer one unknown minority ethnic group in Rivers State.Are there any sports that you engage in?

Whilst in the military, I played squash and also tried my hands at boxing and wrestling, which I enjoyed greatly. I also did high jump and pole vault. But when you get to a certain age, you start to take things slowly. I will be 70 next year so, I don’t engage in such strenuous sports any more. All I do now is walk.How do you relax?

I read books and newspapers. I do some writings whenever I have any-thing to write.What kind of food do you like?

Food is one thing that is also dictat-ed by my health. I watch what I eat be-cause I can only take those things that won’t jeopardise my health. I shouldn’t take (too much) carbohydrate, so no garri. I take amala which is made from unripe plaintain.Who is the lady behind the Eze Ekpeye Logbo?

She is a wonderful lady, one in sever-al millions of women. You can see that I am a first class traditional ruler, yet I have just one wife. She is not just a wife, she is a mother, a sister, a friend, a con-fidant; she is all and all. Her name is Fe-licia Funmilayo Robinson. Her parents gave her a Yoruba

name because she was born in Lagos. She is not Yoruba.What about children?

I don’t have plenty children. I had four children but lost one. So I have a boy and two girls.Can we know the communities that make up Ekpeye Kingdom?

They are many. Let me tell you the clans that make up Ekpeye. That will be less cumbersome. There is Ubie, the first son and it has 21 towns and villag-es. Akoh, the second son, has 14 towns and villages. Igbuduya the third son, has 25 towns and villages. Upata, the fourth son has 21 towns and villages, then Ahoada, the metropolitan town of Ekpeye which is also the headquarters of Ekpeye town as well as the Ahoada East Local Government. I have two lo-cal governments under Ekpeye, Ahoada East and Ahoada West.How has it been, being one of the pipeline communities of Nigeria LNG?

Well, recently the company carried out a number of projects at Ubeta where the company has a node junction and we commend them for this. But there is still a lot that they can do for

our communities.Are there any moments that you recall and have cause to smile?

Well in the military, I had some mo-ments. Such as when I was transferred from the army to the air force. For us leaving the army for the air force was a good thing as we were also sent to Germany for training. There also was the time that I was appointed the Aide-de-Camp to the Plateau State Governor. You know that that position is consid-ered very powerful, as you have your boss’ ears. All those moments when one is promoted to a higher rank are mo-ments of joy. Then in the traditional function, I always remember periods when Ekpeye people come together to host some of our sons and daughters that are given appointments in govern-ment or have distinguished themselves in any sphere.What advice will you like to give to youths both within your kingdom and in the society at large?

The youths should shun violence and restiveness; they should embrace our traditional culture in respecting elders. They should take interest in what happens within their commu-nities. They should see themselves from where they come from first rather than imitate all those things that they watch on television and cinema houses. The rot in the so-ciety today is fuelled by imitation of what other people do in their country. When you imitate them, you don’t understand their cul-ture and you just import foreign actions or behaviours into your own culture without a proper understanding of what such means. So youths should shun

violence and restiveness; they should embrace our traditional value systems that make a people great.How have you been able to curb youth res-tiveness in your community?

The truth is unlike other parts of the country, there is hardly any of such incidents in Ekpeye and this is because the youths in this community listen to the traditional institution. I am proud to say that the Ekpeye Youth Congress listens to me. They understand the power of dialogue and utilise it. That is why if you see Ekpeye youths causing any problem, be sure that they have ex-hausted all other options that are avail-able to them to avoid that crisis, espe-cially with the oil companies. They are therefore pushed to it. They share my view that it is always good to dialogue rather than broach trouble as dialogue will still be used to settle any trouble.What are those things that you will love to see the oil companies in your communities do for the people?

There are so many things that they can assist us with. Some of these are scholarships for our children, social infrastructures, materials and human capacity development.

interview

“I have just one wife. She is not just a wife, she is a mother, a sister, a friend a con-fidant; she is all and all. Her name is Felicia Fun-milayo Rob-inson. Her parents gave her a Yoruba name be-cause she was born in Lagos. She is not Yoruba.”

32 HOST

Isamtrade trail

by tam fiofori, GUEST WRITER

“Na wetin man dey do for mar-ket, this early morning?” a humour-tinged female voice calls out behind us. Another female voice picks up her banter and adds, “Na wa o!” They are light-heartedly curi-

ous, wondering what we are doing in their domain as early as 8.30 on an over-cast Wednesday morning. As we snake along the crowded passages between the stalls, we too are curious as we are at the famous big Creek Road Market in Port Harcourt or “Town” as the area is generally referred to, in search of genuine answers from the true stakeholders.

This is unquestionably the biggest isam depot and mar-ket in Nigeria and at our disposal are no fewer than 60 isam wholesalers as well as retailers and hundreds of buyers and consumers.

Isam or periwinkle is a small marine snail (zoological name: tympanotonus fuscatus). Also classified as a shellfish, there are two varieties of periwinkle in the Niger Delta where they abound in their multimillions in their natural habitat in the numerous brackish creeks, estuaries and mangrove swamps of the Delta. They are harvested and marketed live as they stay alive for several weeks. The periwinkle is a staple of the peo-ples of the Niger Delta and has become an acquired delicacy for many other Nigerians.

insight

33HOST

Isam, as one of the main sources of pro-teinous food, traditionally occupied a cen-tral and sacred place in the culture of the Nembe Ijaw of present-day Bayelsa State. The Nembe used to have Isam festivals and till date, Nembes are allowed to eat isam

but never to sell it. The consequences for selling isam include incurable skin diseases which eventually lead to death.

big business…and mudThe daily consumption of isam in the

Niger Delta runs into billions. The isam business is worth multimillions of naira daily; and that makes it big business. The capital of the isam trade, in terms of volume, is the stretch from the Nembe/Bonny/Bille waterside to the Creek Road Market in Port Harcourt. This is the nu-cleus of the distribution network that en-sures that Port Harcourt and its environs consume the most isam daily in Nigeria.

Okrika, Kalabari, Ijaw and Andoni women are the major wholesalers at the Creek Road Market and their retail-cus-tumers are usually Akwa Ibom and Igbo women who now sell to the consumers who buy isam at the main markets: New Layout Market Borikiri, Mile One Market, Mile Three Market, Oil Mill Market and the smaller markets including Rumuoko-ro, Rumuomasi and Rumukwrushi.

Madam Ada Allison, from Okrika, chubby-cheeked with a grey-haired low cut, is an encyclopaedic 20-year veteran of the isam trade. She sells between 100 and 200 bags of isam every market day. It’s “early morning market” as the market women say, which means it is time to im-mediately establish the business flow for the day. This is the time to start attract-ing custumers, no time for chitchat or distractions. All the same, Madam Allison graciously agrees to be interviewed while serving her numerous custumers.

She informs and shows us that there are two types of isam – the sweeter ikari isam with spikes on its shell and with big-ger, stronger flesh and the imoni isam with a smooth shell and smaller flesh. Madam Allison says: “Dem come from different place for mangrove and na ikari plenty pass. You fit use the two cook the same soup.”

Is isam perishable after it has been har-vested live?

“The one wey dey with potopoto (mud) dey last for three months,” she replies. “The potopoto dey give am food because na for inside de potopoto dem pick am come. So if e dey with potopoto, that one nahim dey give am food to stay to live long. Nahim make we no dey wash am to remove potopoto.”

Naturally, the isam trade and industry are muddy work. The palms of the isam sellers are always muddy and as they mix and measure isam daily, their fingernails are permanently impregnated with this grey-black mangrove mud. “Mud,” says Femi Kusa, journalist and natural medi-cine practitioner, “has medicinal uses but may transmit germs if infected and un-treated.”

the nitty-gritty… blood… and pricing dynamics

How often does she replenish her stock? “Every week dem dey come…some go travel two days, three days, sometimes one week sef.” How much does she sell her isam? “I dey sell am in bags, big bag na N1,500, small bag N800. I dey sell in basin, in the rubber. Even small portion sef, like N20 own I dey sell to make people dey eat isam. The price of basin is N1,000, imono is N1200 and rubber na 200 or 100

insight

from top: ISAM boat;

customers waiting

for their goods

34 HOST

or 50 naira.” It is estimated that there are well over 2,000 isam in a big bag.

