Remembering Ugonna And The Port Harcourt Four

Written by Chigachi Eke

 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

(Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”)

The Facts
I have only one mission: To tell you the real Ugonna Kelechi Obuzor. If his murderers had accused him of academic incompetency, my response would be to tender his unassailable school record. But they claimed he was a cultist who stole laptop and Blackberry, leaving me with no option than to argue in material terms. Kindly note:
  One, in January 2012, nine months to his murder in Omokiri at Aluu, his father Messiah Obuzor bought two white Blackberry Bold 5 phones for two hundred thousand naira from Everyday Supermarket, Port Harcourt. One was given to Ugonna’s senior sister and the other to Ugonna himself. Ugonna’s laptop was not bought in Nigeria. Felix Aomreore, his father’s colleague at Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), returned from America with a top-of-the-line laptop, which Ugonna’s father bought for him. Those that killed him should think of a better excuse. Laptop meant nothing to Ugonna; in his family everyone had one. Charles Akalezi taught him to use computer while he was in primary. His killers stole his Blackberry.
  Two, on 7th August, two months to his murder, Credible Travels booked Ugonna for a week long Christmas holiday in Dubai. He was to lodge at Golden Square Hotel. His flight was EMIRATE Flight No: EK 0782, Boeing 777-300 ER; depart LOS 22nd Dec., 21:30 and arrive DXB 23rd Dec., 7.40 a.m. Return: Depart DXB 29th Dec., 7:35 and arrive LOS 12: 55 a.m. This should be his second holiday in Dubai. Ugonna was not the highway man his killers would like you to believe. He was never known to borrow money because he never lacked.
  Three, on 1st October, five days before he was murdered, Ugonna received his monthly allowance of fifty thousand naira from his father in a bundle of five hundred notes. Months after his burial his father recovered the sum of forty-four thousand naira from the same bundle in his box.  In five days his expenses were just six thousand naira. Frugality is not consistent with a cultist.
  Four, on 5th October, the day he was murdered, his father paid one hundred and forty thousand naira into the bank account of estate agent Ordu Ebenezer Chima. Ugonna had complained 3rd October that the house where he lived off-campus was burgled thrice. Ever security conscious, he avoided anything capable of upsetting his father who greatly suffered when Ugonna’s mother Jane died 2005. So when his boarding was robbed he immediately reported same to his father who paid Chima to get Ugonna a safer lodge.
Ugonna’s Last Two Days
The 3rd October 2012 was like any other busy day for Obuzor, security head at NDDC. He signed off and was chauffeured to his residence.  He walked through the front door only to stand face to face with a huge cake, “Happy birthday to our Daddy!”
  Ugonna and his three sisters pulled this punch.  Their father was truly grateful and said that the cake was beautiful. Who were the bakers? The Skippers at Tombia Street in GRA, he was told. Like olive branches around the table of the Lord, so his four children and their caring stepmother gathered around him as he cut his birthday cake. Not to be outdone he popped a bottle of Andre which he drank alone. Everyone else settled for non-alcoholic beverages as he raised them on strict abstinence. With music in the background he now enquired about his son’s studies.
  Ugonna raised a serious security matter with his father. The house where he had his off-campus accommodation was recently burgled. It was the third time thieves were to raid the place. Then get another accommodation fast, his father urged. At his father’s insistence he promised to engage an estate agent the next day. Continuing, his father told him not to sleep in the unsafe house till a safer place was got. Ugonna agreed again. Obuzor then rose for the night.
  A product of HARVARD Kennedy School, Massachusetts, Obuzor knew the value of education for young Africans. He lost Jane when Ugonna was eleven and his youngest daughter three. He took the decision to raise his kids alone. It was not until 2010 that he remarried. From the outset he made it known that all first degrees would be done under his watchful eyes in Nigeria.  Yes to postgraduate overseas, but not until then. Ugonna brought him joy. At eighteen he was a second year Geology student at the University of Port Harcourt. 
  Ugonna himself slept soundly through what was to be his last night with his family. At dawn Thursday 4th October he was up and ready to leave. His father offered transport money but he declined. It was just four days he got his monthly allowance. His father insisted and he obliged. He was again reminded to call during the day after seeing an estate agent.
