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“But they were ready before you!” Snapped my father angrily,
early on March, 6, 1957.

I had innocently asked: “But Dad, why did the Gold Coast get
independence before us?” There are two tiny sovereign nations, Benin and Togo,
hanging like strips of spaghetti on the map between Ghana and Nigeria. Yet,
Nigerians feel their real neighbours are Ghana. A bonding factor of colonial
experience in the way we relate to other nationals is pervasive. So, we compare
and measure ourselves with Ghana all the time – in politics and economics,
football and highlife music, education and fashion, cocoa and now oil. Luckily,
it has been healthy rivalry tinged with mutual respect, unlike the state of
affairs with our brothers to the east. Nigeria and Cameroon nearly went to war
over the Bakassi peninsula, even though ethnographically, we are closer to
Cameroon than to Ghana.

I sometimes ask what matrix or criteria are used in measuring
the Ghana-Nigeria competition, but all I hear is a savage rebuke: “Go to Ghana
and see!” Clearly, we live in a comparative world. Physics, biology, geography
and many more subjects have their comparative modules. Every life process is
compared with the other. Yet, in most cases, there is no linearity, no
parameter applied in arriving at judgmental conclusions. Our world subsists on
subjectivity, parochialism, unnecessary competition and naked prejudice.

Meeting the Queen

James Robertson replaced John Macpherson at the Marina as the
ruler of Nigeria, and had the honour of welcoming Queen Elizabeth II to Lagos.
I’ve never seen a human with a head as massive as the new governor-general’s.
He looked like an ox, and I almost ran away in horror the day he visited our
school.

Queen Elizabeth II stepped out to be confronted by the
regimental band of the Nigerian Army that could not have looked smarter and
more professional. They smashed out God Save the Queen, before advancing
through a series of Prussian martial tunes on to the lilting Blue Bells of
Scotland and the melodious Old Calabar. It was a sunny day. A broad Union Jack,
one of the most beautiful flags in the world, fluttered gracefully in the sea
breeze of Lagos. The impressive Royal Yacht Britannia bobbed and bubbled on
anchor in the murky waters of Lagos harbour.

Elizabeth’s visit in 1956 was not the first by a royal to
Nigeria. Her uncle, Edward, the Prince of Wales, was here for a week in April,
1925. I heard stories about him from my parents that he was handsome. They did
not tell me about the king’s huge appetite for married women. There was genuine
fear in England that he was going to turn Buckingham Palace into a brothel.
Eventually, Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 after just one year on the throne,
when the British government objected to his marrying Wallis Simpson, an American
divorcee. She had two living ex-husbands! My mother thought it was great and
gallant for a king to leave his throne in order to marry the woman he loved. My
father just shrugged and withheld his opinion. I asked to know what a
“divorcee” was, but got slapped down by my parents.

What didn’t we see in the way of automobiles during the Queen’s
visit – Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Armstrong-Siddeley, Austin Princess and Daimler!
A Roll-Royce epitomises everything that imperial splendour and authority
represents – silence, reverence, dignity, austerity and quality. But of all the
cars I saw in colonial Nigeria, none impressed me more than the Humber Super
Snipe.

I’ve not seen one again since 1953. A shame the British car
industry doesn’t exist anymore! In her farewell speech, the embryonic Nigerian
Army was re-christened the Queens’s Own Nigeria Regiment by Elizabeth herself.
They were terrific when it came to ceremonial occasions; the soldiers all the
same height – slim, very dark, with slightly bowed legs. Each soldier looked
like the twin of the subaltern next to him. The regiment, in heavily-starched
Bermuda shorts, marched in step like mechanised toys. Not a single Nigerian
soldier at ceremonial parades in those days had a pot belly balanced on K-legs.

“Regiment,” which insinuates command subsidiarity or a component
of a larger unit, attracted criticism in Nigeria. The army of an independent
Nigeria was not going to be something like the Scottish or Welsh Regiment
within the UK armed forces. So, a change was effected to the Royal Nigeria Army
(RNA) under the last British commander, Major-General Welby-Everard.