The high cost of isam today can be explained, according to Madam Allison: “Twenty years ago, big bag na 300, now N1,500. Isam dey cost because people wey dey pick am don less. People now dey look for steady and payment job. Isam come from different rivers in Kalabari, Okrika, Andoni and mostly Ijaw from Bayelsa. Dem dey bend down dey pick am one one put for basket. For good time one person fit pick one bag for a whole day, 800 or 1,500 bag. Crude oil sef don begin kill isam.”

She then exhibits the economic wis-dom of a home-manager. “Isam na de cheapest seafood you fit buy today. You can buy little isam, some crayfish, some vegetable ogu, and you can cook better soup. Isam really dey cheap compare to fish and meat!”

Which is her favourite isam and how does she use it? “Me I like ikari pass. I dey carry ikari cook native soup. Every soup I carry am cook. No soup wey e no dey enter because dem say isam dey give blood. Na-him make people dey rush am. Dem say isam dey give blood for body.”

Can isam be eaten raw? “I fit cut am finish, boil am put salt

suck am like that if I need blood for my body quick quick, for two or three days. The blood wey dey my body go change to normal blood.”

Mrs Udoka, an Igbo woman and Al-lison’s regular custumer, informs us that she was introduced to isam when she came to Port Harcourt, “because dem dey marry our sisters for Kalabari and Okrika nahim we take know isam.”

Why does she eat isam? , she says “Dem say isam dey good for body o. E dey give blood!”

Her friend, Mrs Oyenze, from Imo State, echoes, “e dey give blood,” adding “Me I dey take am cook edikaikong, this Calabar soup.”

What is her favourite and how many types of soup does she cook with isam?, she continues: “Isam no dey select soup. You can cook it with any type of soup you want.” She learnt how to eat isam when she came to Port Harcourt and her hus-band, an Igbo, also likes isam. She buys it twice a week and in bags. Then ‘peels’ them, to resell in cups. “We dey sell am for pregnant women. It helps them a lot. Dey say na sucking one dey give blood pass re-moving one.” And how much profit does she make from one bag? “We no dey count am now,” she laughs. “We are using it to help our family. As far as we from there find something to eat it is okay.”

As is usual in such circumstances we are surrounded by curious on-lookers wondering what we are up to with isam sellers and buyers. One of such bystander is a middle-aged man. You dey eat isam? We ask him.

“Yes sir, e dey sweet for soup o,” he replies. His name is Udoh. “I dey push wheelbarrow,” he tells us. He charges the isam sellers for transporting their isam bags from the waterside to their stalls.

“We dey charge them twenty naira for each bag.”

Ada Allison is assisted by a pretty, young Akwa Ibom lady, who speaks Ibibio with some of the customers. It is apparent that the Akwa Ibom folk in Port Harcourt buy a lot of isam. Mrs Patience Innocent Akpan, a fair-skinned customer in her 30’s, visits Creek Road Market daily to buy isam in bags and then resells in cups. She sells her isam in their shells. “One milk cup sell for N20, butter cup N30 or two cups for N50.” Those who buy from her then have the option of “peeling” the isam from the shell or cutting the tail-end of the shell.

How does she use her isam? “I be Akwa Ibom,” she stresses. “Whenever I want to prepare okazi soup, I use isam and also for edikaikong soup. I cut my isam shell and put it in the soup. I wash it well. When I cut it, I remove the tail. Then I use salt to wash the cut shells up to five or six times. After washing with salt, you soak it in salt again for some minutes before you rinse it and put it inside the pot.” Why remove the tail?

“Because that side use to bitter.” She does not think other people eat isam with the tail, and as for the thick membrane that covers the top of the isam in the shell, “by the time you suck it you will now use your tongue and mouth to remove it.”

She is aware of the hard work involved in picking isam from the muddy river bed. “We have isam in Akwa Ibom that is why we know how to eat it,” she concludes.

“Madam, na how much be rubber?” a customer asks Mrs Krike who sells isam in a stall opposite that of Ada Allison. “Na 200. Na how many rubber?” she replies. “Na 180,” the customer offers. “You, you dey worry me o…you know say na 200 and jara dey,” Mrs Krike counters. We asked why she wants to buy this particular type of isam. “E no dey bitter,” she responds.

“Who buys isam most?” we ask Mrs Krike, who we later find out is a school-leaver. “Both Akwa Ibom and Rivers peo-ple. In this part of the market, it is Okrika people who sell isam. I have been selling isam for more than eight years.” “I learnt from my husband’s stepmother.”

And why isam? “It is a business. When I finished school I had to get into the isam business to help myself and my family.” In a day she can sell up to 20 bags. She believes isam is costlier in the rainy season. According to her “the rain prevents isam pickers from going out. So if you enter the rain to go and pick isam you will sell it for

insight

from top: customers collecting

their goods; IKARI ISAM with

spiky shell; the smoother IMONI ISAM; ex-

tracted ISAM

35HOST

a high price. The same goes for crayfish and fish; they are also expensive in the rainy season.”

Elizabeth Saturday Smith is weary-looking but she still keeps her eyes focused on her bags of isam which have just been off-loaded from the huge boat she had travelled in with her cargo from Bayelsa State. Right now, at mid-morning, she is concerned about negotiating with the carrier who has loaded some of her bags of isam on his wheelbarrow for the muddy quarter-mile journey in a slight drizzle from the Nembe/Bonny/Bille wa-terside to her wholesale buyer at the Creek Road Market.

She has brought in 32 bags from

Bayelsa and had travelled for 24 hours. She has been in the isam business for three years. She is also of the opinion that the rains affect isam’s pricing: “For rainy sea-son bush don sink. Water dey everywhere. When rain fall dem no go fit go inside bush pick am, nahim make de thing dey cost. Even for dry season when holiday close isam go full, when holiday open e no go dey because many people no dey again to pick am. But now rain don fall water don cover all the bush especially for our side Bayelsa the main place wey dem dey bring am. Until October, November, we go see bush again.”

The floods that come with the rains and school holidays affect isam supply. Usually when students are on holidays, they earn money by going to the man-grove to pick isam and boost its supply. How does she use isam in cooking? “When you wan cook soup you go boil water and pour the isam inside. Na two type of isam we dey get. Some na chukuchuku (ikari isam) some na smooth one. The smooth one dem dey cut am dey cook or you fit bring am out, but the chukuchuku dem dey commot am dey cook.”

A bystander wades in: “You see this isam, person go go, potopoto go reach here,” she points to her waist, “before you go dey pick one one one one one one. As you go, you dey pick am one one dey put am for basket. The day wey you go go you go enter rain. Rain go fall till night, you no go see isam pick. Mosquito dey, dey bite, sandfly dey, dey bite for river; every-where potopoto. Before you go get one basket you don do like this.”

Nadum, a young man in his mid-20’s,

is “in charge” of the boat that has brought Mrs Smith and her isam from Bayelsa. “One thousand two hundred,” he de-mands from one of the women, reading from his book of records. He has been transporting isam from Bayelsa for two years and he comes to Port Harcourt twice a week. His cargo varies between 2,500 and 3,000 bags per trip. “Some boys do disturb us at times, with guns, robbing us. We do escape them at times also,” he says as a matter-of-fact. For him, it is an occu-pational hazard he accepts for now.

Lined up on the kerb of Creek Road, the outer periphery of the market, are women selling shelled/peeled isam. A not-too-accommodating young woman selling roasted isam insists on being paid before she talks, “because na strength I dey take talk.” She sells one milk tin of isam for N150 and, insists she does not know or care why isam is expensive. Hers is simply to buy from those who have shelled the isam and then resell. She has sold her cup of isam for N150 over the past five months, she claims.

Another woman, Rose, is busy expertly removing the isam flesh with a needle from shells into a big basin. She sells her cooked shelled isam for N100 per cup and, when isam is scarce, for N120 or N130. Isam, she says, has become ex-pensive because of the rains flooding the mangroves. She has been ‘peeling’ isam for 20 years, she claims, “I start as small pickin.” In her late 20’s or early 30’s, Rose, is from Andoni. She declines to be photographed.

Roasting isam entails a lot of skill, an ability to endure heat and improvisation. The isam shells are carefully arranged, or “set” in a discarded cover for an electric fan which serves as a tray. The tray is now put on a raging fire stoked by burn-ing plastic for about two minutes, then poured into a basin of water to cool. The roasted isam is now ready for shelling/peeling which is done by using a needle.

