By Imaji jio ufumaka
When we were younger, the story made rounds of Ijegu magic and voodoo. It was told of children who became what they mimic after ; the children who imitated cripples, were crippled to become cripples. Those who joked about an one-eyed blind folks became as blinded as the folks ; not a few walked 'kplénģhe-kplénģhe' as they imitated a one-legged or 'one-k-legged' village man. The type of hopping walk where one leg seemed shorter than the other, in Yala is called kplénģhe-kplénģhe !
Many kids who met their waterloo of physical disabilities were said to not have been born in that way. However, we never heard of kids who became rich by imitating the rich!
Not minding the above, Many of Yala greats hail from that area.
Ijegu has produced many known and unknown academics and business moguls. (In)arguably, one of the best and perhaps, only Professor of Theater Arts, not a mere professor, he's the first and only one of Theater Arts, and the first in Nigeria, professing in Media and Communication.
The first, richest business man in Yala came from that enclave. He is called Ohimini Akpa.
Not surprisingly though, some of notables of Ishibori and Obudu migrated from Ijegu. Some of them have died, others are alive, aging, yet still relevant in the political discourse of Nigeria.
The first professor of economics, specializing in the business aspect, a very influential man, of national consideration, an Obudu man, has his ancestral base in Ijegu. One of the early business men, whose deals related to and with the northern part of Nigeria, an Obudu man by modern consideration, has his root traced to Ijegu-Yala. He has his children in the Governor Ayade administration and family.
A one time principal, a hardcore educationist and disciplinarian, a strong voice in Ishibori socio-cultural and political matters is of the Ijegu blood. In the same Ishibori, another business man, highly revered in the matters of Ishibori traditional, political and commercial considerations, has his roots at Ijegu.
While the kingdom of Ugaga boasts of political demagogues, Okpoma of business moguls, Yahe of both business and religious generals, Imaje for agriculture, Okuku as a center of commerce and epileptic industry, (no gratitude to the lack of government motivation), Ijegu-Yala, readily represents the academic and economic excellence of Yala nation!
In Ijegu-Yala, the soil anf waters are overly blessed with agricultural resources, such as rice, yam, cassava, fish, cattle rearing, and abundance of mineral resources such as iron ore, coal, magnesium, etc, which have been left fallow in the hands of all successive government, both at the state and national levels.
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Born May 3rd, 1943 to the royal family of Adā Ogaŕ Ajū of Ayíne in Oŕe of Ijegu-Yala, the Late Elder Fidelis Aju Ogar had quite a difficult life experience.
He began his elementary education in the old St Paul's Elementary School, Ijegu. Later, due to some inexplicable reasons, order than his mother who hailed from Ipuole-Okuku, he moved to the famous St Joseph's Elementary School, Okuku. That academic journey spanned from 1957 to 1963.
The boy, Fidelis, was a very brilliant kid who graduated with an 'A Pass Grade' in his elementary scholarship.
His father was a wealthy farmer who, ignorantly hated his children being educated in the white man's way of life. He thought that the school was meant for slaves who must be tortured. His son, Fidelis was of a royal blood. He mustn't be 'tortured' by any 'oyibo' man.
Ironically, Adā Ogaŕ Ajū was a wealthy man who preferred lending money to men who needed to train their children in the ways of oyibo education, leaving and encouraging his to farm the farms.
Many ancients towed this way of nativity. They sent the slaves and very obstinate or recalcitrant kids to school, while their beloved sons and daughters were reserved to inherit their wealth of farms.
Many seems to be the woes of the modern Yala man, when one observes that many of their heads and decision makers are a people of lesser genetic coloration, a clan of ex slaves' progenitors.
Uninterested in becoming the great farmer his wealthy father desiredof him, the young boy, Fidelis escaped to pursue higher education. He wrote exams to be admitted into the then 'University of Ogoja', Marco (Mary Knoll College), Okuku, but was denied that dream due to lack of finance.
It was this experience that compelled him to find a home in Enugu, where he became an 'okrika' trader.
