Introduction
On 27
April 2002, the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) launched a well-attended
one billion naira “Development Fund” at Effurun. The reporter who
covered the
event, Abraham Ogbodo (The Guardian on Sunday May 5, 2002),
poignantly remarked that the ceremony was held in “the yet-to-be
completed school hall of Urhobo College Effurun”. UCE, as we
simply refer to it (motto:
aut optimum aut nihil: either the best or nothing), is among the
best known schools of its type founded in Nigeria in the 1940s to
provide
avenues for the educational advancement of the talented young in their
respective
communities. Urhobo College Effurun continues to fulfill this
aim,
and it stands today as the flagship of secondary schools in
Urhoboland.
The Urhobo College Assembly Hall where the UPU held the fund-raising
ceremony
was built from individual contributions of members of Urhobo College
Old
Students Association (UCOSA) when the late Edo State-born Dr. A. U.
Salami
was its president. UCOSA brought the hall (uncompleted now for
more
than twenty five years) to the present stage where it could be hired by
the
UPU for the launching of its development fund. But, remarkably,
Urhobo
College Effurun does not feature in the development plans of the
UPU!
Why
is this the case? Granted that the college was taken over
by governments in the madness of the oil boom years of the 1970s; still
this institution bears the name of the Urhobo nation and stands, it can
be argued, as the most outstanding and positive achievement of the UPU
in its seventy-year history. Urhobo College is also the
institution to which is linked the name, Mukoro Mowoe,
who without doubt, is the most revered leader the Urhobo nation has
produced.
As The Guardian newspaper reporter put it: Urhobo College
“became
a springboard for the intellectual empowerment of Urhobo youths… the
net
result is that Urhobo land which could not produce a Cambridge
matriculant
in the 1930s and early 1940s, is today a major contributor to the
nation’s
intelligentsia and in fact global scholarship”. Urhobo College
Effurun
symbolises Urhobo resilience, independence of spirit, determination and
what the Urhobo nation can achieve when the people work together.
These are reasons why the College should feature prominently in Urhobo
national development plans. In Nigeria’s present
environment of
private enterprise the government finally recognized its foolishness,
and
is now begging to hand over the schools it took over to their original
proprietors.
Now that good quality secondary schools are big business, has the UPU
seriously
considered taking back the proprietorship of Urhobo College Effurun? If
it
has not, then it should, to start with, by setting up a high-powered
committee
to seriously look into its feasibility.
Urhobo
College Effurun and Urhobo Interethnic Relations
At one level,
the relationship
between the Urhobo nation and its Itsekiri and Ijaw
neighbours in Warri is one characterised by conflict. At a personal level,
the
various peoples are closely interwoven, having intermarried extensively
for
many decades. So, it would have been obvious to the UPU that Urhobo
College Effurun could not be an exclusively “Urhobo” institution. The
founders did not intend it, in staff and student composition, to be an
ethnic institution. That may seem an odd
thing to say about a college founded and funded by the UPU and named “Urhobo
College”.
The evidence from early student admission and staff recruitment
policies clearly suggests that Urhobo College was “Urhobo” only to the
extent that the school was Urhobo home grown; it was UPU-inspired from
conception, staff development, funding to building of infrastructure
(including the land on which the college is built); there was no
missionary influence, no expatriates, no corporate or profit motives,
no governments. Beyond that the founding
fathers were more intent in the quality of the staff and students of
Urhobo College Effurun than in their ethnic origins.
Of course being on Effurun soil, Urhobo boys (and later girls as
well) were at a ‘catchment’ area advantage
over other ethnic groups, but there was no evidence of active exclusion
of other nationalities in student admission. In
other words right from inception, the founders operated an open
multi-ethnic institution. Two some notable examples may be cited as
illustration.
Two early
recipients of the UPU-sponsored undergraduate scholarships (meant for
talented secondary school graduates to go to the University College
Ibadan and return to teach at the college) were S.J. Okudu and T. N. Tamuno,
who years later became, respectively, Registrar and Vice-Chancellor of
Nigeria’s premier University
of Ibadan.
They were both Ijaw, one from the
Western and the other from the Eastern region. Okudu returned to UCE to teach in fulfillment of
his scholarship bond and rose to the post of Vice-Principal. Okudu later returned to U.I. where his talents
as
university administrator were immediately evident.