Stella, an Ijaw from Bayelsa, is a mother of nine surviving children out of 11 and with the help of her five daughters, roasts isam on the edge of the creek about two kilometres from the main Creek Road Market. She is supplied her isam by a canoe man who conveys the bags from the Nembe/Bonny/Bille waterside. Self-taught, she has been roasting isam since 1981. She roasts at least three bags a day and up to five if the demand increases.

She says isam has become expensive, as she buys a bag for N1,500 and at peak periods of scarcity for as much as N3,500 per big bag. “After roasting, we can get 19 to 20 cups from one bag, and we sell one cup of roasted isam for N140 or N150. Isam don cost.”

Her eldest daughter, Bebe, an SSS2 stu-dent, has been helping her mother since 2007 and is quite philosophical about the hard work involved. “It is very difficult, but from the isam we always have money to pay the school fees so that I can become what I want to be in the future, which is, a lawyer,” she says.

It is about nine in the morning and

clockwise from left:

madam krike, ISAM whole-

saler; madam ada allison,

another ISAM wholesaler;

stella has been roasting ISAM

since 1981; and bebe, stella’s

daughter

insight

36 HOST

There are many ways to prepare isam for consumption. The processing of isam includes boiling/cooking and roasting after which the flesh is pulled out of the shell usually with the aid of a needle. In local par-

lance, it is called ‘peeling’ the isam. The boiled, peeled isam stays fresh for 24 hours if the water in which it is stored is changed. The roasted peeled isam can be dried to make it last longer. Roasted isam is salted and is said to be sweeter. Of course, the boiled and roasted isam can be stored in the freezer to stay ‘fresh’ longer. Isam can also be washed, then the bottom tip cut off, the tail piece removed; making it ready to be used in cooking.

Isam is very versatile, adaptable for use for snacks and in soups/stews and meals. You can ‘drink’ garri with coconut and roasted isam. You can boil or

roast plantain, yam, cocoyam or corn and eat with isam; all as snacks. Isam can be boiled or fried and used to cook a stew to go with boiled yam or rice. Then there are the end-less varieties of soups that can be cooked with isam; making it the most acceptable and affordable seafood of the Niger Delta for centuries!

The unanimous verdict of sellers and consumers of isam as being very nutritious and good for the body is a classic ex-ample of ‘grandma’s wisdom’ being correct and scientifically verifiable. Isam consists 61.5 grams of protein per 100 grams; 19.9 grams of carbohydrate per 100 grams; 6.2 grams of ether extract per 100 grams; 12.3 grams of ash per 100 grams; and 19.9 grams of water per 100 grams (Augustus, 2002). In a paper published by J I Ndem, M I Akpanabiatu and E U Essien of the Department of Biochemistry/Faculty of Basic Medical

Sciences, University of Calabar in 2008, they concluded that, “consumption of diet enriched with periwinkle/isam, bonka fish, cray fish and oil rich in omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids may prevent cardiovascu-lar disease. This may be one major reason for low incident of coronary heart

disease among the poor rural people that consumed basically periwinkle/isam, bonka fish and cray fish as their main sources of protein.”

The empty isam shell is also useful as chipping in building. It can also be ground and mixed with ground corn and used as poultry feed to give calcium for strong bones of the poultry birds.

Isam eat cetera

Bebe, her sisters and mother are on their third bag of isam, while two hired young girls are equally busy shelling the roasted isam a few metres away from the roasting centre; in front of Stella’s modest dwelling.

Two kilometres away at the Nembe/Bonny/Bille waterside, three huge boats that have arrived this Saturday morning, are being off-loaded in front of a huge crowd of women. In two days, another five boats will dock with their isam cargo from Bayelsa. Between 7,000 and 8,000 bags of isam have been brought in by the three boats. There are women who have travelled with their bags of isam. Oth-ers are patiently waiting to receive their consignment under a cleverly worked-out system.

According to Engineer Dukoopiri, of one of the boats, “the people who are waiting here have supplier-custumers. When we are loading, their supplier-cus-tumers in Bayelsa bring their bags and we write the names of the buyers in Port

Harcourt on the bags. When we call out the names of the buyers they will collect their bags.”

Young Ibi, a JSS2 student, is in the crowd to collect her mother’s consign-ment. Her mother buys between 20 and 40 bags a week. Ibi’s task, this school-free morning, is to convey her mother’s con-signment to the Creek Road Market.

A middle-aged isam wholesaler wait-ing for her consignment gives an ob-lique insight into the added costs which ultimately contribute to the high price of isam. “After paying for cost of bring-ing isam…if you get 100 bags you go pay about N3,000, we go pay people wey dey off-load am into small canoe, then peo-ple wey dey off-load from small canoe to the ground, pay people wey dey arrange the bags for ground, then people wey go carry am drop for our shed, before buy-ers go come buy am. That is why isam dey cost!” To keep up good relations with the supplier, the custumer also has to

The isam is arranged in a metal basket-like container made from a standing fan guard

The isam is roasted over an open fire

The isam is then easily extracted from its shell with a sharp object

The roasted isam is cooled in water

The extract-ed isam

1

2

3

4

5

buy foodstuffs such as rice, beans and yams as gifts to the supplier as well as send empty bags to be filled with the isam she orders. Some 30 women, wholesale dealers, own all of the bags on the three boats.

On the average, 45,000 bags of isam arrive at the Nembe/Bonny/Bille water-side every week for onward transmission through wholesale and retail traders to consumers in the many thousands of households in Port Harcourt daily. This translates into about N67.5million worth of isam business a week, in a strictly cash-and-carry environment.

Expensive or not, isam – the most ac-cessible, convenient and affordable nutri-tious seafood for the people of the Niger Delta – will continue, as it has through centuries, to fill many pots and purses…and “give blood.”FIOFORI IS AN ACCOMPLISHED FILMMAKER,

PHOTOGRAPHER AND JOURNALIST

insight

37HOST

by elkanah chawai

Songhai Integrated System Centre, an integrated farm in Port Novo, Benin Republic, awes almost every visitor. Evelyn Brown, an indigene of Finima in Bonny Kingdom, was there from October 30

to November 7 on an agriculture excursion organised by Nigeria LNG, and, was she overwhelmed?

Yes, and more: she came home with sev-eral ideas to maximise the potentials in her farm in Finima. During the excursion, an idea struck her about a river that runs across her farm.. People come to pick periwinkles for free at the river’s bank. She thought she could breed periwinkles and add to her sources of income on the farm.

At Songhai, she learnt that nothing should be wasted. She was taught how to decompose manure for use. “Who would have ever thought that you have to decom-pose manure before use” she wonders?

On that trip, Brown, along with eight other farmers and four children from Rivers State, generated bright ideas of what they could do to make their dream farms.

The excursion was part of a robust plan to revive agriculture in Rivers State. Through the N-AGENDA – short for NLNG Agro-Enterprise Development sponsored by Nigeria LNG and facilitated by Anpez, the implementing consultant, farmers are be-ing supported with technical know-how on

best practices in agriculture. They are being developed as role models for farmers who are looking beyond subsistence farming and aspiring to embark on commercial farming.

According to a report by Community Research and Development Centre, most of the people in the Niger Delta are farm-ers but many whose source of livelihood depended solely on farming and fishing had to change their means of livelihood because of environmental degradation. The report states further that the rural popula-tion commonly fish or practice subsistence agriculture, and supplement their diet and income with a wide variety of forest prod-ucts. The rural people’s immediate need is farming for their daily meal and if the farming season is good, they sell the surplus for very meagre income. However, with the knowledge they have, they can never go beyond subsistence farming because educa-tion levels are below average, particularly low for women.

But Brown, like others participating in the N-AGENDA, rose above the odds. She started her farm in 1995 because she loved to eat cassava and pineapples. On a family land, a 15 minutes drive away from home, she started with her favourite crops, then expanded with a growing passion for her farm. She started poultry, a piggery and goat rearing. Her crave for knowledge led her to N-AGENDA and several road shows that taught her how to grow her farm to a com-mercial success. She is one of 200 farmers being trained in agriculture to better their

farms and their lives. “The N-AGENDA commenced in Oc-

tober 2006 with a pilot phase. At the pilot stage, we were invited to come and see how we could contribute to the programme. We see N-AGENDA as a very viable point to help develop the community. This time around the focus is on the individual. If the individual is developed, the community is going to move along with it. It also focuses on a practice that is well established in the communities-- farming. What N-AGENDA is doing is boosting agriculture,” Everest Nwankwo, executive director of Anpez, tells Host.