Okrika is the collection of fairly used or not at all used clothings, exported from Europe to Africa, nay, Nigeria. It got its name from a town in Rivers State of Nigeria, known as Okrika Town. That's where those sets of clothes were first settled for onward distribution to other parts of Nigeria, especially, the riverine areas of Calabar, Port-Harcourt, Lagos and Bonny, etc.
Still interested in the acquisition of western education, Fidelis applied to the Institute of Commerce, London, 1965. Being the genius he was, he bagged the all-round best in Typing and Shorthand, a course, whose difficulty in understanding was likened only to Latin.
He was a multi-dimensional man. He enrolled and graduated from a Driving School, with an A-grade. In those days, driving schools were 'unpolitical', and was a big deal. Many drivers of the time began their driving lessons with an Austine lorry. A lorry that had no key as it is known today. It was rather wound about by an 'Z-shaped' iron rod.
In Okuku, there was one Driving School, along Igoli road, close to Ijaja Veterinary Cattle Ranch, an expanse of land, dedicated to the rearing and treating of cattle and other animals, the only type in the entire old Ogoja County, of the defunct South Eastern State of Nigeria.
Becoming a man, his family demanded that he took a wife for himself. His first wife of amongst, about three to four wives, was my aunt, my mother's late younger sister.
She was a pretty lady, an ebony black babe of very strict upbringing, having lived with my mother in Jos, the then capital of the defunct Benue-Plateau State.
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Aunt Rīwho was my nanny in Jos. She was the one to whom my mother left me with while she went about 'food-on-the-table' matters.
I was born slightly before the Nigerian civil war began. Due to some health challenges, mama escaped with me to Jos, where, upon being given raw tomatoes and raw eggs to drink, I got back my withering frame of a knee-jerking condition, unknown then, to Western medicine!
It was at Jos that, the trader called Fidelis Aju Ogar met with Aunt Rīwho Ehlebi, the daughter if a very famous Ijegu man.
Pa Ehlebi Oko was a strong voice, a man of blue blood, a great warrior and farmer, that was Aunt Rīwho's father. Pa Ehlebi married my maternal grand mother, Oganya Yegwa, after she'd lost her handsome husband, Wodah Wogor, also an Ijegu man, with an Ugaga mother.
Pa Ehlebi, a man of thorough discipline and love, took care of my mother, like a biological father would of his child. Mama grew under this new father, supporting in the early nursing of the first group of Pa Ehlebi's sons, who also, mama thought, initially, mistook her to be their father's daughter. It was such trust and confidence that influenced Pa Ehlebi to allow mama go with Aunt Rīwho Ehlebi to Jos.
After the marriage to Aunt Rīwho, Fidelis returned to Enugu, where with his new bride, was caught in the battle of the civil war and was forced to relocate to Anang land, covering the Abak, Ikot-Ekpene areas of today's Cross River State, then, in the South Eastern State geographical domain.
Elder Fidelis Aju had his first child, Oganya Juliana (named after both Fidelis' very loving mother, to whom he had a very intimate affinity with), and Aunt Rīwho Ehlebi l's late mother. The baby was born under the war circumstance of 1968.
In that war situation, while going to check his new born baby, the locals thought him to be an Igbo man, due to his skin pigmentation, being a very fair-complexioned man. He struggle to righle himself out, hiding in bushes and abandoned trenches, crawling in the thick of the forests, like a python, to locate his family, caught in the war web.
Finally, after being announced dead, to which an elaborate funeral was conducted for the 'late Fidelis', he returned home to Yala, like a prodigal son, to yet a bigger celebration. This time, it was a celebration of life, where an ox was butchered for the ceremony by his late wealthy father.
Daddy Fidelis Aju told me that, at his 'resurrection' and appearance in Yala, not a few natives evaporated in fear, running in different directions, not knowing where they were heading towards.
Upon settling in Yala, Fidelis preferred encamping in Okuku, where he hoped to continue with his okrika trade.
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In Okuku, coincidentally, after the war, was where mama pitched her tent. It was here, growing, that I became a close child-buddy to Uncle Fidelis.
Of all my mother's children, undebatably, I was the closest to Fidelis. He would invite me to his farm at a place, within the boundary of Ijegu-Yala and Woda. He simply would ask me to join him to yeŕo Woda (the farm at Woda), some kilometers away from Okuku. We often rode in his Honda 175 CD motor bike. He placed his machette or cutlass, pocketed in a bamboo case, by the side of his motor bike. Though, he advised me to sit properly, he would doubly assure himself that I sat properly.
