The Graves Are Not Yet Full
By Philip Emeagwali
emeagwali.com <http://emeagwali.com>

Walk with me down memory lane. The time: 1968. In 30 months, one million dead. The setting: a dusty camp in Biafra where survivors waited and hoped for peace. The survivors: Refugees fleeing from the “Dance of Death.” My mentor: One of the refugee camp directors, whom I called “Teacher” out of respect.

“Martin Luther King has been killed,” Teacher said, with a pained voice and vacant eyes. I looked towards Teacher, wondering: “Who is Martin Luther King?” I was a 13-year-old refugee in the west African nation of Nigeria, a land then called Biafra. Martin Luther King. What did that name mean?

Eight out of ten Biafrans were refugees exiled from their own country. Two years earlier, Christian army officers had staged a bloody coup killing Muslim leaders. The Muslims felt the coup was a tribal mutiny of Christian Igbos against their beloved leaders. The aggrieved Muslims went on a killing rampage, chanting: “Igbo, Igbo, Igbo, you are no longer part of Nigeria!” In the days that followed, 50,000 Igbos were killed in street uprisings.

Killing was not new to us in Biafra. I was 13, but I knew much of killing. Widows and orphans were most of the refugees in our camp. They had survived the Igbo “Dance of Death” - a euphemism for the mass executions. One thousand men at gunpoint forced to dance a public dance. Seven hundred were then shot and buried en masse in shallow graves. When told to hurry up and return to his regular duty, one of the murderers said: “The graves are not yet full.”

A few days later, with only the clothes on our backs, we fled from this “Dance of Death.” That was six months before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Teacher and I were eventually conscripted into the Biafran army and sent to the front, two years after our escape.

After the war, Teacher - who had taught me the name of Martin Luther King - was among the one million who had died. I - a child soldier - was one of the fifteen million who survived.

Africa is committing suicide: a two-decade war in Sudan, genocidal killings in Rwanda, scorched-earth conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, and Liberia. The wars in modern Africa are the largest global-scale loss of life since the establishment of the Atlantic Slave trade, which uprooted and scattered Africa’s sons and daughters across the United States, Jamaica, and Brazil.

Africa’s wars are steering the continent toward a sea of self-destruction so deep that even the greatest horror writers are unable to fathom its depths. So, given our circumstances, Martin Luther King was a name unknown, a dead man among millions, with a message that never reached the shores of Biafra.

Neither did his message reach the ears of “The Black Scorpion,” Benjamin Adekunle, a tough Nigerian army commander, whose credo of ethnic cleansing knew nothing of Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement: “We shoot at everything that moves, and when our forces move into Igbo territory, we even shoot things that do not move.”

As we heed Martin Luther King Jr.’s call, and march together across the world stage, let us never forget that we who have witnessed and survived the injustice of such nonsensical wars are the torchbearers of his legacy of peace for our world, our nation, and our children.

Excerpted from a speech delivered by Philip Emeagwali <http://www.emeagwali.com/> at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia at the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. The entire transcript and video is posted at emeagwali.com <http://www.emeagwali.com/>.

 Philip Emeagwali <http://www.emeagwali.com/> has been called “a father of the Internet” by CNN <http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/fyi/interactive/specials/bhm/story/black.innovators.html>  and TIME <http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html>, and extolled as “one of the great minds of the Information Age” by former US president Bill Clinton <http://emeagwali.com/video/president-bill-clinton/one-of-the-great-minds-of-the-information-age.wmv>.

Dividends Aboard Onitsha -Lagos Luxury Bus
By Emma Chukwuanukwu, Assistant Editor

If you have never travelled in the famous "luxury" bus from South East to Lagos, man, you are missing something! When I boarded a bus at Upper Iweka Road in Onitsha, my hope was to ride to Lagos in a vehicle that can provide some comfort. But the bus provided a lot more than comfort as it became a church at one time, a national assembly and a comedy show as the journey progressed. With all 56 passengers and Obere Oche, small seat for passengers on attachment, the bus assumed a life of its own with about 78 passengers.

As the bus made its way across the famous Niger Bridge into Delta State on its way to Benin City, a young man sitting next to me turned out to be a powerful "Man of God." He got up, Bible in hand and called on the congregation to get into the mood for prayers. Someone raised a chorus and the whole bus was turned into an interdenominational set up. We prayed and sang and the Holy Ghost came down!

Then, our man of God raised his hand and began to "bind all blood-sucking spirits' that may have laid ambush for us, waiting to devour us and prevent us from getting to our destinations. He invited the blood of Jesus to "cover" our road and chase away all blood-sucking and man-eating spirits that operate on the highways so that the children of God would travel in peace and arrive safely to the glory of God. And we shouted a serious Amen!

As our bus made its way through Benin City and joined the road to Ore, it was easy to see how right our pastor was about the blood-sucking spirits. Those suckers have dug very deep potholes along the once-smooth expressway to Ore that our bus had to slow down to a crawl, veering from one side of the road to the other to avoid the potholes. So many 'luxurious' buses including our own have had their front and back bumpers removed by their owners to avoid losing them to the potholes on the road.

I could not help thinking that the blood-sucking spirits must have invaded the coffers of the Ministry of Works in Abuja and spirited away all the money budgeted for the maintenance of that all-important expressway in the past eight years. This seems plausible as the blood-sucking spirits are very powerful and no one has been able to explain why that double-carriage way, the only link between the South West and the Eastern part of Nigeria has remained in that terrible state for nearly ten years.