“Somebody who knew about the N-AGENDA programme told me about it. They told me one of their programmes was coming up in Bonny. I went for it and I was asked if I had any training. I told them that I hadn’t any training and they enrolled me for training,” Brown narrates her first encoun-ter with the organisers of the programme.

“I love cassava. I love yam too. I love fruits especially pineapple. My venture in farming started with those things I love eating. I have passed that level to the point where I sell my produce,” she tells Host.

“I owned the farm before the training. I had everything in the farm. The change after N-AGENDA brought was the training. The training shed more light on how to go about things. Before, I was applying the lit-tle knowledge I had on the farm. Like the yam for example. If I got a yam head, I will come and plant just like that. I come back

landand prosper

back to

feature

farmers in porto novo

38 HOST

to see that the yam is not doing well. I never knew that it will come out like as yam seed-ling. I get angry with myself when I see that. But now I know,” Brown says admiring her lush crops shooting out from the ground.

A veterinarian technician and three other farmers are under her employ. Paul Sunday and Friday Nfot Moses help her on the tilling of the soil and animals while Hygi-nus Ozoani, drives her through the rough terrain to her farm. The vet technician is Evodine Zafu, a Cameroonian, who came to visit her friend in Bonny seven months ago and was introduced to Brown by her neighbour. She trained at the National Cen-tre for Zootechnical Intervention, Jakiri in Cameroun.

Zafu says that Brown’s farm is in tune with best practices and applies high vet medicine standards.. For example, on the prevention of swine flu on the farm, she says “I give the pigs vaccines. But there are two phases of vaccinations for them. You have to really know which phase to start with or else they die. We have footbath—a small pool of disinfectant at the doorsteps of the pig pen just like a foot mat.”

Umoroye Igenewari has always loved farming. He says he’s been farm-ing since childhood; in Abua, where he comes from, farming is the major occupation. About seven communities are involved with N-

AGENDA in Abua.He came across N-AGENDA in 2007 and has no regrets ever since. “NLNG sees the need to assist their host communities in farming. They

have arranged with the National Root Crops Research Institute in Umudike and have brought them down to our locality. It was announced that NLNG was coming to town for a road show and that they wanted every person to go to the town. I was opportune to be there and it was a road show. They introduced the N-AGENDA to us and I started following up.

“Abua is known as the food basket of Rivers State. We produce cassava, yam, plantain and pineapple abundantly. Though, the scale of yam produc-tion is small. Before now, we were producing yam but the yield fell and farm theft made it worse.

“When I started in 2007, I was given 600 yam minisets to plant. I planted and harvested and I didn’t sell. Instead, I replanted them in 2008 and NLNG gave me another 400 seed yams. In 2009 farming season, I was given 50 seed yams again. I have planted in two farms. I have grown my farm ten times. What I have planted today will be replanted. My target is going to the market with 10,000 seed yams to sell. The average price you can get from a seed yam is N50,” Igenewari says.

Call it big dreams of a farmer. He said as part of N-AGENDA’s vision, he is trying to convince youths to go back to yam farming: “For example, I have six boys that I am assisting with the know-how on yam farming. I teach them on how to plant yams, how to raising them from the miniset to yam seedlings. The basic problem with farming here is getting the planting material, i.e. the seedlings.”

And that is what N-AGENDA is all about. Says Anprez’s Nwankwo: “We look at the position of the person in the

community because we want to make these farmers trainers too. Picking two people in a community of 500 makes the number look like a drop of water in an ocean. That is why we look for people who can train others. That becomes part of the criteria in selecting farmers for N-AGENDA.”

In the mean time, Igenewari gets a major part of his income from design-ing signboards and banners as a graphic artist, making enough to sustain his wife and pay his trainees for the job they do on the farm.

He was also part of the team to Songhai: “Our experience there cannot be compared to any,” he says, adding: “Some gutters in Port Novo are even used for breeding of fishes. Even the droppings of the birds are useful either for manure production or maggot breeding. They breed maggot which they use to feed the fish. In Port Novo, there was desire in me to start integration in any little way once I return. I have told my boys and we will have to do some-

thing about it.” “N-AGENDA

is nonsense to those who don’t want to follow up. But to those who really want to practise agricul-ture, it is the best place to start off,” Igenewari advised.

The agricultur-al scheme is also helping children with the knowl-edge to sustain their interest in the occupation and make them bet-ter farmers in the future.

“We have a programme which we call the Co-

coyam Rebirth Programme which is focused on Abua. The area used to pro-duce cocoyam in large quantity. Suddenly that product disappeared and it became very expensive. So we thought that we could bring cocoyam back to Abua. We did a lot of research and brought it in. We selected seven schools in Abua and each of these schools has given a 20 by 20 metres land where we have planted about 400 heads of cocoyam. This happened in July and in December, we shall harvest. All the cocoyam will mature at the same time. We have market for that. The farmers have made their orders already. For that particular product, we don’t have problems on how to sell it. We have decided to use the revenue to buy school uniforms for the pupils maintaining the farms,” Nwakwo explains.

One of such schools where these experimental farms are being established is the Community Primary School, Omelema in Abua. Reverend Fyneface Sokari, the headmaster of the school and also a beneficiary of the pro-gramme, says such farms as could be used to sustain the schools financially.

“NLNG came and formed a club, Young Farmers Club, to get children in-volved in farming. They appointed a leader and they handed the farm to the leader to take care. They did it well. No weed destroyed the crops. After that, NLNG told us they wanted a child from every school for an agriculture excur-

like brown, like igenewari

feature

evelyn brown and her crew in

bonny

Umoroye Igenewari

39HOST

sion. They have gone to Port Novo in Benin Republic already and they gave them cloths to sew.

“When you want to impart knowledge and build a child, you start from youth so that they grow up with the knowledge. We are drilling them to have experience in farming so that when they grow up they can move from simple tools farming to mechanised farming if the government will assist them. All the teachers in the school are involved,” he adds.

“In those days, we made very large farms which feed the school financially. If plantain or cassava can do well, we can beg the community to give us a land and with NLNG, we can run the school.

“The school is everlasting. We need regular assistance. There are lands to farm but the children are too small to use their hands. If loans are given, we can use the money to hire labourers. From that farm, we can get the payment to pay back the loan. The farm is an experiment. I feel we should let NLNG know that cocoyam cannot grow here so that we can concentrate on other crops like cassava,” the headmaster reveals.

He too has had experience with N-AGENDA but he has not been success-ful because of a disease that plagues his cocoyam farm.

“I have a land that we used for experiment for a cocoyam farm. But there

was a failure. The disease that was affect-ing the cocoyam farm is still affecting it and the whole farm is almost destroyed. I wish NLNG will come and find out the cause of this damage and find a solution to it. I am sure there are insects in the soil destroying the farm.

“We are expecting the cocoyam to be harvested in January. It is during the harvest that we will know how successful it is. It is an experiment. If the proceeds are enough to sell, we will give to the pu-pils and keep some for the next planting

season,” Rev Sokari says with much hope for a good harvest at the end of the season.

Ten years old Lucky Lambert is the president of the school’s Young Farm-ers Club. He also took part in the Port Novo excursion. “We went to learn farming. They taught us how to hoe and how to plant carrots. I can farm and my father has a farm. When I grow up, I want to be a farmer,” he says.

The headmaster said many farmers maintain themselves with proceeds from the farm. He says they sell the proceeds and train their children, leaving one’s imagination to run wild on what they can do if they get the knowledge, seedlings and farming implements from the N-AGENDA programme.

One of the challenges people like Brown and Igenewari, who are trying to go big with their produce sales, is a ready market to sell. In the 1960s and 1970s, there used to be agricultural market boards which bought the pro-duce off the farmers but they no longer exist.

Nwankwo explains that part of the programme is market linkage. He says “one of our responsibilities is market linkage and we are looking at that. As a matter of fact, that was the idea behind the N-AGENDA farmers associa-tion and is the reason why we want to monitor the impact of the programme as from 2009 to see whether we can get 200 farmers to start planting at the same time. If they do this, there is the chance that they will harvest at the same period too. And if they harvest in the same period, we will be able to gather tons of the produce, definitely we will have a big market to sell that.”

