12/12

I walked into the sitting room dancing happily to Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe’s popular track “ONUIGBO” playing. The song has always been one of my favorites ever since I could remember, and I listened to it whenever I traveled to Enugu to visit my grandfather.

A look at my grandfather’s face cast an irredeemable sadness in me that didn’t all stop my dancing that day but still makes me sad today. Tears ran freely down his face as his lips trembled vigorously like a man in a trance. My grandfather was uttering nothing audible, as fear and curiosity prompted me to tap his laps and inquire what the problem was.

My grandfather was startled because he was drowning deep in his own sorrows that he never knew someone was in the sitting room with him. He opened his eyes and also opened an ocean of tears that began to drop to the ground. I hugged him and realized that his body was trembling.

“Grandfather, why are you crying” was what I whispered into his ears as I made our embrace tighter?

“My son, this song reminds me of the events that happened between November and December 1948”, was the response he gave to me in an emotionally trembling voice.

Instantly, I became concerned about what could have made my Grandfather cry like this. I switched off the CD player and pulled aside the stool in front of my grandfather where a sat down slowly. He looked at my curious face and knew that nothing will ever make me go away without hearing the story. He bowed down his face and heaved a sigh of relief.

My son, he started, the colonial masters did us wrong on many fronts in this land. However, the atrocities that happened at Iva Valley in November 1948 happened before my eyes and its memories still bring tears to my eyes each and every time recall it. Our working conditions digging coal for the colonizers were worse than that stray dog. We worked six days a week without shifts in the most hazardous and inhuman conditions. The most dreadful part of it was that we couldn’t take care of our families from the peanuts they paid us. We pleaded and cried unto them to improve our welfare packages, but it all fell to deaf ears. We were angered and thus resorted to industrial action. We didn’t go on a strike; rather we slowed down the pace of work. Yes, who wouldn’t be angry? It is our land, our valley, our coal, and our labor. Yet, we were begging foreigners to eat of its fruit.

The go-slow method of industrial action soon turned into a sit-in strike. This angered the managers as they couldn’t also sack and replace the striking miners. On the 18th of November 1948, the British decided to bring in the police to remove the striking workers and replace them with new workers. The operation was commanded by Captain F.S Philips who met the striking workers with red clothes tied on their bonnet while singing and dancing. He perceives this as a challenge to his authority and fired many rounds of bullets at the workers killing 21 of them and injuring many others in the process.

To make matters worse, the Europeans refused to organize a burial ceremony to pray for the dead miners in any of their churches in Enugu, thereby frustrating their colleagues who survived the event. The 21 slain bodies were carried to various churches, and they shut their doors in the faces of their fellow humans, whose only crime was being African.

Led by Mazi Ojike Mbaonu and other intellectuals, calls were made to the British to permit a mass burial for the dead miners in any of the churches that fell to deaf ears. It was amid the frustration and wailing, where upon those locals decided to call upon God in their own way to bless and keep the souls of the departed. This was a clarion to Africanism and a wake-up call for our traditions.

The corpses were moved to Aba, where on the 12th of December 1948, prayers were done for them in the Igbo traditional way, and a mass burial was conducted.

Know this, my son, they never valued our lives now death. That is why the 12th of December each year is recognized and celebrated by most Igbo traditionalists worldwide as an emancipation day. My grandfather concluded.

My heart became heavy, and my love for those heroes who have laid down their lives to make mine better will never know any bounds.