Importantly, Chief S. J. Okudu
became the Foundation Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the governing
Council of the new Delta State
University, Abraka. Tekena. N. Tamuno having
had a
brilliant undergraduate career in history at the University College
Ibadan, went on to distinguish himself as an academic and he is today
one of Nigeria’s most important men of letters. The
Senior Tutor and History Master when I entered Urhobo College Effurun
in 1951 was no other than Chief Ikime, from Eastern Urhobo, now Isoko. Chief Ikime
is the elder brother of the brilliant Ibadan
historian, Professor Obaro Ikime. The issue of
whether Urhobo College Effurun was conceptualised
as an ethnic institution is worthy
of reflection. If for nothing else, it
enables
me to suggest that the founding fathers of UCE and the school itself
contributed to interethnic harmony in the 1950s, at a time when
interethnic tensions were already rising in the Warri area. I think it is a pity that the early products
of UCE, many of whom are now senior citizens
and still very much around and willing to play a mediator role, have
not
been pressed into service at attempts to resolve the various crises in
the
Warri area.
Multiethnic
Student Body of Urhobo College Effurun
The late Chief
Arthur Prest when giving a UCOSA annual
after-dinner address at Idama hotel, Okumagba layout Warri, raised the issue of the
name “Urhobo College.” Chief Arthur Prest,
an
eminent lawyer, a member of the Itsekiri Land Trust and former Federal
cabinet
minister, suggested that the appellation “Urhobo,” for an institution
that
was clearly multiethnic in staff and student composition, was
anachronistic. Prest
was right certainly with respect to the multi-ethnic composition of UCE
students. On this point, perhaps you will
permit me to drop the names that come to mind of some illustrious
non-Urhobo members of my 1954 class as illustration: Julius Ifidon Ola (JIO) is
a native of Ora in present day Edo
State. After
Urhobo College Effurun, Ola entered Fourah Bay College, Sierra
Leone for a Durham BA.
He later joined the civil service and after the Midwest Region
was created out of the Western Region in 1963, he was one of the
youngest among the first set of Permanent Secretaries to be created; he
thus became a pillar in the new Region’s administration.
JIO is now owner and CEO of JIM Travels, a travel agency with
branches throughout Nigeria. Felix Ejebba Esisi is Itsekiri and the present head of Okere Itsekiris,
the opposite number if you like, to Chief Benjamin Okumagba,
the Otota of Okere
Urhobo Kingdom. Okumagba
and Esisi are both UCOSAites
and leaders on opposite sides in the intractable Urhobo-Itsekiri crisis
at Okere in Warri. Before
becoming the leader of his people, Esisi,
who with Benjamin Okumagba played football
on the same side in the first eleven for Urhobo College Effurun and was
one of Chief Daniel Okumagba’s most valued
players, had had a successful career in the NNPC. Benjamin
Maku is also a prominent Itsekiri who took
a degree from the University
of Lagos sometime after
Urhobo College Effurun and then joined the Central Bank
of Nigeria
where he rose to be a director and head of Banking Examinations
Department before retirement.
The most gifted
member of the 1954 class was undoubtedly Christopher Orji, an Igbo, from which side of Niger
I am not able to say. Orji
was delightfully irritatingly eccentric and brilliant in mathematics. He, Ojaide and
Matthew Scott-Emuakpor were the first
Urhobo College Effurun boys to enter UCI in 1957. We
used to think that Orji saw the answer to
a mathematics problem laid out as soon as he set eyes on it. To live up to his eccentric reputation, Orji claimed to have read the Bible from Genesis
to Revelation over and over again! He
later worked with Shell Development Company. Outside
my class of 1954, there were many other non-Urhobos in UCE. Commoners rubbed shoulders with royalty in
people like the late Prince Magnus Eweka, who had a great
career as a school boy half miler (880 yards). He
quickly and brilliantly rose to the top rank in the Police Force
before his tragic death at an early age. Gbenoba
(a prince of the Agbor royal family at Boji Boji), I
remember, was a junior in Orerokpe House
where I was prefect in 1954. This is just to give a flavour of the ethnic plurality
and ethnic background of the early students of UCE.
In his
after-dinner address to UCOSA that I referred to, Prest
called on the old students to consider changing the name of Urhobo
College Effurun, to reflect the cosmopolitan outlook of the college. The old students took Prest’s
point seriously, but after deliberation, decided on the status
quo, many
taking the view that if the name did not make the college any less
multiethnic up till then, there was no reason to expect it to in years
to come. Besides, the name “Urhobo College
Effurun” like the
college itself had a critical significance in Urhobo history. It seems to me that the positive multi-ethnic
thrust of Urhobo College Effurun in its early days ought to be fully
appreciated in looking at Urhobo relations with other ethnic groups in
this our crisis-ridden region of Nigeria.