For now, what NLNG and Anprez are doing is setting up experimental farms in communities in Rivers State. Their hopes are that these farms will become very successful that it can become role models for other to emu-late. But for the “guinea pigs” this is the turning point in their quest for a better life.

Brown says she pays her workers be-tween N20,000 and N50,000. On what she makes from the farm, she says: “I sell about 80 per cent of my produce. I have ways of measuring the cassava I sell. I can sell it N500 a bucket. The cassava I harvested this year was not enough. I used to have cassava on a large piece of land but they were destroyed by grass cutters. I have used traps to stop but they are still coming. I have posed a question about it in one of our workshops. I was still advised to continue with the trap.

“I use the income from the farm to feed my family. The farm is not doing well enough to generate the income I want. My uncle sup-ports me on the farm. My uncle helps me with about 50 per cent of my total income while the farm produces the other half.”

Brown is striving to make the farm big-ger and a commercial success. She wants to buy machines like those that will hatch eggs for her to sell chicks and those that will pro-duce palm oil..

This is the kind of ardour that farmers may need to get the country back on track to what it used to be in the past. It is even more striking that this revival of agriculture is hap-pening in oil producing areas. But farmers like Brown and organisations like NLNG and Anprez believe that the choice of the revival could not have started at a better place.

feature

Members of the Young Farmers Club work in the farm

Rev Fyneface Sokari, head master of Community Primary School

evelyn brown sees her farm as her future

40 HOST

Everest Nwankwo is the Executive Director of Anpez Centre for Environment and Development, NLNG’s partner in the N-AGENDA programme. He tells Host what his organisation is doing in utilising the potentials of agriculture efficiently.

What is your organisation’s role in N-AGENDA?The N-AGENDA started in October 2006 and it started with a pilot phase.

What N-AGENDA is doing is boosting agriculture. Anpez (Centre for Envi-ronment and Development) brings in the professionalism required by these farmers and creates a link between the farmers and the market. We also want to see how we can enhance productivity of these farmers. These are areas of intervention that we are involved in. Our major responsibility is to select about 200 farmers, over a period of three years, to identify their needs and develop an intervention programme which can be in form of training, building their capacity and improving what they already have on ground and the market linkage I mentioned earlier. We will monitor the impact on the farmers over time to assess the level of impact after the N-AGENDA pro-gramme. Where do you get profes-sionals for this project?

One of the key deliverables of N-AGENDA is capacity building. We actu-ally set out to identify partners that have the expertise to be able to deliver to the people. Right now, we are partnering with Nigerian Root Crops Research Institute in Umudike. They are focused on crop root production. They have been able to train over 100 farmers. We are also partnering with African Aquaculture Centre in Aluu, Rivers State, which focuses on fish and animal production. And recently, we just came back with some farmer from Songhai Centre, Port Novo which has provided training for the farmers. These institu-tions are our permanent partners. How are farmers selected for this programme?

Our budget allows us to work with 200 people. One of the things we did was to set out the criteria for selecting the farmers. We have over 100 host communities. We decided to go for two people per community. We ex-empted fresh farmers. The person must be an existing farmer. They must have access to a large area of land. We also looked at the position of the person in the community because we want to make these farmers trainers too. Picking two people in a community of 500 makes the number look like a drop of wa-

ter in an ocean. That is why we look for people who can train others. We also wanted to focus on indigent farmers so we can actually improve their stand-ard of living. Some of the challenges we have in the selection is a situation when you send out forms to the paramount rulers to give to farmers in the community. The paramount leaders now choose their relatives for the forms. So, this made us to start visiting the farms of those who we applied. How successful has the programme being converting subsistent farmers to commer-cial farmers?

The pilot phase just ended last year and we started the programme this year in March. We have been able to provide a lot of planting materials. We did this in April. By the time we started, the planting season had almost ended. What we are doing now is structuring a process where we start the farming season in November so that we can measure the impact in these peo-ple. Though, for some of them, we can measure the impact already. We have set monitoring indicators for the farmers on what we have given to them and what we are expecting from them. By 2010, we should be able to get tangible results.How long is the phase expected to run for?

This phase will run until 2011.Is there an exit strategy for these farmers?

We had some training for aqua-culture farmers and one thing that hap-pened was that farmers came together and formed what they called N-AGENDA farmers association. The idea is to spread and have eight charters. The association will pull capital or credit to support its members. Not only that, we are looking at some equipment to buy for the association like trac-tors that the farmers can use. These are part of the strategy. By the time N-AGENDA ends, these things will be there running and the farmers themselves will continue to run the process. Before now, we used to bring experts from Umudike for the road shows. Part of the exit strategy is to stop bringing in these experts and use our farmers we have trained to deliver the road shows. Whatever we are supposed to pay the institute will go to these farmers. Right now, we are buying cassava stems and yam seedlings from the institute but part of our strategy is having the farmers, who we have given seedlings to plant, supply these seedlings to other farmers. That will reduce the cost of running N-AGENDA. One of the failures of agricultural projects today is not helping farmers sell their produce like they do in the past through market boards. Are there plans to help them market their produce?

One of our responsibilities is market linkage and we are looking at that. As a matter of fact, that was the idea behind the N-AGENDA farmers association and is the reason why we want to monitor the impact of the programme as from 2009 to see whether we can get 200 farmers to start planting at the same time. If they do this, there is the chance that they will harvest at the same pe-riod too and if we can gather tons of the produce, we will definitely have a big market to sell that. NLNG could make the catering contractors buy all their raw food from these N-AGENDA farmers and that would be a big market. With or without NLNG, this project has to be sustainable. So how are you going to find a market for them?

There can be so many outlets. The key thing is that we have to bring these produce into a store house where we can market it. So when do we see this planned harvest happening?

We are looking at May next year. For the people doing animal production, that should happen anytime from now. Theirs is continuous, not seasonal.

The Nigeria LNG Agro-Enterprise Development was designed to en-courage sustainable exploration of the abundant natural agro-re-sources in the communities and midwife their transformation into

viable enterprises. It was also designed to enhance the revenue earning potential of the rural entrepreneurs through the provision of value added agricultural and non-agricultural services – capacity building in farm man-agement techniques, exposure to improved varieties and crops, field trips and linkage to farming institutes etc.

From inception, 50 participants were trained and supported in agro

enterprise development at the African Regional Aqua Culture Centre (ARAC) in Aluu, Port Harcourt. A second batch of 52 have also been trained and supported in the development of farming practices and yield improvement in roots, tuber and plantain production at the National Root Crops Research Institute Umudike in January 2007. No fewer than 2,000 farmers have also attended various road shows across host com-munities in the past years aimed at bringing home emerging knowledge on agro enterprises by our partnership with the NRCRI Umudike and ARAC, Aluu.

n-agenda’s agenda

feature

41HOST

Empowered!the economic empowerment and development day,

amongst other things, celebrates all nlng sponsored em-powerment initiatives, which includes the youth empower-ment scheme (yes), the micro-credit scheme, the nlng

agro-enterprise development action (n-agenda) and village savings and loans scheme. it also brings together the beneficiaries of these schemes and avails them the opportunity to exhibit their products and services. it serves as a veritable avenue for assessing the impact of the initiatives and their sustainability.

the 2009 edition was held on friday 4 december at presiden-tial hotel, port harcourt, rivers state. notable public figures who graced the occasion were father godfrey nzamujo, the founder and director of the songhai centre, a pioneering farm, training and research centre in porto novo, benin republic, and sir god-frey ohuabunwa, an entrepreneur who has excelled in various fields of business endeavours including telecommunications, pe-troleum, broadcasting and hospitality. here are a few images from the event.

gallery

Home made honey and other products pro-duced by a YES trainee

Different types of cakes from a group in Emouha Kingdom

Sir Nkem Obu, Commu-nity Liaison Officer and other participants

A group from Emouha Kingdom exhibiting their textile wares

Andy Odeh, Community Rela-tions and Development Man-ager, makes a presentation

Another YES trainee exhibiting his tailoring skills

42 HOST

gallery

Siene Allwell-Brown, Godfrey Ohuabunwa, guest speaker, Director of Songhai Farms Port Novo, Rev Fr Godfrey Nzamujo

Eze Ekpeye Logbo, Eze Robinson O Robinson

Emily Green-Nwodim, Head of Economic Empowerment and Development unit presents her address

Rev Fr Godfrey Nzamujo makes his presentation on a model for sustainable agriculture. His Song-hai farm has been classified by World Bank as one of the centres of excellence in Africa

Rev Fr Njamujo presents a plaque to a champion while Fola Anifowose of NLNG Economic Empowerment unit watches

Siene Allwell-Brown, General Manager, External Relations welcomes guests while Andy Oden, Community Relations Manager[left] watches.