  But Ugonna didn’t call. His father repeatedly tried his number but the line failed. Late that Thursday he got Ugonna’s senior sister on the phone. Ugonna should call back and say if the estate agent could help, he told her.  She promised to reach him with her own line. Hours later Ugonna called to say that an estate agent called Ordu Ebenezer Chima had found him a safer accommodation for a hundred and forty-thousand naira. He’d pay half since he intended sharing the new place with his roommate Lloyd Toku. No, his father objected, Lloyd was Ugonna’s friend and shouldn’t pay. His father offered to pay the full rent for the boys and asked for agent Chima’s bank account. By 8.47 p.m. Ugonna sent it by text message.
  Immediately he reached office Friday 5th October, Obuzor gave his driver the full amount to pay into agent Chima’s account. He then called his son to inform him that the money was paid but Ugonna’s line once more was not going. Students switched off their phones during lectures and he was unbothered. But when the line would still not connect he sent a text 9.59 a.m. confirming payment. Ugonna did not, and would never, reply because by this time his murderers had waylaid and robbed him, Lloyd, Chiadika Biringa and Tekena Elkanah at Omokiri.
  Obuzor was in a meeting with Mike Uto, a director from the Delta State office of NDDC, when his phone rang 12.40 a.m. A caller identifying himself as Michael Nelson asked if he was Ugonna’s father. He answered in the affirmative. Nelson then advised him to rush to the Emergency Ward of the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, UPTH, because that was where Ugonna was taken to. It was a bolt out of nowhere. What happened? Nelson would not give details except for him to hurry up. Director Uto insisted on coming along.
  In transit he called cautious Nelson for the umpteenth time before his informer volunteered that some of Ugonna’s friends were even killed. Nelson was off the line again and Obuzor had the presence of mind to call Ugonna’s senior sister. Rush over to the Emergency Ward of UPTH, he directed her, someone just called that Ugonna was there. He told her he was on his way. At his second call she said she was in the ward but yet to locate her brother. He replied he was now at Alekahia next to UPTH, she should continue searching. Then his jeep bumped to a stop in front of the ward. The male nurse he approached walked away without offering help. He called his daughter the third time and this time she was crying. Ugonna was dead. What…where was she? Mortuary?
  Stretched out on a drab table were the battered remains of his six footer son. On the floor were Chiadika, Lloyd and Tekena all dead. The air reeked of blood and burnt flesh. With his arrival evil from the crypt and grotesque lies took flight. The possibility that these boys were innocent now made sense. Questions none asked before killing them were now asked. His wild eyes wandered back to the table. It was Ugonna for sure. He could pick out his son anywhere. Did his very hands not nurse him into a man? It was Ugonna lying there dead.
  With a bottle of anointing water he immediately anointed his dead son. Then he knelt, “God it wasn’t for this that I chose to serve you. I did not bargain to have my only son killed serving you, I did not. Anyone who has a hand in Ugonna’s death should be killed in a manner worse than what was done to him.” He stood up and examined Ugonna’s extensive wounds. His son wore Afro hair but his killers smashed his head with such force that a piece of cloth was used to hold his head fragments together. Ugonna had suffered the most inhuman death imaginable. He broke down completely.
Epitaph
THERE was element of revenge in the manner Ugonna and his friends were killed. When anti-intellectuals in Boko Haram killed students, was that not the revenge of hateful ignorance against knowledge? What was the victims’ offence? “Infidels,”  “cultists;” how true? You can tell a lot about an accuser from his allegation. The perpetrators fooled none claiming that laptop and Blackberry valued more than four lives. But their claims only succeeded in condemning them as unhappy misfits trapped in poverty. Stripped of their humanity, by contrast, the victims still exuded wealth and good living.
  That moment when envious poverty by sheer number had prosperity at a disadvantage was symbolic; perhaps symptomatic of a future that must be avoided. Prosperity must pay for years of accumulated insults heaped on poverty: “Ninety-nine days for the thief and one day for the owner!”  The excessive cruelty, prolonged beating and burning of the dead were acts of vengeance. Ugonna and his friends died innocent victims of hate crime.
Eke writes from Port Harcourt