Strategies
for Urhobo Cultural and Educational Emancipation
Urhobo needs to
project a different image of itself in the eyes of other Nigerian
nationalities, as a major ethnic group being among the top ten most
populous. The UPU under the inspiring
guidance of Mowoe did a lot to improve Urhobo’s
image from being predominantly associated with the fraud phenomenon
known as “Urhobo wayo” (brain pass
brain na him be
wayo) to the present position of
relative respectability. But
there is still a lot to do; Urhobos must take steps to change its
present
image of a minor tribe harassing Itsekiris,
instead
of the major nationality that it is in Nigeria. Perhaps it is for this purpose that the
present UPU leadership has thought of the Urhobo development fund that
I referred to earlier. Personally, I was
impressed by Chief Okumagba’s statement at
the occasion that the problems arising from the leadership tussles
leading to his emergence as President-General
of UPU are now things of the past. I
sincerely
hope that under Benjamin Okumagba’s
leadership,
the Urhobo nation can look forward to a future of united commitment to
the
course of meaningful development. One would hope that the Urhobo
development project will serve to mobilise
and unite all Urhobos behind Chief Okumagba,
just as the Urhobo College Effurun project of the 1940s did behind
Chief Mukoro Mowoe in a way that no other Urhobo leader has experienced
since. Permit me to dwell a little on some of the areas of Urhobo
national life that the UPU has earmarked for development.
I have chosen to expatiate on two of these because of my
personal concern for the conservation of Urhobo culture as a critical
step towards our self knowledge and self respect:
i.
Ultra-Modern Urhobo Cultural Centre
One of the
projects outlined by the UPU is an ultra-modern cultural centre. The idea of such a centre is a good one. But what purpose will it serve?
Urhobo culture (meaning the totality of the peoples’ accumulated
experience as expressed in their languages and dialects, religions,
medicine, poetry, dance, architecture, art, technology, festivals etc.
and handed down during centuries of life in Urhoboland), is alive among
the people in their towns and villages. It is not something that can be
collected and housed in a cultural centre. Perhaps
a cultural centre built in an urban area like
Warri, Sapele or Ughelli, can serve the
purpose of providing facilities for the display, from time to time, of
aspects of our diverse cultural heritage. This will be for the benefit
of the elite who live in the diaspora, and
tourists. But, if we do not take steps to
preserve the “culture” back home where it is functional and alive today, a cultural centre will have nothing to display tomorrow.
ii.
Urhobo National Museum
An Urhobo
National Museum
is very important proposal as a way of promoting Urhobo culture. Let me explain why. In
Greek mythology, Muse, the daughter of Zeus, was the goddess of
learning, especially the arts, poetry and music. This
myth has survived into modern usage; each branch of the arts is
believed by some to be under the guidance of a Muse, e.g., Clio
is the Muse of history, Euterpe
of music, Terpsichore of dance. In
Urhobo art, the idea of the Muse also exists and it was not borrowed
from the Greeks! More likely, it is a remnant of ideas that reached Greece
by diffusion from ancient Africa through Egypt. In Urhobo, perhaps the most concrete
expression of the Muse is Uhawha,
the spirit that inspires and protects all who engage in Udje, the
somewhat dangerous satirical poetry/song/dance form for which Ugbienvwen and Udu
Clans are famous. Uhawha is believed to intercept the invisible
missiles that may be fired at Udje performers (composers and performers) by
enemies who are scandalised by the
incisive satire of Udje
poetry. And, without prior homage, Udje, once it
has been
evoked and taken possession, may refuse to leave the performer and may
‘sing’
or ‘dance’ him/her to exhaustion. I am Ughienvwen and
not
wanting to take Uhawha’s name in vain, I
shall
call on you to join me in paying a brief formal homage to Uhawha thus:
Uhawha je….je! Uhawha
je….je!!, Uhawha
je!!!
How can a museum
promote Urhobo culture? A museum can be
used to teach Urhobo culture because it should store old illustrative
artifacts including old manuscripts on different aspects of Urhobo
history and culture. A museum can also
serve as a repository for Urhobo repatriated sculptures, paintings,
films or other works of art about or by Urhobos that are now displaced
outside Urhoboland in the diaspora. I am reminded here of Professor (Chief)
Perkins Foss, the Oyibo-Edjo of Evwreni, an
internationally renowned American art historian and world authority
on Urhobo art who, in collaboration with our own brilliant and erudite
Bruce Onobrakpeya (D. Littt.
