Last week, the people of Emaudo-Ekpoma marked the thirty-sixth year of Professor Ambrose Alli’s demise. Our subject was the Governor of Bendel State, in the Midwestern part of Nigeria. He died on September 22, 1989, at the age of sixty. When the news of his mortal passage hit the headlines, many did not believe he was really dead. Reality sank on that fateful Friday, October 27, 1989, when the casket arrived in a Toyota Hiace Ambulance at the morgue of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
His wife and children, clad in navy blue outfits, arrived in Alli’s Mercedes-Benz marked BD9000K, apparently in despair. Then, it dawned on them that they would see him no more.
The wife went into the morgue to give a hand in the makeup of her loving spouse, with whom, in the bloom of love, had taken refuge at the Ososo Hills in the Akoko-Edo area of the state he had governed as governor. What a trying moment, she came out fighting tears, tears that reminded one of the austere covenant we had all entered with the Supreme Being. The truth is, we are born into this world, journeying from cradle to death, rich or poor. What a grim fact! It was this awareness that Umuobuarie Igberase, his kinsman, the legendary master storyteller, said, if men were God, they would have moulded us weird.
Coincidentally, as Alli’s remains were being laid into the casket, a group of people arrived with a pauper’s coffin to bury their dead. People around began to frown at the coffin. “Is that for Alli, our folk hero? Some queried, and a member of the burial committee who was standing by retorted, “No, it is not!” It did not just end there. A reporter who was also around asked why a person should be buried with that kind of coffin. He was told that whatever one went with it did not really matter, that a dead man was a dead man so far as he or she was not fed to the vultures. He was equally reminded of some traditional practices that frowned on grandiose funeral obsequies.
The convoy following Alli’s body departed for the airport. The funny thing was that many of the vehicles that were supposed to be in the convoy arrived at the airport in bits. They were cut off from the police escorts by the maddening Lagos traffic over which this writer waxed poetic a few years earlier: when you descend,/ It is a meteoric thus,/ In a circumference of rancor,/Phantoms move in defiance of phantoms,/Horns blare,/To the east the fold stumble,/ To the west they swagger,/The nation’s hold is ugliest.
At the Nigerian Airforce wing of the Murtala Mohammed Airport, the golden casket that housed Alli’s remains was carried into an Airforce aircraft, Hercules, C-130. Everyone went on board. Five minutes later, all alighted because the aircraft had developed minor mechanical faults. One could not help but wonder once more about our country’s defence capability. Ten minutes later, another Hercules aircraft came to the rescue. It was not comfortable at all. Perhaps it was premeditated to give Alli a parting military drill as a one-time colonel in the Army Medical Corps during the Civil War. The aircraft arrived in Benin City without a hitch.
In Benin, the crowd at the Airport was motley and unprecedented. A lady journalist on board the aircraft gave the audience a mirth. She slipped on her high-heeled shoes and rolled on the ground. However, she was quietly helped to her feet. Among those waiting to see the remains of Alli were his sworn political enemies. After all, dead men, they say, have no enemies. They must have felt discomfited and regretted that they did not bury the hatchet before the man’s mortal passage. At Ogbe Stadium, the crowd was unprecedented. It was more than the one that gathered for him some years ago when he was being inaugurated as the first executive governor of Bendel state (1979-1983). Now, he was a dead man lying in state for his beloved people to catch the last glimpse of him before he was committed to Mother Earth. Under the intense heat of the sun, little children, youth, and adults were brawling for any memento for remembrance.
Reverend Uwaifo, Provost, College of Education, Ekiadolor, near Benin City, rendered his searing requiem sermon about life, the vanities of men. He intoned, “All those in a position of power should do something by which they will be remembered”. Dignitaries who sat at the VIP section of the stadium, including the state C-in-C, were disconsolate and sober. It should be clear that not all who died are given this kind of royal burial. Forgive me if I have wrongly paraphrased the sermon out of context. Anyway, that was the gist of it.
Alli’s body would leave the stadium in Benin for the plateau town, Ekpoma. The great scramble began, and youths who wanted to accompany him home scrambled for seats in the buses provided free by the state-owned transport company, Bendel Line. In the process, some lost bits of their clothes and shoes.
Subsequently, Alli’s body voyaged into Esan country. Beginning from the town of Iruekpen, the road was crowded with human beings who were eager to see the last of their darling governor. Historically, whenever Alli visited home from the state capital, Benin City, it was usually in this town that he began to walk on foot. Often, he defied the comfort and fanfare of his convoy. This time, it was his remains, like a dummy, saying farewell to them. His body again lay in state at the Bendel State University, Ekpoma, for a commendation ceremony. Recall that the varsity was one of the worthy projects he created while in office. As commendation commenced, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, Alli’s political associate, walked into the area without publicity. Some persons who quickly recognised his presence cleared a seat for him. Unassuming, he sat at a corner of the pavilion under the scorching sun. For sure, that kind of price was not too much for a colleague.. As the wake began in Alli’s residence, many people arrived to partake in the act. Organised groups, such as Emaudo Youth Association, which came from Lagos for the ceremony, were barred from entering the venue. In the process, many were brutalised by the police, who said they were acting on instructions. As always, they exhibited the cold arm of the state, wielding truncheons and tear-gas canisters. Whoever gave the orders did Ambrose Alli a disservice. A great number of important dignitaries were either clubbed by the police or tear-gassed. The act kept many at bay and lured them into sleep.
The funeral oration and wreath-laying after his remains were lowered six feet in the bowels of Mother Earth were another great scene. It was held on October 28. Friends of the departed took their turn while the service chiefs, state governors, from Bendel to Akwa Ibom, engaged in a competition of wreath-laying. It was hard to tell who bested; no one could tell. The irony of it all was that it was this same set of people who wanted him crucified. Alli’s death confirmed Michael Collins’s lines in his “Walk a Black Night”. He wrote that: “life ends only a man’s life, not the life he had lived, not where he had belonged”.
• Akhaine, a Professor of Political Science, was a beneficiary of the free education programme of the honouree as Governor of the Old Bendel State, now Edo and Delta states.