43HOST

gallery

Christopher Jonathan never knew his father and has no idea of what it means to grow up with one. Life was hard in the hinterlands of Rivers States especially growing

up in a society with age-long beliefs that the “bread winner”, the man of the house, is all in all.

In most cases, especially in the rural areas, when the “bread-winner”dies, the dreams of a good education and life above the poverty line also go to the grave. But, for Jonathan, that was not the case – thanks to the Youth Em-powerment Scheme (YES) rolled out in 2004 by Nigeria LNG Limited.

It started with him getting the YES form. That was like getting a visa to self-reliance.

According to the young man from a small community called Bakana, “My life in the village was very hard and that is why I say my life is a testimony. If it wasn’t for the training, I know that I would have been one of the mili-tants. Some of my class mates are like that.”

“YES,” says Sir Belejit Ikuru, a former coordinator of the scheme, is “to make the participating youths economically and socially responsible through guided vocational and entrepreneurial development training.”

Barnabas Ekanem, a social worker, who used to work with the youth on the YES programme, as a member of staff of the Com-munity Development Foundation, which con-sulted for NLNG on YES, says the programme was a lifeline to many of the youths who came from poor backgrounds.

He tells the story of Iyenemi Mac-Eli, who was hawking kerosene in the streets with all the hazards that come with it. “But once she bought into the programme,” he said elatedly, “she got trained and right now she has opened her own place which is flourishing.”

Jonathan, who was trained in photography, today is the proud owner of “Bob J. Video Stu-dio” operating from a N120,000-a-year shop in Port Harcourt, providing services in, among others, digital video editing, video/photo cov-erage, and transferring video cassette to VCD & DVD. He started operations with a cam-corder and still picture camera, given to him as part of his starter packs. Today, he owns four cameras, 2 DVD burners, an editing system, an IQ photo printer, an HP printer, three video inserters, three 14 inches TVs and a computer.

Jonathan continues his story: “When I

heard about the training on photography, I thought it was just photography training until I was given a starter pack. The starter pack consisted of a photo and video cameras. I was also given money. The organisers have been giving me money. It was for transport. I don’t know how I would have survived without it. I was coming from the village without anything. I can’t really remember how much I was given for transport money but it was sufficient. The organisers were also keeping some money separately for us. With that money, I bought my computer and with that system and two cameras, I was doing okay. I was saving money and later had to open a studio. There was nobody to help me with it. I saved some more money from the equipment I had and later bought more equipment. Gradually, I grew. I used to buy my Compact Discs (CDs) from Port Harcourt. But now, I have a link in Lagos where I buy my CDs. And I also sell materials to other people.”

Since his graduation from the YES programme, Jonathan has invested about N840,000 into his business. “Sometimes, I can get N50,000 a day from the studio. Other days, I can get N10,000 a day. I can’t give you an exact amount of money I make in a month. It depends on the work I get. But there is no day I don’t get something out of these equipment. I have trained more than 10 persons in my vil-lage free of charge and I tell them to use their equipment to make money. Some people rent cameras to practise. I rent my cameras out. Eighty per cent of cameramen rent cameras. I make N1,500 from the camcorders cameras every day. The bigger one I rent out for N4,000 every day.

“In my village, they still think I am an ordinary photographer. They don’t know I have reached this stage. My family is calling me for meetings and there is no time to attend because of my work. I work night and day. My studio is my hope. I want to expand my studio to a stage where people will hear of me. What I need is finance to back me and I am making more savings towards that,” he adds. Married, Christopher is now a father of a 10-month old baby boy. He takes care of his mother and two children of his brother who lost his job recently.

Mac-Eli tells her own success story. “In 2007, I went for NLNG empowerment. They posted us to places to go and learn the work. After the work, I decided to get a place for my-self so that I can go on with the work. Before now, I was selling kerosene. I was making mon-ey from that but I prefer tailoring. I make more money from tailoring than I did when I was selling kerosene. The kerosene business is not certain. Sometimes you get money and some-times you don’t. When I was selling kerosene, I made N3,000 to N5,000 in a week. But with tailoring, I can make a N10,000 to N30,000. It depends on how many customers I get that week,” she says.

Iyenemi believes that she is so much better off than selling kerosene. Her joy is that she doesn’t depend on anyone. She supports two siblings financially in their university educa-tion. “I support my two younger ones. They are in University of Port Harcourt and Rivers State University of Science and Technology (UST). Sometimes they ask me for money for books and I will tell them to come immediately. My

yes!oh

How has the Youth Empowerment Scheme fared?By Elkanah Chawai

from top: iyenemi mac-eli; christopher Jonathan

44 HOST

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husband is a business man and I am helping him with the family.” She doesn’t have a child yet but she is sure preparing for the future. She vaunts that “by next year, “I will ask NLNG to come and see what I have done to expand my business.”

Not all the trained youths are that success-ful though. There are cases of some youths selling off their equipment and “returning to their vomit,” as it were; while some just get frustrated by the smothering business environ-ment in the country. Yet, there are still stories of those who strive amidst this condition to earn a living.

One of those in this group is George Inye whose parents could only educate him to secondary school level. But he now has a weld-ing workshop. Set behind him as he narrates his story of survival is his small welding shop which is located at a corner in a compound of multi-storey building. His shop can hardly be seen from the road where his services should be visible to pedestrians and would-be custom-ers. But this is what he could afford after his training. However, he avers that there is hope as a professional welder. He was introduced to YES by his community chief. “My parents are late and they trained me up to secondary school. They could not afford it and education is about what you can afford. I am not giving up. I know with time, when I find myself okay, I can start from there”.

He recounts his experiences: “before weld-ing, I was a driver. My highest qualification is WAEC. I was driving somebody’s car and I got about a minimum of N1,500. I earn more now but it is not frequent. If we rate how much

Currently, trainees complete the flow-ing programmes from admission to graduation:

1. Pre-Training Engagements: One day in-duction/motivation session and one week attitude re-orientation/team building training at the Leadership Centre, Aluu.

2. Vocational Training: Six months voca-tional/technical skills training and one month post-training practical experience attachment for experience sharing and confidence building.

3. Graduation Activities: One week capac-

ity building workshop in entrepreneurial skills, finance and management, Trade Tests Certification (stage 3 & 2) organ-ised by the Federal Ministry of Labour and exhibition/graduation ceremonies.

4. Post-Graduation Engagement: Monthly, quarterly and end of programme moni-toring and evaluation of the trainees’ performance, training centres and trainers. Additionally, graduates receive funding support and are involved in joint partner programme content review and evaluation.

yes ladder

income we get per month, it is far better than driving. We look at ourselves as professionals. We have something that can take us some-where. On the average, I will say I earn about N30,000 a month outside little jobs I get at the end of the day,” he tells Host, fully in his personal protective equipment. But he adds: “But the thing is that if your problem is more than your income, it would seem like you are not doing anything. We don’t have constant supply of jobs from companies or contracts to fabricate something. I don’t have such custom-ers that patronize me everyday. Only few of those who know me come around”.

Inye feels that with a big loan to start, take-off would have been smoother. His welding machine that he got as part of his starter’s pack did not help matters as it did not take long before it broke down. “We just picked up and started. The welding machine that was given to us is not strong. So we just managed it. But within a short period, it died off,” he said without any tinge of sadness in his eyes. He earns off a locally built welding machine. He takes care of his late brother’s children who died in an accident and hopes to educate them.

With the same resilience, Solomon Ohaka is willing to push on until he gets a university education. His skills have given him more options at actualising his dreams. Trained as a photographer/video producer, he now freelances with African Independent Television (AIT) and Rivers State Television (RSTV) as a cameraman.

“When I was informed by youths in my community, I thought that I should get the YES form since I had nothing doing after secondary school. I went for the train-ing and learnt a lot of things not only in photography but important things in life during the training. When I came back, I used the starter pack given to me to start my business. I bought some equipment and I have trained some people who are on their own now. I am so proud of NLNG who in-troduced the programme. If I go to AIT and RSTV, I am well known there. I am a pro-fessional cameraman for them. We always travel out and I come back to operate my shop”, he explained with pride.