I hear it said now and again that the most efficient black
soldier is the one commanded by a white officer? True or false, this naïve
belief could have contributed to the downfall of Nkrumah and Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa. One cardinal error the two men made was to retain their British chiefs
of staff, well into independence.

Despite open warnings from Tawia Adamafio in Ghana and Azikiwe
in Nigeria,

Major-Generals Alexander and Welby-Everard remained in charge of
the Ghana and Nigeria armies until 1961 and 1965 respectively. The two Britons
could not have done a good job. Once they left, the armies rebelled!

Champion of the world

“They said that Bassey has knocked him down! The commentator
said the man has got up! I’m not sure what they’re saying now. Eh-hem, now they
said the man is bleeding from the nose. I think the referee is stopping the
fight!” We didn’t wait for a confirmation, screaming, hugging one another, jumping
about like kangaroos. It had been a live commentary of the live commentary on
the night of June 24, 1957 at Uyo.

Our small, robust radio set was never loud enough. Someone, a
second commentator, had to stick an ear close enough to it for better audio,
and then translate the actual commentary to the rest of us. Over 50 people
crowded around this unreliable radio set on that night at the hall of the TTC,
the Teacher’s Training College.

Nigeria’s Hogan Bassey was fighting Cherif Hamia, the French
Algerian for the Featherweight Championship of the World in Paris. Tears still
well into my eyes today when I recall the Daily Times front-page headline of
the next morning that simply read, “Hogan Bassey, Champion of the World!” The
1950s were the golden period for black people in international sports. To my
generation of Nigerians, sports remain the ethos around which our lives are
built. When, in 1958, I returned from the interview for admission into Umuahia
Government College, my father was waiting anxiously, pacing about like a caged
lion on the platform at Aba Railway Station.

“So, how did it go? What questions did they ask you?” I told him
there were three white men:

the principal, Mr. Wareham; Mr. Wilson and Mr. Garrod. After
they confirmed my name, place and date of birth, Mr. Wareham began seriously,
that he had heard I played cricket, and did I know cricket was played at
Umuahia College? Would I continue to play if admitted? It was like a crown
counsel cross-examining a criminal. I answered the questions timidly, but in
the affirmative. The three men looked at each other, and then asked me to call
the next candidate. It had been such a brief encounter I thought something had
gone wrong, and these white men didn’t want to waste their time with me. On the
short train ride from Umuahia to Aba, I sat somewhat dejected.

“Ahhh,” concluded my father, “then you’ve passed!” How? It was
in 1952, when my father was at University College, London and he sent two
cricket bats, a ball and some linseed oil to condition the bats, through the
district officer of Owerri, Mr. Mann to my brother and me. It resulted from a
letter my mother wrote to him that we used the branches of coconut trees for a
bat, and old tennis balls to play cricket. My brother got into Umuahia in 1954 and
was regular in the first team by 1958. The news about a younger brother, still
in primary school, who could use a cricket bat, had filtered into the school.

I kept a scrap book in which sports clippings from the Daily
Times, the West African Pilot, the overseas Daily Mirror and Illustrated London
News were stuck. There is no doubt in my mind over who qualifies to be the most
celebrated Nigerian footballer of all time – Teslim Balogun! He was, simply,
Thunder Balogun to everyone and for a striker to bear such a frightening name
speaks volumes of his exploits, and how goal-keepers must have suffered.

Three important landmark records made the 1950s memorable for me: that West
Indian side with Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott beat England
in a cricket test series, winning at Lords, the cricket citadel; Brazil won the
football Jules Rimet trophy ( the FIFA World Cup) in 1958. There were black
players in their team – Pele, Didi, Djalma Santos and Garrincha. In the same
year, the West Indian, Garry Sobers set a world batting record of 365 not out
against Pakistan. It was a wonderful decade!