Honoris causa,
Ibadan), Nigeria’s
topmost creative fine artist, will be putting up an exhibition of
Urhobo art in New York
in 2003. After that event, scholars within
and outside Nigeria
will want to know where Urhoboland is and how to have access to its
cultural artifacts in their natural surroundings. So,
there is that very important function of a museum, but an Urhobo
National Museum
should be linked directly to serious studies of Urhobo culture in an
institution where such studies can be pursued without hindrance. I
suggest below that a Mukoro Mowoe
University will serve as
that kind of institution.
iii.
Shrines are Museums
When we think of
establishing an Urhobo National
Museum, we should try to
understand museums in their broad historical context.
The word “museum” derives from “Muse” as described above. The original museums date back to ancient Greece
and were in fact shrines built to store mnemonic objects of natural
history, religion and the arts. In due
course of time, the shrines built to the different artistic muses
evolved into what are now modern museums; these are in fact buildings
or places containing artifacts of knowledge. Urhobo communities have
numerous museums called shrines (edjo)
built to various gods and goddesses. In
fact what most characterises the tarditional religious life of the Urhobo people
are numerous shrines in the various towns and villages.
The shrine is a sacred place of worship, but in most cases, it
also houses the history of the village or community and its evolved
relationship with neighbouring communities. For example, the Ughienvwen
have a clan deity called Ogbaurhie (a river goddess). Her
shrine is at Otughienvwen.
Our oral history of origin has it that when the man Ughienvwen left Ogobiri on the Atlantic coast in present day Bayelsa for whatever reason, a woman companion
in Ughienvwen’s entourage, disguised Ogbaurhie as a
baby on her back. It was the goddess that
guided Ughienvwen and his followers to
safety at Otughienvwen after wandering for
years in the rivers and creeks of the Niger
delta. Today, Ughienvwen
and Ijaws have very close, most of the
time, friendly relations. I am told that
artifacts of this history are evident in the Ogbaurhie
shrine.
The political,
legislative and judicial instruments for the administration of Ughienvwen were traditionally in the hands of
members of four Ogbaurhie cults: Ade (Administrative/Ceremonial/Judiciary
cult), Igbun-Oto/Igbun-Eshovwin
(Military/Law Enforcement), Ebo (Medicine/Philosophy).
These are the structures of traditional Ughienvwen
governance. Admittedly, there is a
limitation to the potential usefulness of traditional shrines as
institutions for the promotion of cultural education; that limitation
is their relative inaccessibility. Often,
only the priests can enter them! The only non-initiate
that I know of who has ever been allowed into the Ogbaurhie shrine at Otughienvwen
is our intrepid Oyibo-Edjo of Evwreni, Chief Perkins Foss!. Nevertheless, I believe that any meaningful
development
of museums in Urhoboland should be comprehensive and must include the
critical
recognition that our traditional shrines are important components of
Urhobo
national heritage. We must develop
strategies
for their preservation and restoration. In
this
regard, we should challenge ourselves to be, at least, tolerant of the
religious
institutions of our forefathers. Or, are
we,
now converts to foreign religions (which owe their foothold among us to
the
tolerance, in the first instance, of our traditional religions), going to be intolerant of the very kernel of our
culture? The religions of our forefathers
constitute the core
of Urhobo culture, history, spirituality and morality.
Efforts at intellectual appreciation of our culture must include
a
positive scholarly engagement with the practitioners, the ebos who are in fact the
conservationists,
of Urhobo traditional religions.
The
environment in Urhoboland is intricately interwoven with Urhobo culture. Nowhere are the people more part of their
biodiversity than in Urhoboland, nowhere is the poetry, oratory, sculpture, festivals more a product of the
peoples’ interaction with the environment, nowhere is any talk of
environmental protection without conservation of the peoples’ culture
more of an empty talk. What we need is an
Urhobo community university in which scholars of different persuasions,
Urhobo and non-Urhobo, can undertake rigorous pursuit of, among other
things,
various aspects of Urhobo culture without having to fight for limited
space
with groups who have had the advantages of headstart
and larger numbers. In Nigerian
universities
Urhobo scholars and their attempts to introduce Urhobo cultural
studies,
are often victims of the form of democracy that is unique to a country
of
many nationalities in which the minority has to endure the tyranny of
the
majority.