Ohaka shares a shop with a barber in Rumudomaya in Port Harcourt. The shops are separated by a sheet of ply wood, with a dark room of a sort at the other side. From the barber’s side of the shop, it would seem like there is nothing in that cottage.

Solomon owns a computer and equipment worth over N100,000 in his corner. He pays half of N120,000 per annum.

“I didn’t have any money to start a full shop so I had to share with someone to split the rent at the end of the month. Despite the other jobs for the TV station, I have to manage this shop due to other commit-ments like my plans to go back to school and family obligations. I couldn’t continue my schooling because of money. Since I lost my father at the age of 23, nobody could sponsor my education anymore. So, I de-cided to suspend and make money first to take care of my siblings. I am taking care of my mother who is a farmer and helping my elder brother who just got admission to UST. We got the admission together but I couldn’t go. I am now looking forward to taking some part-time courses soon. My job with AIT is a contract job. I get N10,000 per job. . Sometimes, I could get two of those jobs in a month. I make like N30,000 naira in a month. The scheme has added a lot of value to my life. Today, I can say I am a good leader. I have succeeded in being a good follower but today, I have people under my tutelage. I have achieved a lot,” he empha-sises.

Over the years, the YES scheme has grown in popularity. In the first batch, 108 trainees out of 118 enrolled gradu-ated. In the second batch, all 120 trainees graduated. 61 trainees graduated in third batch and presently enrolled for the fourth batch are 115 trainees. Despite the grow-ing popularity and successes recorded so far, the selection of would-be trainees still remains a challenge. The organisers of the scheme are faced with growing pressure to enrol candidates already selected by their community chiefs. The danger of this is that only the chief’s relatives may benefit, defeating the aim of making far-reaching impact on the youths. Making about a hundred of youths self-reliant in year may seem inconsequential when compared to the number of unemployed youths in the region and the growing restiveness, but Ekanem, who says that the scheme has recorded like 60 per cent success in youths setting up business, adds that it has worked for youths, saying that the real suc-cess lies in other companies taking up the scheme to achieve one of the fundamental Millennium Development Goals - helping people earn a living.

above: solomon ohaka; left: george inye

45HOST

STORIES BY boboye onduku, GUEST WRITER

The wrestling story that Amadi-Ama provides is one that will make any listener feel left-out. From every tale bearer it was evident that any sort of connection with wrestling

brought societal relevance. The glitter in the eyes of Frank Tamuno-Koko, when asked

about his community’s wrestling history, was non-stop. He is the chairman of Amadi-Ama’ s Administrative council, and a living witness to the golden moments of wrestling in his community.

“During the dry season when there was little farming, we took to wrestling. We wres-tled with our Rebisi brothers, Elekahia, Orow-orukwo, Orogbum, Oro-Abali, Rumukalag-bor…all the neighbouring towns,” Tamuno Koko starts off. He tells us wrestling was the centre of community celebrations during the season. And this Yuletide provides the perfect setting for a revival of the keen challenges which wrestling throws up. With a certain sense of upliftment, he reveals “we are trying to revive it, that is why we have introduced it along with regatta festival.”

Observer status invitations will be handed out to other Rebisi communities for this year’s event. “We just want to try it out in-ternally this year. Next year, we will invite Orogbum and Oro-Abali to wrestle with our young men and put a prize on it.” This year’s competition will be solely for the seven com-pounds of Amadi-Ama, namely: Tuboberene, Amadi, Olunwa, Josiah, Wurianime (Aliko and Ogbanga).

The enthusiasm shown by the young men of Amadi-Ama is a welcome development ahead of the festival. ‘Old boy we go wrestle that day; we go see’ is the language of the chal-lenges among the youths. The little ‘tokens’ promised the wrestlers by the organisers have thrown up more responses from the youths ahead of the competition. Interestingly, the ground rules for this year’s competition are not complicated. “If you think you are strong and healthy enough you are qualified. There are no ground rules except as we have it tradi-tionally,” Tamuno-Koko adds.

There will be a traditional referee who will be saddled with the task of pairing the com-petitors for the lesser battles. The bigger bat-tles will be solely for those who want to claim all honours. The referee in that case will not stop any David from challenging any Goliath for glory. The battle is for those who will be clad in traditional wrapper with under pants and t-shirts. But the t-shirts won’t count for those who choose to go flesh-to-flesh. And there is also plenty of white powder to go round all competitors free of charge.

exhilarating drumbeatsWhat makes any wrestling festival tick?

“When you watch it, it is interesting. Any-where you are, when you hear the drums you have to come out,” Opuene Tuboberene lends his voice. Opuene’s father Rodney Tu-boberene is a wrestling legend in Amadi-Ama, which makes his voice a qualified one. Tamu-no-Koko speaks of his blood getting warm because he could hear the wrestling drums of years past in his mind’s ears. “In the process of watching, the drum will [literally] drag you and make you feel like you are part of it. Your leg will be moving, your hands will be mov-ing,” Tuboberene takes his point home. For the older Tuboberene, Rodney, “the drums say wrestling is here now, come and wrestle.”

biblical antecedentsIf Amadi –Ama needed any additional impe-

tus to revive wrestling, then the Biblical story of Jacob wrestling with God all night gave them one. “We are a Christian community, so there is this general revival in Christendom in this area , so we are kind of averse to masquerades these days but wrestling , we find nothing anti-Christian in it, it is purely a sport, after all we all watch the WWF, ” Tamuno-Koko tells anyone who raises any eye-brows. The community administrator believes the Amadi-Ama wrestling is real and authentic when placed side by side that of professional wrestling which he believes is scripted.

the costs“Wrestling is simple to organise,” states

Tamuno-Koko. “You just get the drum set and the drummers and that is it. This one, you don’t need plenty of people [as opposed to football], just get a drum set...four people here and four people there and you wrestle,” he stresses further.

unity’s sakeThe revival cause for wrestling in Amadi-

Ama is believed to be the impetus to unite not just the youths but entire villages. “ I believe that if the youths at the age of wrestling make it a habit to be going from one community to the other [to wrestle] and the other people respond, it will make them more friendly,” says Rodney. Being a veteran and legend his words here offer great insight. He concludes “It’ll bring the communities together, instead of dividing them or being unfriendly to one another

whenamadi-amadrums beat in

sports

bonny cultural carnival 200921St-26Th Dec 2009

time table21St December 2009 - Cutural Float Parade &

Boat Regatta (Gigi)22Nd December 2009 - Agidi Owu (Traditional

Masquerade Display)23Rd December 2009 - Eremina Ogbo & Iria24Th December 2009 - Street Party25Th December 2009 - Nwa – Otam Carnival26Th December 2009 - The Bonny Beach

Carnival And After Party, RA1 Beach Bonny

For More Info And Enquires Call07031225094/ 08037548343

below: 84 year-old rodney tuboberene; bottom: frank ta-muno-koko, administra-tive council chairman, amadi ama

46 HOST

Watching 84-years Rodney Tuboberene search for a photo-graph gave no hint of his giant-killing status. He appeared rather slow in his search but his calmness showed he knew

he would find the picture. “This is it,” he speaks up after about two min-utes of search. He hands over a picture of himself standing in front of his house, sporting a brown and white checkered flowing etibo, a round cap and a bead around his neck. His body frame rested on his left leg while his right leg pushed forward a little. He held a pair of glasses in his left hand and a walking stick in the other. He looked every inch a father but hardly the revered former wrestling champion of Amadi-ama.

“It must have been in 1958 /1959,” Frank Tamuno-Koko offers to tell the story of Tuboberene’s greatest fight. “There was a young man called Otokolo from Orogbum. He was their champion. His back had not touched mother earth. It was the last match-up when the champion wres-tlers usually come out and Otokolo was a huge man. Otokolo pranced around like a peacock. The young man Rodney stopped quietly and was waiting. After Otokolo had done all his show-boating, they clashed.”

Tamuno –Koko continues the story with increasing animations: “I can still see the move. Rodney put his two arms into the armpit of Otokolo - just like a footballer will chest a corner kick and blast into the net - and ‘chested’ him. And before we knew it, Otokolo was down.”

