By Crispin Oduobuk
On a certain Port Harcourt November afternoon sometime in the ‘80s, I was crying softly in the front seat of a broken down Peugeot 504 Station Wagon while my father sought help from the drivers of other vehicles whizzing past us on what was then called Eastern Bypass.
Help was slow in coming and our purpose for undertaking the journey, my registration as one of the pioneer students of University Demonstration Secondary School, was greatly delayed.
Decades later, that situation remains fresh in my memory. It speaks to me about matters such as filial love and expectations, parental responsibility, and the power a single instance of disappointment can wield over an entire life.
While I tried to hide my tears from my father that day, he eventually found out and said to me, “Why are you crying? Can’t you see I’m doing the best that I can?”
Of course, there’s little one can do to reason with a preteen boy who has his mind fixed on showing up in his new school on time so he won’t be one of the stragglers who gets the dregs after the early birds have had their choice of the best seats and what have you.
Moreover, up until that day, Daddy had been invincible; as far as I was concerned, he could do anything. So to get stumped on a matter as seemingly inconsequential to a child’s mind like a broken down vehicle shattered the illusions I had of his invincibility.
It did not matter that as at the time my father was between personal cars; the Station Wagon being an official car assigned to him in his then role as chief superintendent of the Port Harcourt Prisons.
Yet, till this day I continue to interrogate that situation, even fictionalising elements of it once in a story that still didn’t exorcise the worries over that occasion.
When I sat down to write this piece, I wondered what Daddy would have made of the lamentations that many of us pour forth each day over the disappointment President Muhammadu Buhari has become. Not much, most likely. I do not recall him having strong opinions about the government of the day. Perhaps it’s a civil servant thing. Or maybe he learned such taciturnity from being stuck in Biafra throughout the Civil War. I, on the other hand, struggle with such tact.
When, as the saying goes, e don do me, e don do me! I go talk wetin dey my mind and maybe enter trouble on top di matter.
At one point, I was so lost that there were days I would actually sit and cry from loneliness and the pain it can inflict. I’d been so close to my father throughout my childhood that it is only recently I’ve come to accept that I missed him so much to the point of being mad at him for dying and leaving me rudderless at some of the points I needed him most.
Whatever my father’s shortcomings as a human, I am reminded that he was slow to anger and very careful with his words. I never heard him utter a swear word. I never saw him exchange angry words with my mother. He also had an easy and ready smile, finding humour in most situations. For instance, he would say driving on a potholed road was just a disco dance. If you came around him with a bag dangling from your shoulder, he would ask if you’d become a native doctor. Anybody straggling on the roadside was afongho etebe (sorry folks, no interpretation).
As I dig myself out of a recent mind-debilitating bout of depression, the kind where you wish everyday that the world would just end so you don’t have to participate anymore, I wonder if he ever faced such ordeals. If he did, how did he handle it? Put on a smile and face the world?
Whatever the case may be, I know this: like my late mother, he had a great work ethic. Come rain or shine, he got up early, polished his shoes, put on his well-ironed uniform, and went to work.
Even when he had become a senior officer, 7am will not meet my father at home.
That said, his absence, or more specifically, the absence of his fatherly guidance has made me an iconoclast of sorts with consequences both good and bad. I have broken with tradition and will encourage my offspring to do same, for I have come to believe nothing new and worthwhile can come from tradition.
As tributes go, I am not sure what to make of this long, rambling piece. So perhaps it is better to say the one thing I absolutely must say and bring things to a close: Dear family, friends, and total strangers from across the Facebook universe, let me introduce you to my father who passed away 20 years ago. Meet Mr Crispin Akpan Inoh, retired Assistant Comptroller General of Prisons. My dear father, I am proud to be your son. Please forgive all my youthful stupidities and continue to rest in peace.
Oduobuk wrote from Abuja