Mukoro Mowoe University
Below, I try to
argue the case for a Mukoro Mowoe
University in Urhobo
heartland. Such an important project will unite all Urhobos behind the
UPU. When completed, a Mukoro
Mowoe University
will also act as a catalyst for the scholarly pursuit of Urhobo
culture, history, language and environment in the way that Urhobo
College Effurun
proved to be the catalyst for intellectual upsurge among Urhobo young
men
and women. In fact the ideas embodied in the one billion naira
development
fund launch will be best actualised in a Mukoro
Mowoe University
project. Such a university will also serve
as a befitting memorial to our hero, Mukoro Mowoe.
The call for a university in Urhobo heartland is not a frivolous
call. It has parallels in other parts of
the
world among minority groups struggling for cultural identity. Such institutions have served as critical
strategies
for the propagation of latent energies and talents among minorities
trying
to discover who they are. The preservation
of
Welsh culture and language was a major impetus for the foundation of
the
National University of Wales, with University Colleges in Cardiff, Aberystwyth and Bangor; these great institutions
are imbued with the Welsh character, but, they are also world famous as
centres of learning and sound scholarship. The Welsh are a minority ethnic group in Britain
with a similar population size to Urhobo and like the Urhobo, poetry
and song more than the visual arts are their major traditional forms of
artistic expression. When one explores the
prodigious complex Udje poetry of the Udu and the Ughienvwen,
one cannot help imagining that had Dylan Thomas been born in Owahwa instead of a Welsh village, he might have
been a great Udje exponent! The Welsh
universities helped to preserve and update the Welsh language and hence
Welsh culture, by providing opportunities for its scholarly study. There was a time when under English
‘colonialism’ the Welsh language all but died out of existence; its use
was prohibited under British colonialism. Today, the Welsh are very
proud of their language.
But before I
expatiate further on the case for a Mukoro
Mowoe University,
let me go back a bit to the origins of Urhobo College Effurun.
The
UPU and Urhobo College Effurun
The book by
Chief T.
E. A. Salubi with the intriguing title The Miracles of an original thought (1965), is a
story of
Urhobo College Effurun by an eminent Urhobo man who was there from the beginning when
the college
was established in 1946. In the brief
account
on the subject of Urhobo College Effurun in The Member for Warri Province. The life and Times of Chief Mukoro
Mowoe 1890-1948) by Obaro Ikime (1977), the author acknowledges Chief Salubi’s account as his main source. A detailed
account of this great historic institution and its makers remains to be
written. I do not intend to go over the grounds already adequately
covered by Chief Salubi and Professor Ikime. When one
looks at the records, one thing is certain: it was a miracle that
Mukoro Mowoe was able to mobilise a group
of people who were at that time nothing but a tribe of unconnected
clans behind a common project. Clearly,
this was due to the personality of the Mukoro Mowoe and also because
this happened at a time when education was an intensely felt need
throughout Urhoboland. I will add that the
founding of the UPU and the founding
of Urhobo College Effurun were very closely interwoven; thus we can say
that
the desparate need for education of Urhobo
youths
throughout Urhoboland was the major impetus for the founding of UPU. One rendition of the aims of the UPU to be
found
in the book by Ikime (p.88) explicitly
said:
The Union seeks to promote
education in Urhoboland because it strongly believes
in the immense advantage of education in
social and economic structure of society.
That is why I
maintain in this lecture that Urhobo College Effurun
has been an intimate part of Urhobo history in the last seventy years.
Urhobo College Effurun was the much needed foot in the door for
advancing the educational aspirations of Urhobo youths. That is why I
maintain that UCE should continue to remain on the development agenda
of the UPU and why it should serve
as a template for the establishment of institutions of higher learning
in
Urhoboland.
As we learn from
Salubi and Ikime,
the Urhobo
Brotherly Society that later became the Urhobo Progress Union was
inaugurated
in Chief Mowoe’s house on 3 November, 1931
with
Omorohwovo Okoro
from
Ovu as its founding president.