Meanwhile, our man of God was just ending his sermon on the bus as we rode into Ore in Ondo State where we stopped for refreshments. Before we disembarked, the pastor had distributed some tracks and envelopes for donations 'to support the work of God.' The tracks asked everybody to repent for the kingdom of God is at hand, while reminding us that God loves a cheerful giver. I gave my 'widows mite, not wanting to be left out when the doors of heaven open for the chosen ones.

We re-embarked on the bus after about 30-minute refreshments and the second part of our journey began from Ore through Ijebu Ode, Shagamu to Lagos, a journey of nearly 300 kilometres. Little did we know that the last part of that journey would turn out to be the best in that famous 'luxury' bus! As we were about to move, a fair-complexioned young man rushed into the bus dragging a medium-sized Ghana-must-go bag. We paid little attention to him and the bus moved out on the way to Lagos. Some of us were inclined to relax, digest the refreshment we just had and possibly sleep through the rest of the journey.

When the young man cleared his throat and greeted everybody "in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," some of us were inclined to ignore him. But his next words jolted everybody to attention. "I want to ask a question. And whoever gets the answer correct, I will give him a gift. 'Can I ask the question?' A few voices answered. 'Go ahead, ask? "My question is this. If you are a young girl and you want to marry and you have two men who want to marry you, one is a drunk and the other a gambler, who would you marry between the two?" The question caught everybody by surprise and even those passengers who wanted to sleep were now wide awake and focused attention on the young man. A young lady behind me said she would not choose any of the two. "God will not let a gambler or a drunk come to marry me. I will not agree,' she said. But the young man said she had to choose between the two.

The whole bus turned into a sort of National Assembly debate with the young man as either the Senate President or the Speaker moderating. A gambler or a drunk, who makes a better husband? "I will prefer a drunk," said a middle-aged man sitting near the middle of bus. "You don't know what you are talking about," a woman countered. "A drunk will spend all his money in the bar and have nothing to take care of his wife and family. Most of the time he falls into the gutter and may not even get home at all. I prefer a gambler, even though none of them is good," she argued.

"Listen, let me tell you why I prefer a drunk," said another middle-aged man. And he went on to tell us a short story of a popular drunk in his village. This drunk, he said, had lost two bicycles to thieves while drinking in his popular joint. He was pained to lose his bicycles twice but he got wise to the thieves. The next time he went to the bar to drink, he went with a big rope. While drinking in the bar, he tied one end of the rope to the bicycle and the other end on his right leg, so that he would be alerted if the thieves came. "You see, a drunk can be sensible," he concluded.

Everybody roared with laughter.

"I agree with you. I won't marry a gambler if I were a young girl," said another. A gambler can sell everything he has, including his wife, to get money to gamble. If you are his wife, you will never have rest of mind in your matrimonial home."

"All of you are missing the point," another man joined the debate. You people don't understand that gambling is business.

Even if the gambler sells his wife to gamble, if he wins he will buy everything back including the person who bought his wife."

"What if he doesn't win," asked the young lady sitting behind me. "What happens to the wife? She will become the property of another man. That is why I said I will not marry either of them."

"A drunk is better," said the storyteller. "The drunk I told you about in my village built a house, has a wife and children. He will not sell his wife because he needs her to look after him when he gets drunk."

"I know a man who sold his houses in Abuja and Lagos just to gamble. He lost the first bet. But he borrowed money to gamble again and won millions. Now, he has bought bigger houses everywhere and he can marry as many wives as he wants. That is why I said gambling is business," said the champion of gamblers.

And the debate raged on until the moderator called for adjournment. Nobody won; therefore nobody was entitled to any gift. But there were so many wonderful medicines in his mini-pharmacy that could cure every imaginable illness.

As the bus rolled into Lagos, I couldn't help reflecting on the various paradoxes and Hobson's choice that confront Nigerians on a daily basis: political, economic and social.

If you are a Nigerian voter, 18 years and above, would you vote for a pen-robber or an armed robber as the governor of your state? From the mind-bugling billions of naira, EFCC says our former governors have stolen, it appears the ability to steal public funds and obtain money by false pretences rank high among qualifications for election contests in Nigeria.

The American government says Nigeria sold $55 billion worth of crude oil in 2007. Yet, United Nations Human Development Index for 2007 indicate that about 95 per cent of Nigerians live below poverty lines with a per capita income of less than three dollars a day!

Now, as a Nigerian, would you prefer to live in a rich country of poor people or migrate to a poor country of rich people? Would you prefer a Nigeria without crude oil but cheaper kerosene and petrol or a country blessed with crude oil but imports refined fuel and petrol at exorbitant costs to its citizens?

On the power sector, what would be your choice between the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN)?

Indeed how would you choose between a government of militants and kidnappers and a government of executive thieves who have crippled every public institution to enrich themselves at the expense of the citizens?"

As I disembarked from 'luxury bus,' I was pleasantly surprised that the boisterous debate had made the journey so smooth and enjoyable. Our man of God successfully banished and bound the blood-sucking spirits, so we arrived safely. I am looking forward to another opportunity to enjoy the many surprises of the 'luxury bus.'
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