By
Obododimma Oha
I did not
have the luck of coming into the world to see my maternal great grandfather; he
had died before I was born. But I was told that he was a smallish, fearless,
no-nonsense fellow: in sum, a fighter. That description of my maternal great
grandfather, Alaka, was apt for he not only
refused to pay tax to the coloniser
-- the British – but confronted
and accused kotuma who came to arrest him on account of it of wanting to steal
yams and cassava from his farm where he was working. This narrative was known
throughout the town. Great grandfather was humming a masquerade/war song and
tending the yam tendrils on his farm, an activity called iṅe ji in Igbo. Men
who engaged in iṅe ji normally perform
serious work songs, derived from masquerading or war. The songs transport and
transform them in the ongoing activity to the ones they are remembering. The
may be on the farms tending the yams, but they are not really there. No; they
are far far away in the village square or theatres of war demonstrating their
skills. The outcome is that they complete their tasks pleasurably in no
distant time; they are unmindful of the expanse or the much they have to do,
and complete this enormous task. It was in one of those that great grandfather
was engaged, in fact, completely lost, when kotuma otule nta came and brought
him back with screams of “Hey, you!”
At first,
great grandfather just ignored him as he waved his baton, thinking he had an
easy one there. Then, kotuma screamed again, using his mba mmiri dialect of Igbo:
“Kwa ngi ka m na-agwa?” Great grandfather
looked across to the man wearing starched khaki shorts and white shirt and said
nothing. Then, he grabbed yam tendrils and some sticks of cassava and with a
great howl made for kotuma. Great grandfather was screaming, calling on other
villagers working that kotuma was uprooting and stealing his yams and cassava.
Kotuma said it was a lie but knew better that the best thing was to make the
best use of his legs. He ran and ran, with great grandfather after him. Kotuma ran and ran, until his lost scent of
his assailant and made his way back to Ugwu nwa Apali where he must have reported
that the man (great grandfather) had disappeared from the village.
When I think
of great grandfather’s opposition to the idea of paying a tax to the colonial
invader, I conclude that we have not started the struggle of liberation in our
time. Great grandfather, the old warrior, only knew he was a citizen of Uri
(Uli) and nothing more. Making him a citizen of “Nigeria” or of elsewhere in
those early times in the 19th century was strange! How could anybody just enslave him and ask him
to pay annual tributes to oyibo the invader like that? Worse, still, it is
fellow Black people assisting him to do this criminal thing! So, the local tax
collector had a big problem with Alaka, my maternal great grandfather. He
reported to the colonial authorities at Ugwa nwa Apali, but it was of no avail.
It is easy to give a fruit to a monkey, but it is not that easy to tell the
monkey to surrender it, as the local saying goes. Great grandfather stiffly refused to pay the income tax and was
blacklisted, pending when he would be arrested and sent to prison after a judgment at Ugwu nwa Apali. That was their business,
he shrugged his shoulder, and used the fly whisk on his shoulder to drive away
the pestering flies and head for the village square at Arọmaragụ for a meeting.
Yes; Alaka
was a troublesome native for the British because he did not want to become a
slave in his own village by symbolizing this loss of rights through payment of
tax to the foreign ruler. Where are our balls? He would ask angrily. Imagine
strangers asking us to pay for living in our own village! I have not quite
understood this, he rounded off, aggrieved greatly.
I have no
doubts that this grief contributed to great grandfather’s death. He
didn’t hang himself, like Okonkwo does in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, but the mere fact that there were only few
villagers joining in the refusal to pay was indeed worrisome. Have we been that
castrated? He would ask no one in particular. As the days passed, it became
clear that he was on his own in this resistance and was doing so at his own
risk. No other villager would visit him at Ugwu nwa Apali when he was thrown
into prison by Nwa DC. The other villagers would go about their daily business
as nothing has happened, as if he was a mere rat! This pained him greatly and
had to start taking snuff exceedingly to ease the emotional pain.
I wish I had
met great grandfather. I only hear stories of him and his great deeds. It would
have been nice to sit on his knees to listen to his stories, to stroke his jaw and listen to his
radical ideas or learn proverbs from him. Today, as one remembers Alaka, one is
forced to ask where the men have all gone. And have they lost every part of
their manhood to the colonial masters?
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