Mukoro Mowoe was elected Vice-President at that meeting. Within three years (1934), Okoro had stepped down for Mukoro Mowoe as
President of the Society which eventually became the Urhobo Progress
Union. As early as 1935, a year after
Mowoe took over as President, the Lagos branch had put education
for Urhobo youths on the agenda of the UPU by proposing the
setting up of a secondary school scholarship fund for Urhobo boys and
girls under the auspices of the Union. Other
branches had other conflicting ideas on how to advance education in
Urhoboland; this is not hard to imagine for disparate groups of Urhobos
trying to decide on a common course of action! It took eleven years for
issues to be resolved and for the foundation of Urhobo College Effurun
to be laid in 1946. Resolving the
potentially fatal conflict between the
Lagos branch (the
progressives) and the Warri, the home branch (the conservatives)
appeared to have tested Chief Mukoro Mowoe’s
leadership qualities to the limit. Ikime tells us that Mowoe toured the entire
country in 1946, to explain to the many
Urhobo people in the diaspora (urhie), the aims of the
education scheme. Here is a widely quoted
passage from a lecture he gave at one stop in his tour, which may in
fact be used today as the clarion call for any Urhobo National
education project:
“My belief is that
every being
born into the world has a duty to perform to his people …. any one of you who should fail to play his or her
part for the upliftment of our dear tribe,
it were better that she or he had not been born at all”.
And, lamenting
the absence of Urhobos from among the political leadership in Nigeria
in 1946, he asked rhetorically,
“out of these (potential
rulers of Nigeria)….any
Urhoboman among the names? If no, why?”
His
own answer was precise – lack of educational opportunities for Urhobos. His own analysis was accurate
“….otherwise, I think if not more, we have the same
equal brains.”
If one examines
the quality of intellectual attainment of Urhobo scholars today, Mukoro
Mowoe was right in his assessment that given the same opportunities
Urhobo “brains” can hold their own among other Nigerians.
Some
Early Urhobo College Effurun Personalities Recalled
(This picture is a rare porttrait of Mr. M.
G. Ejaife, first Principal of Urhobo College, Effurun. Click at the
picture to see its features and further comments. -- Editor)
While the UPU
branches were engaged in these debates, two Urhobo young men had been
sent for further training in preparation to take charge of the new
college: M.G. Ejaife went to Fourah Bay College Sierra
Leone where he took a Durham
degree. The other was the brilliant E.N. Igho who went to Downing
College, Cambridge
University in England,
where he read Biology. Ejaife
had earlier studied at the famous St. Andrews
College Oyo. At Oyo he became a contemporary of some of the great names
in education in the Western Region of the 1950s. the late Chief Michael
Adekunle Ajasin,
who became Governor of old Oyo state and later the famous leader of
NADECO
was one; another is the Rev. Alayande,
famous
Principal of Ibadan Grammar School and teacher of the great Bola Ige. Rev. Alayande now in his 90s is leader of the Yoruba
Elders
Forum. Had he lived, Ejaife would have
been 90
at the time of this lecture. Ejaife became the first Principal of Urhobo
College
Effurun, and Igho his deputy.
A comprehensive story of these great Urhobo teachers
is yet to be written. Ejaife
was an all round scholar, a polymath / polyglot – Latin and Greek,
English
literature, English language, music, mathematics, history, geography,
several
Nigerian languages, the most learned man I have been influenced by. E.N. Igho was M.
A. (Cantab) and he never allowed too many
opportunities
pass without him reminding you of the fact: “I am a Cambridge
master, you know; your principal is only a bachelor’, he was known to
say. Then there were men like Ikime, the History Master and Senior Tutor in
charge of admissions, J.G. Ako who was
already a teacher at the Urhobo Collegiate, the predecessor of Urhobo
College Effurun. Daniel Okumagba was the tough Games and Maths Master of Urhobo College Effurun who later
became long serving Treasurer of the UPU and prominent politician of
the Shagari era.
Urhobo College
Effurun, in the early years was famous, but not for the number of
straight A’s or Grade Ones it produced in the Senior Cambridge school
certificate examinations. It was famous in sports. But what was
remarkable is that UCE graduates went out to excel in fields which
could not have been predicted from their time in UCE or even from their
performance in the school leaving certificate examinations. Some became well known scientists, even though
the only real science subjects in which we had any exposure in the
early years were Biology and Chemistry, without laboratories and no
Physics at all. Our biology classes
consisted of leisurely strolls with E. N. Igho
through what could be described as Urhobo College Effurun Botanical
Gardens, on the other side of the Effurun-Sapele
Road facing UCE, the site on which Mid-West
Inn was later built, now a concrete jungle of shops and motor parks. Igho taught what
is nowadays called “integrated biology”, during which we were
introduced to the biodiversity of the Niger Delta Wetlands or what is
locally called Ivwori.