The ensuing scenes, according to Tamuno-Koko, were euphoric. “The village tore into two with wild celebrations. When you throw somebody like that, the drum rhythm changes to say ‘Yes!’ And then the arena was crowd-ed. Everybody jumped out from their seats and ran into the arena and danced, danced and danced. We didn’t know when the Orogbum people left; we didn’t know when Otokolo left. We carried him [Rodney] shoulder high round the village and sang until late at night.”

But does the legend himself remember the fight even at old age? “When Otokolo came up, I too came up,” Tuboberene starts off. “Let’s say within a short time, the great Otokolo was down. And the wrestling stopped. The man went home. And I have not wrestled since that day.” His memories of his wrestling contemporaries did not suffer the same fate though. “My group of wrestlers, those who can per-form have died,” he reveals. However, he names Augustine Amadi, Ishmael Alikor, Macdonald, Alexander Iringe and his 86-year-old elder brother, Alabo Pius Tuboberene, as his wrestling contemporaries who are still alive.

If there were any motivations for him to go into the chal-lenge he gives an idea of some of them. “When you see the crowd and hear the drums, you will feel very bold. You will not allow yourself down.” He speaks of the cheering role women played in such times as a great boost. “Women poured us powder just to make us stronger and happy. They encouraged more at some point. They sort of initiated our powers, if my language is correct,” he says.

The father 16 children from three wives believes wres-tling can make one a popular person. But he says he received no traditional title for his exploit because ‘it’s not traditional here (in Amadi-Ama)’. He also speaks of his time in the military. “I left the army in 1988-89. Kaduna was my last station. I was attached to the 44 Military Hos-pital in the Army Medical Corps.” He has great memories of the Queen’s first visit to Nigeria. “That was September 16, 1956. I still have the paper.” His first posting at the Yaba hospital and his time at Abule Ijesha offered him the opportunity to relish that memory.

The petty quarrels among same wrestling communi-ties due to company payments make him unhappy. He believes this has altered the development of wrestling ties in Rebisi. “When you say let’s go wrestling, they will say we no go go.” His take is that the revival of wrestling chal-lenges across communities will make the communities relate well. “It can bring good intention to you and other people [around you],” he concludes.

a legend and his great conquest

sports

47HOST

BY boboye onduku, GUEST WRITER

Say Jack Robinson! How long did it take…two, three, four seconds?

Well that is the same time it took 21 teams in Bonny to pick up participation forms for

the Bonny LGA Chairman’s Cup claims Darlington Banigo. And that is difficult to refute because he is the Secretary of the Bonny Football Association, the organisers of the competition.

In the conference room of the local gov-ernment council on Wednesday, November 18, Banigo was truly in-charge. “I told you specifically not to erase, or Tipex anything on this form,” he reprimands one of the club managers submitting forms. Subse-quently, he sends him away to fill out the all important player’s dates of birth that were omitted. This brought home the serious-ness attached to the 56-match competition.

the benefitsN600,000 prize money is up for grabs by

the top three teams. And some of the teams are not taking chances. “We train at No1 Wilbros Pipeline on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays by 4pm,” John Kanebi, man-ager of De Bull FC, one of the clubs that have picked up the N2,000 participation forms speaks up. His desire to expose his players (through this competition) is in line with the competition’s overall objectives. “It is indeed the Bonny Local council’s desire to expose their players to the big Premier League sides like Sharks, Bayelsa United, and Dolphins,” says Bobo Atamah Pepple, the former NEPA Port Harcourt player who is now the supervisory councilor for youths and sports in Bonny Council. Pep-ple believes sport is a youthful thing and the competition will keep the youths busy ahead of the Christmas celebrations. This is in addition to the atmosphere of brotherli-ness and peace that will usher in the Annual Bonny Cultural Celebrations.

a local talent huntThe organisers believe that they must

source for their own talents. Clubs must of-fer proof to have been in existence in Bonny to be allowed any chance to participate. This is because the organisers don’t want to have any group of people coming together only for the sake of the competition. “Be-fore we accepted their applications, we had seen that they have been in existence. When it comes to football, because it‘s a game people watch, so its easy to identify those that are living here and those that are living outside,” Banigo attests.

a clarion call The clarion call is to scouts from within

and outside the State to spend at least a week and watch the Bonny boys ply their trade. Banigo puts it firmly: “I am sure the players will exceed their expectations. Probably at the end of this tournament we will have need to make a stronger case for Bonny to be considered [for more attention from talent scouts].”

the host venuesThe Government School Field, the mini-

stadium, in Bonny and the Finima field

will host all matches. Four matches are scheduled to hold daily, with two matches running simultaneously at each venue, morning and afternoon. “The Government School field needs finishing touches be-cause the place becomes marshy when there is rain. But fortunately now the rains have stopped so we will just do the markings and all the rest,” the Banigo assures.

fifa standardsThe Bonny FA is working on the play-

ers licenses with the Rivers State Football Association. This is being done to ensure that the tournament is organised within the State FA rules and gets the parent body’s blessings. Match officials will come from the Bonny Referees Association, an affiliate of the Nigerian Referees Association (NRA). . The assurance by Banigo also covers the rules of play. “We are following FIFA stand-ard rules and NFA accredited referees are the ones that will officiate,” he confirms.

John kanebi claims he was nicknmaed ‘De Bull’ even before the famed Super Eagles Star and present Super Eagles Coach, Daniel Amokachi

took on the name. But whether you believe that or not is not his concern. His concern is the group of boys he trains assiduously on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays by 4pm at No 1 Wilbros pipeline Bon-ny. He formed De Bull United Football Club, Bonny Island, alongside John Nelson in March 2009.

His players are going through the rigours of tacti-cal and physical training ahead of the Bonny Chair-man’s Cup slated for December 2009. “We are participating in this competition because I want to expose players so that they can go and play for better teams outside.” His background as a former pro-fessional player for Iwuanyanwu Nationale (1983), El Kanemi Warriors (1986) and AS Diaraf Senegal (2004) makes him know that there are better teams in abundance outside Bonny.

“Anything about football is money. Without mon-ey you cannot move players. So I am trying my best to ensure that the little one I can provide I provide for them,” he replies when asked on how he is coping with the financial rigours of running a football clubs at any level. But where does he get the money to pro-vide even the little he is providing? “I have a business- a hairdressing saloon in Bonny,” he says. And adds quickly: “I have to encourage them to play but as of now we are lacking in terms of boots for players and training jerseys and the many things that can make the boys to be fit”

Ahead of the Chair-man’s Cup, Kanebi envis-ages BOCA Juniors, Finima Bright Stars, LGA Team, and Randolph team are going to be hard nuts to crack for his side. He submits: “My purpose of participating in this competition is to expose the boys so that when they move on they can ‘be able to make things happen’. But if God grants them a win, I will thank God.” However, Nel-son, his manager, is more up-

beat about De Bull’s chances. “I know what many of them [De Bull United players] can do. They can zero their mind, play the game and be determined to win,” he emphatically speaks out. Nelson’s 3-year sojourn in Bonny Island has seen him play five local competi-tions and he somehow also shares his manager’s de-sire. “We want some boys to go to a higher level and play as professional footballers,” he agrees.

De Bull United admits only players born from 1980 till date. Kanebi claims he gets parental con-sent before allowing any player to lace his boots for his side. “I have a form I give to the boys to give to their parents; if they support them to play they have a place to fill.” Of course being a married man with two children makes him understand the importance of getting parent consent before engaging young-sters. ‘Womanising’, smoking and alcoholism for Kanebi are no go areas for any De Bull player. “If I find anyone [culpable], I give him suspension; at least two weeks,” he says. Nelson, on the other hand has shelved his marriage plans for next year and is content with the ‘bubbling’ that football competitions like the Chairman’s Cup brings to the oil-rich Island every other day.

Kanebi had an unsuccessful trial in Spain in his quest to ply his trade abroad. Any player of De Bull United that makes it to any big club in any of the big leagues, especially Spain, will definitely win the brag-ging rights over their manager. And also fulfill his manager’s ambition of setting up the club.

a manager’s desire

bonny seeks football

talentGroups Teams

Group A White House FC, Dynamic Royal FC, Titanic FC, Okada FC

Group B Randolph FC, Finima United, Young Strikers, United Stars

Group C OLGA FC, Super Whales, Atlantic Stars, Super Stars

Group D Winners FC, Sunshine Stars, Boca Juniors, De-Bull FC

sports

Kanebi (1st left) with members of the De Bull United Football Club

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