I Was Gen. Benjamin Adekunle, aka Black Scorpion shoe shine boy

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As a boy growing up in Sapele during the Nigerian Civil War, the Governor of Delta State, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, found himself playing the role of a shoeshine boy to the Nigerian war hero, Gen. Benjamin Adekunle, aka Black Scorpion. Here, he goes on memory lane to recapture the civil war era and to pay tribute to his dad who retired as a police inspector after 33 years in the police.

My father was Chief Edmund Dudu Uduaghan. He died some years back. He was a policeman for several years. He retired as Inspector after 33 years in the police force and became a chief of the Warri kingdom. I didn’t live much with my father. He was polygamous. And he lived of course with all the challenges of a polygamous family.

My grandmother took me up quite early at the age of 3. I lived most of my childhood life with my grandmother and later my aunty. But even though I was living with my grandmother, he did not forget us. He made sure he came to the village every Sunday to come and see me and look at my school work. My grandmother was an illiterate, so he came every Sunday to see how I was doing. And when I entered secondary school in Warri, he also visited on his bicycle.

Like the typical policemen of those days, he was somebody interested in education and he monitored my progress in education. And he was also very spiritual. He wasn’t highly educated. He read up to Standard 6 of those days from where he joined the police.

Looking back, I remember my father living in the police barracks in Sapele. Comparatively, the barracks wasn’t as congested as it is now. I remember an incident during the Nigerian Civil War and the Biafran soldiers occupied part of Midwest then and they took Sapele. All the policemen sent their families home. Because when the Biafran soldiers come, the first place they capture is the police station.

They were there for some weeks until the Federal soldiers came to liberate Sapele. Since the whole family had gone to the village, I was the only one living with him in the barracks. Opposite where we were staying was the Inspectors’ House which Brigadier-Gen. Benjamin Adekunle took over and was staying there. For the few days he stayed there, he would bring his boots out and I would go and pick it and clean it and shine it. Because he said he loved the way I used to shine my father’s shoes. He might not remember that now, but I remember it.

In those days, from what I know about my father, I cannot swear that they (police) were not corrupt at all. But they were far more disciplined, honest and dedicated. Corruption was less rampant. One aspect of the police which I think is missing and which I want the police to go back to is the aspect that has to do with intelligence gathering. I remember there was a special group of policemen, they didn’t put on uniform, but they were all over the town, they were in the beer parlour drinking, they were in the market, they were in the public transport and all that like the ordinary persons, but they were gathering information. And with that information, the police could pre-empt crime.

I hear that that is what the SSS is supposed to be doing now but I don’t know whether they are doing it effectively, because I don’t see SSS men in beer parlours, trying to gather information. I think they called it the E-Department or so in those days. If they can resuscitate that and let these policemen go and gather information or if it is the SSS that is supposed to be doing it, they should be working closely with the police. Something has to be done on information gathering. I believe that if that is done, the police would be much more effective. I am not too sure that their welfare is as good as what it was in those days. Comparatively, the value of money was stronger then. Now, we as governors virtually have to do most things for the police. And I don’t think it was like that in those days when my father was in the police.

My father’s favourite prayer and saying is Psalm 23: The Lord is my Shepherd. When I was going to secondary school as a boarder, I had to go and sleep in his house the night before and he woke me up and said: “My son, as you are going to school, I don’t have anything to give to you but I give you Psalm 23.” He just recited Psalm 23 for me. It was something he believed in strongly and it was something he passed on to us. The other thing about my father which I still find myself doing is that my father never eats alone. Except the children were not in the vicinity but he never eats alone. Even if you have eaten and he was eating, you have to go and sit with him and join him to eat.

My father was a very frank person and he could say it the way it is. In those days, the Okotie Eboh family had some issues in which one wife and a daughter sued the other members of the family and tried to claim all the entitlements and my father who was a customary court president then was invited by the court to come and testify on the customary aspect of the Itsekiri marriage. So, when he came, he told the court that “according to our customs, the wife is a man’s property to be shared and all the children must be part of the property, and that even the wife is also a property. Whether the man married in church or whatever, it doesn’t really matter, she is still a property. Therefore, all the man’s properties have to be shared among the children.”

It was historical and it helped the judge to resolve the case. It also helped the other children who had lost everything without getting anything. So, he was that kind of man who was not afraid to say it, the way it is. As a governor, I miss my father most when I have some challenges with some elders. As a chief, he would have been able to go to them and talk to them because they are age mates, instead of me having to go and face the elders. And I used to tell some of them (the elders) when they give me a lot of trouble, “It’s because my father is not alive! If he was alive, he would be the one talking to you, not me coming to sit with you and talk to you.”

My approach to elders is not to come out and publicly abuse them. I don’t do it and I don’t encourage anybody to do it. Because for somebody to become an elder, he has passed through a lot. And also, the elder is not coming to struggle for your position, so it’s not like he is coming to take your position. So, that threat is not there. There is a lot of wisdom in being an elder. What I do is to listen, because it is not everything an elder says, even if the elder is in opposition, that is useless. I try to listen and pick that aspect that would make the society better. Then those criticisms that are not constructive, I just put them aside. Even if you abuse me from now till tomorrow, I would not react. Some of my loyalists try to respond but I advise them that it is not necessary. Because the more you respond, the stronger they are. My approach to the elders is not fire-for-fire but water-for-fire.

Talking of fire-for-fire, my most unforgettable childhood memory was when my grandmother went to cane the headmaster for caning me at school. My grandmother was a very tough, no nonsense woman. If you were caned at school, you must tell her. And when you tell her, she would find out what made them to cane you. If you actually committed an offence and you were caned, she would do her own caning. She was such a disciplinarian. So one day, the headmaster caned me mercilessly.

In those days, I was the mail boy in the village and I used to go to the post office located in another village to bring in letters. It was here I developed a passion for stamp collection and before I give you your letter, I would beg you to let me remove the stamp. Everybody knew that I was a stamp collector. As a way of getting stamps we used to write letter to various companies for catalogues. One day, I was not in school and somebody else went to bring the letters from the post office and the headmaster saw one letter addressed to me and he asked me why I was writing letters to companies for business and I explained that it was just the stamp I was interested in. But for some strange reasons, the headmaster caned me seriously for writing to companies.

I went home and I had to tell my grandmother that I was caned. She didn’t understand why I was caned, so she waited till Sunday when my father came to the village and I told the story to my father who in turn was shocked that I should be caned for stamp collection which was a hobby for many school children. On hearing that I had done nothing wrong by collecting stamps, my grandmother waited for the headmaster who passes in front of our house on his way to school. She carried a chair and sat by the side of the road waiting with a long cane. When the headmaster was coming, he slowed down to greet my grandmother, but before he finished his greeting, my grandmother had whipped him, asking: “Who are you to be whipping my son for not committing any offence?”
That is one incident I cannot forget many years after.

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