Remarkably,
however, the first Urhobo College Effurun graduate to earn the PhD did
it in the field of genetics from the University
of Cambridge in 1964. His name is Matthew Scott-Emuapkor
who became the first professor of genetics in the Department of Botany
at the University of Ibadan
in 1978. And, yours sincerely, the first
Urhobo College Effurun product to become full university professor in
any field of study, achieved it in pharmacology at the University
of Ibadan in 1977. Again,
the first Urhobo College Effurun product to qualify in Medicine, Prince
Sunday Mebitaghan was a member of my class
of 1954. Dr. S. B. Mebitaghan
is a very distinguished public health specialist based in Benin.
Scott-Emuakpor' was a brilliant scholar and
an all rounder. I know because he was my
classmate and there was usually a baton change between first and second
positions between us – Matthew due to his talents in science and
mathematics; my interests at that time were more in the arts, Latin and
English. Matthew held the Greyer Cup
records in the triple jump (16 feet 7 and
half inches [1953]), and high jump (6ft 4 and half inches [1954]). He also excelled in long jump as well as being
a member
of Chief Daniel Okumagba’s tough football
first
eleven. It was something of a surprise to
many
of us who admire him that Matthew did not pursue any of these
tremendous talents
later in UCI or Cambridge.
Here now, permit
me a little immodest indulgence! On my first day in the “A-Level”
Physics class at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology
Ibadan, in 1956, the Physics master watched me from a distance while I
tried to work a Wheatstone bridge experiment. I
did not know one end of the contraption from the other, having never
set eyes on one before, nor could I make head or tail of the typed
instructions. I began to sweat! Finally,
the master came round. Mr. Woodcock was a
rough looking Englishman with a reputation from Umuahia
or CKC for tough no nonsense attitude towards students.
I thought he was going to throw me out! He did not. Instead he
glared at me and warned I could never pass physics at any level in two
years without a previous “O”-Level pass in the subject.
From that day on Nelkon “A
Level” Physics became my constant companion.
I was going to show him and I did! I have a certificate to show
that
I passed GCE “A-Level” Physics in 1958. What
Urhobo College Effurun transmitted to its early products was not so
much
dazzling knowledge in specific subjects, but broad education; a recent
Cambridge
alumni leaflet humorously defined education as “what is left after all
that
was learnt has been forgotten”. A strong
belief
in one's ability to make the most of limited facilities was an
important
part of the education. I could, if it was
appropriate
to do so, name some great pioneer students of Urhobo College Effurun,
eminent
men in Nigerian Society today, who when they left UCE, no one expected
much,
but who later attained distinction in law, politics, administration,
the
military, academia and in the literary world.
The robust
ability to make do with little could also have been an attribute of my
generation of Urhobo College
students, many of whom had come to Effurun from all sorts of primary
schools where some were practically self-taught. I,
for example, began my education career in Owahwa
in 1944 in a primary school appropriately called Ifaka Providence School, after its
founder, Mr. Ifaka of Ughelli/Evwreni. Ifaka was an
entrepreneur, a man who recognised the
educational needs of rural Urhobo youngsters and started a chain of IP
schools in the Ughelli area.
With school fees of three pence per month paid irregularly, Ifaka did not hire too many teachers. In Owahwa, Ifaka was virtually the only teacher. He rode into the village once or twice a week
on his Raleigh Bicycle and that was when the classes held.
The rest of the time, we were engaged in the other traditional
processes of education, fishing, wrestling, singing, dancing. I was luckier than most because I had access
to informal instruction from two cousins who were in school at Otughienvwen. By
1946, I had advanced to primary 3 and had become Ifaka’s
assistant teacher on those days when he did not show up! This was
before I graduated to the famous Baptist School Oginibo
where Urhobo greats like Gamaliel Onosode, boardroom guru and 1999 APP
presidential candidate and the late Chief Clarkson Majomi
were also primary school boys. That was where the Rev. (Dr.) Paul Ebhomielen, the mentor to whom I owe my
advancement in education beyond the primary school level, was
headmaster.
The
Case for a Mukoro Mowoe University
The name Mukoro Nowoe is revered everywhere in Urhoboland not
just because he was the first President-General of the UPU but more
importantly for his outstanding selfless achievements for the Urhobo
people. The most outstanding of these achievements which are there for
all to see are in the field of education. His
inspiring role in establishing Urhobo College Effurun is unparalleled
in Nigeria.