He wasn't a sociable man. He avoided many people, a man not given to gossiping and drinking. He was a very deep man, a Rossicrucian (Amorc), who seldom talked or seldom is he found in the group of 'chatters'. I didn't know him for 'church-going' either. He read many books, especially of the metaphysics, of the science and signs of the higher registers.
He also read the Psalms, the Roman Catholic church's 'Simple Prayer Book'. For the Holy Bible, he had great interest in studying John's gospels.
While in his farm, he told me many stories and encouraged me, though, a very fragile mind/soul I was, to crave for deeper and higher things of life.
It was through his mouth I first heard of the name Francis Bacon. He told me that, that was the real William Shakespeare who chose that pen name, in order to hide from the Roman authorities. Many scholars know him by William Shakespeare, his surrogate name.
Adā Fidelis Aju Ogar thought me that the Christian Holy Book (Bible) was written by a collection of wise judges who, after observing that man's future would ultimately end in fiasco, if not checked, met together with the sole purpose of designing a code of conduct for man's uprightness. He called them the Judges of the Ages ; the wise sages.
Many stories, he often told me, of how the universe came to be. He seemed to have had the history of life in his palm.
Whenever we returned from his farm, he would ask his wife, my aunt, to dish my meal into his so that he and I would eat together. Though I ate with fear, he always urged me to 'feel at home' with him as a son to a loving father.
He told me stories of how Okuku was founded and how the present Okuku market came to be, having been founded by a man known as Pa Ogaŕ Agi. It was originally and in a derogatory manner, referred to as 'Idā Ogaŕ Agī (Ogar Agi's Market).
Following the controversies of my birth, about 40% of my early knowledge and historical evaluation of my biological father was told me by Daddy Fidelis Aju. He told me that I had "...the smiles, the artistic gift and playful simplicity of that Obudu man by the name of Teacher Andrew Valentine Ufumaka, who taught in St Joseph's Elementary School and Christ the King, Okuku and Okpoma, respectively". He would query, "don't let your mother's people to toy around with your future. You belong to that Obudu man...a man of very high mental capacity"!
While Fidelis Aju Ogar spoke the English-language as if he was amongst those that formulated it, not minding that he wasn't a university grad, his Yala accent sounded like an Yahe or Ebó man : he pronounced singular in Yala like it were a plural object. He was full of 'eh' , not 'o' in talking about an object, you would think he meant many of the objects!
My relationship with Elder Fidelis Aju was more like a son to his father, than it was with an uncle in-law. Whenever I was around him, he would take me to his rarely visited palor, sitting opposite me, he would tell me stories about each of his wives and caution me against the future, in matters that relate with women ; he warned me against admiring and lustfully thinking about a married woman. The spiritual penalty for such an offender was the hanging of a huge stone around the neck that keeps dragging the sinner down a bottomless ocean, he would warn and tutor me. That warning has stock like a strong gum.
Elder Fidelis was a very frank and vocal man, not loved by crooks and liars. He hated to be addressed as a friend to a crook. He handled his children with the love of a hen, covering its chics with its tender feathers, yet he whipped the cane on their backs like an Egyptian slave master would on an unwilling Israelite slave. He taught and practiced truth and industry before his kids.
He was friend to the Roman Catholic church priests, one could have mistaken him to be a cathechist. He said that the Roman Catholic priests knew the essence of life much more than any other religious sect or denomintion.
One of his main 'clerical' friends was the late radically rascal Rev Fr Patrick Idiku. The late priest was never shy of a public pbysical combat. He drove like a man constantly acting a James Bond's movie. Never will I forget: once, Elder Fidelis told me that Rev Fr Patrick "...was a priest under the ordination and likeness of King Solomon's libido"!
Their relationship was as close as that of the biblical David and Jonathan . But things went awry. It was so bad, being a man of absolute fluidity in honesty and straight forwardness, he revoked the name of his first son to whom he had named after his 'twin' friend, Patrick Odey Idiku.
