- I was once a Kankara boy. I got lost but was found eight days afterwards. At the age of six, I had vanished from my village and that became a mystery that dogged me in the view of all those who knew me since childhood.
- The village of Abetse in its eerie primordial aura had gone silent. A primary one pupil of its prestigious primary school had been kidnapped or so to say. Life was then sacrosanct and so the village was turned upside down. Everybody felt a sense of loss and confusion. The village had only two unarmed policemen, who were duly informed. The soldiers who had camped at the outskirts of Abetse after their peacekeeping mission in the ATEM TIOU revolts were also officially informed about the loss. How was it possible for anyone to sneak in and kidnap the six year old son of a prominent farmer and politician?
- The mystery was overpowering. There was palpable fear in the air. The elements bore testimony to it. At night, the birds hooted an unusual sustained orchestral that exaggerated the fear of the unknown. At daytime, the surging harmattan winds held a cease fire.
- Conspiracy theories flourished. The only son of Shija Ihyembe was probably the target of bad and jealous people. Potent witchcraft could have been used to lure him to Mbakur. Shija himself was a prominent politician, an ardent follower of Wan-Nachi, Chief JS Tarka whose young pioneer had wrecked havoc in a neighboring village. Who knows? The followers of Sardauna knew where to grab him by the jugular. Shija’s only son looked good enough to be held captive for a ramsom. Furthermore, it could be that God himself may have chosen to judge the arrogant man who never shied from giving people a piece of his mind.
- But unknown to the people of Abetse, I had actually planned and executed my demise from the village. Call it a child’s play, if you like, but a pot-bellied, half-clad village boy with a dusty face save for his oily lips, had imagined that life outside the monotonous beats of the village could be more blissful. The opportunity struck when my senior half sister, Mary, had finished her holiday with us and was leaving for Gboko and I was asked to convey her metal box to the only bus stop in the village. I had hung around the bus stop even when she had dismissed me by tossing a penny to me buy sweets and go back home.
- When the final boarding of the bus was completed, I decided to stow awaythrough the back door of the bus and got myself a little place to sit on the floor. Mary had sat on a front seat well away from my hideout. The bus drove off for a seemingly endless length of time before arriving at its final destination of Gboko.
- Upon alighting at the motor park in Gboko, I triumphantly showed myself to my sister, announcing how clever I was to have joined the bus all the way from Abetse. A vicious slap across my dusty innocent face and a thunderous knock on my stubborn adventure-crazy head, brought me back to reality. All of a sudden, my amiable sister became hostile. She could not even accept my offer to convey her metal box to the residence of our brother in-law where she was visiting.
- That being my very first time in a moving motor vehicle and also to travel anywhere outside the confines of my village, I still considered my visit a huge accomplishment. Gboko itself was a place of wonder. It appeared the city was perpetually on rampage. Thousands of people milled around the motor park and the nearby market talking, arguing, bragging, babbling, boasting, insulting, cursing, laughing or screaming, all in a sustained cacophony that hummed several miles away.
- Gboko town had its unique spectacle too. Hawkers of drugs and other wares performed weird gestures; Ajasco dancers with exaggerated sexy twerks; snake charmers with shiny sneaky eyes; leopard tamers with smelly cow-hide costume; mad men with unabashed nude vulgarity; potters with extended body built; all, adding to the sensation of wonder Gboko had conveyed to my village mentality.
- Back in the village, many conspiracy theories had worked themselves to their apogee. My beloved mother, (God bless her soul), was a woman of courage and faith. As a wife of a prominent politician however, she did not buy into the notion of a rival politician taking his revenge on her husband by kidnapping her son. As a Christian too she did not believe that any witchcraft masterminded by mortals or lesser gods could harm her son. Where was the Almighty God that personally handed over this boy to her after 16 years of childless marriage?
- She was subjected to eight harrowing days and nights of psychological torture. She could neither sleep not pray. She was just numb and kept begging God silently to have mercy on her. Her husband, my indomitable father and a chain smoker had remained taciturn but had intensified his puffs on packets upon packets of his brand cigarettes, Bicycle. In his patriarchal aloofness, he even blamed my mother for my loss. How could she have allowed a tiny boy of six years to stray away from her presence for so long, if not for negligence?
- The quest for my whereabouts led them to the banks of the river Benue where my father paid some Jukum divers to find me dead or alive. After three days of fruitless search, every villager became really confused. There were no telephones in those days, and the nearest radio broadcast station was in far away Kaduna. My brother in-law with whom I was staying in Gboko had no other fast means of sending a message to my father in Abetse. And worse of all, Mary had also really underestimated the panic my disappearance had caused in the village. She had spent only one night and left me at home in Gboko with our inlaw for her boarding school. For whatever reason, which I did not know, it took my brother in-law eight solid days to send me back to the village in the custody of an adult escort.
- My return to Abetse one blasted afternoon after eight days was that of a folk hero. The village had laid prostrate before me like a vast corridor of honour, the sun had also stood still and the village urchins had yelled a victory song upon sighting me step down from the bus in the village’s lone bus stop. Clad only in my torn underwear that encased my peanut, the crowd soon swallowed me up and I instantly became a celebrity, with my playmates chanting songs of joy. I moved the entire village towards the direction of the Shija Ihyembe compound. However, a few meters away from the house, I suddenly broke lose from the surging crowd and sped like a gazelle gracefully into my mother’s arms. I wept. She wept too. Many other villagers also wept.
- It was with a deep sense of vicarious nostalgia that I watched the return of over 300 boys of the Government Science Secondary, Kankara on Channels Television. I join Mr President and other Nigerians in welcoming them home. Their return, like mine over 50 years ago, should help us sort our various conspiracy theories on the hydra – headed manifestation of insecurity. This will also enable us grapple with the new realities that may have arisen.
- A few questions may require some answers at this point. Are the Boko Haram insurgents really the masterminds of this kidnap as their leader, Shakau claimed in his promotional video? What role is the Mayetti Allah group playing this saga? Where were the boys taken to and how was it so easy to secure their release as opposed those of the Chibok and Dapchi captives? Many more complex issues arising from this experience can be carefully examined to enable know from where the next trajectory of insecurity would assail us.
- Once again, welcome home, the Kankara boys
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