But, not many people know that it was Chief Mowoe too who succeeded,
almost single-handedly, in persuading the colonial government, I am
sure against strong opposition from certain quarters, to move
Government College Warri built in 1945 from Warri to Ughelli in Urhobo heartland.
Chief Mukoro Mowoe died on 10 August 1948. In
the more than half a century since then, how have we commemorated him? Let me draw attention to some examples of the
way in which other people have immortalised
their heroes. In my retirement I currently
teach pharmacology on contract at the Obafemi
Awolowo
College of Health Sciences of the Olabisi Onabanjo University, formerly Ogun State
University.
I had a choice between that and the Ladoke
Akintola University
at Ogbomosho
in Osun
State, the Adekunle Ajasin University in Ondo
State or the Obafemi Awolowo University at Ile-Ife!
In his paper “Mukoro Mowoe
and Urhobo Destiny and History” Peter Ekeh lamented the failure of
the Urhobo nation to adequately commemorate our national hero, and he
put forward the following ideas; I doubt if an occasion has ever arisen
to debate them:
i.
Rename Delta
State University
after Mukoro Mowoe.
ii.
Establish a Mukoro Mowoe Scholarship Fund
iii.
Build a Mukoro
Mowoe International
Airport in Warri.
The idea of a
significant Mowoe commemoration is one with which the majority of
Urhobo will agree; therefore these ideas deserve consideration by the
UPU. Perhaps (i)
and (iii) above may draw considerable
controversy knowing the prevailing politics of Delta
State.
On the other hand, the experience from various scholarship
schemes
in Nigeria
is the problem of sustainability in the face of the vanishing value of
endowments. My own addition to the above
list
will be for a brand new Mukoro
Mowoe University
outside Abraka in the Urhobo heartland. Dare I say that perhaps the Chief might be
pleased
that the idea of a University named after him is being advocated by a
product
of Urhobo College Effurun the full educational significance of which he
did not live to see. He might also be
pleased
to see that his efforts in establishing Urhobo College Effurun has
brought
his beloved Urhobos to the stage where they can contemplate a community
university
project. As Ekeh put it “we live in an era
in
which community efforts have once again become mandatory for groups
that
wish to overcome the handicaps imposed by circumstances of poor
governance.”
There is no nationality of our population and land size, wealth,
endowment
in men and women, that does not boast of
least
one university catering to its cultural and educational needs in Nigeria
today.
There
is also a strategic justification. Delta
State is reputed to be
relatively rich, but the state itself is multiethnic and its coffers
cannot be used to satisfy Urhobo cultural aspirations alone. We are the largest group, but our experience
within Nigeria
should teach us that we must be particularly sensitive to the feelings
of our neighbours. While
we have the crude oil, and America
and Europe are still buying it, Delta
State will remain relatively
wealthy. Some of that will inevitably come to Urhoboland; unless we
embark on a major project like a Mukoro
Mowoe University,
where would all our share of the oil wealth have gone in the end? Where
would our rich men and women have immortalised
their names in Libraries, Science Blocks, Halls
of Residence? In 50 or 100 years time, the oil might be finished or
when
Europe and America
may no longer buy crude oil, because it is too dirty; or because they
have discovered cheaper, cleaner forms of energy. Meanwhile, Urhoboland
would have been left physically, culturally and spiritually in ruin. We
could find that we frittered our share of the oil money away in
frivolities. In many parts of the country,
even states with miserable resources are also thinking strategically
and putting down permanent infrastructures while the oil flows in the
Niger Delta. One state, which shall be
nameless, that can hardly raise 10% of its monthly expenditure form
internal revenue is planning a State University; in the year 2000,
only 5 indigenes of that State secured university entrance scores in
the
WASC examination. A Mukoro
Mowoe University
will not have that problem of suitable entrance material.
The Urhobos nation’s contribution to the intellectual
life of Nigeria
is significant and out of proportion to its population.
In a cursory count of senior academics in the University
of Ibadan, Urhobos come
next to Yorubas in the number of full
professors. A Mukoro
Mowoe University
will be a university that draws on its immediate surroundings for
cultural and intellectual inspiration, with roots in traditional
institutions making contributions to the well being of Nigeria
and the world at large from the perspective of a unique environment and
cultural experience.
David Okpako
22
Sankore Avenue, University
of Ibadan
P. O. Box 20334, UI
PO
Oyo Road, Ibadan.
Nigeria 200 005.
Tel: +234 2 810
7602
+234
0802 350 2618
Email address: dpc@ibadan.skannet.com
30 August, 2002.