The kid's name was all Patrick Odey (Aju). But in a swift of radical change, he announced a new name of John-Kennedy Ogar Aju on the boy. He was not ready to retain a memory of a frosty relationship nor was he going to be accommodative with the name of the man he'd told me in private, when asked about such a drastic change, a religious hypocrite!
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After losing an older brother to the internecine conflict and having been molested and harrangued by the Igbos in their land of Enugu, he decided to revenge by being recruited into the Nigerian military. Unfortunately, his parents and other relations were not ready to conduct a second burial over him. So, the recruitment ended the day it was conducted. His loving mother had ran to him while he was about jumping into the army truck at the Okuku Motor Park, at the verge of moving with the new recruits, holding her son's legs, weeping uncontrollably.
Years went by, due to his uprightness, he was made a member of the Okuku grade A Customary Bench of Judges. He combined that judicial exercise, from 1976-1979, with his learned okrika business and (mechanized) farming, 1986.
He delved in to the murky sea of Nigerian politics with his brand of political philosophy, "no be do or die o"!
He was such a disciplinarian, he refused to banter words with his opponents, preferring to forward his debate or/and opinion. He contested for the office of Councillor, Eastern Yala 1, under the then Ogoja Local Government Area. It was a keen contest, though he lost out, by very slim margin, yet he was the first to congratulate his opponent. He often contested under the very popular political parties : NPN, UNCP, SDP and until his demise, a member of the PDP.
As a revolutionary, he championed a move to give a radical posturing to the National Union of Road Transport Union Workers (NURTW), Okuku branch. That move ended he and his loyalists in police detention.
Elder Fidelis Aju Ogar was a man, bestowed with immense cerebral gifts. He was the Life Grand Patron of éwa yí inepā (NEPA Age Grade), Financial Secretary, NURTW ; Secretary-General, Club Y81 (Yala 81).
Earlier in elementary school, he was elected General Head Boy, St Paul's Elementary School, Ijegu-Yala, 1962-1964.
Leadership qualities seemed to have been his divine endowment : he was going to be coronated chief of Echumoga, 1978, but he eloped, perhaps, for personal reason!
The most dramatic was when his people, the people of Oré in Ijegu-Yala, conspired to 'capture' or 'kidnap' him in order to be crowned the village chief : Elder Fidelis developed the heels of a gazelle, suddenly landing, like an eagle on flight, in Makurdi, Benue State!
He was a man with many children, three wives and some subterranean concubines.
Amongst legion of his children, are Pastors John-Kennedy, sorry, Patrick Odey, Onah-Symon, Solomon (of solomonisland blogs), Comrade Emma Oko, Dyna (Peniel), Iyaji, et al.
His wives hailed from Ijegu-Yala, Ugaga, Igede, Okpragada and Okpame; he seemed, like Solomon of the Christian Holy Book, to attempt at having a full female representation in the key Yala enclaves, but there is how much and how far mere mortal can go!
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Elder Chief Hon Fidelis Aju Ogar was a traditional enigma. He loved traditions. He ate culture. He was healthier whenever he saw himself attending to his owo'óchī (the morning god) , the family god that, when appeased early in the morning, was believed to have blessed all members of the family!
As a mystery man, he loved the supernatural elements of life. He was more intrigued and excited when he found himself speaking with the gods, to which he considered was the African Religion. He did all of those, owing no apologies to neither the white man nor the priests of his God!
Not minding the above, like Okonkwo and his son, in the book, 'Things Fall Apart', before his death, right before his eyes, his sons and daughters had chosen the ways of the white man and his new styled religion, the Protestant Church.
He was ached. He turned and turned in the widening gyre, though the center couldn't hold any more for him!
The man died in him who couldn't withstand the modern revolution. The falcon refused to hear the falconer, mere anarchy was going to be released upon him.
Before he died, Elder Fidelis Aju Ogar had epileptically reconciled and blessed those children of his who were on his side of spiritual and religious divide.
To those who were not close by, nor had fully reconciled with him, he appeared in the ghost form, and spoke peace to them, by way of telepathy and verbal pronouncements.
Though things began to fall apart in his later years on earth, Elder Fidelis Aju Ogar was a great man who didn't die like Okonkwo!
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