By Comfort Obi
“Our friends laugh at us because our mothers are not able to give us rice on Christmas Day. Please, cook rice for us to stop them from laughing at us”
From Umunjam, Mbieri, Imo State, comes this story that touches the heart. It, at once, saddens and gladdens the heart. It comes from the home of Professor Ernest Nneji Emenyonu, one of Nigeria’s gifts to Africa and the World.
Emenyonu is an international scholar. Some people call him a citizen of the World. But he is an academic. An authority in African Literature. In Nigeria, he had been “this and that”, including a Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Calabar and the Provost of the (then) Alvan Ikoku College of Education.
While at the University of Calabar, he made the institution the hub of African Literature. Every year, the who is who in African Literature converged at the University for an intellectual harvest. It attracted the best. On one occasion, Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, was the Guest Speaker. The annual ritual was a big deal. I wonder if Unical still hosts it, or in Emenyonu’s absence, died a natural death?
But it was at Alvan that Professor Emenyonu gave his best – not because he was, first, a Lecturer, later Dean, School of Arts, and later Provost. No, it is in terms of his long-fought battle for the deserved upgrade of the Alvan Ikoku College of Education to a University of Education. For years, he fought the battle. He made a case for it everywhere, and continued even when Alvan became a Federal Institution. He used the Media, and he weighed in using every opportunity.
Now that this long-fought battle has been won, somebody should arrange a meeting between Imo State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodinma, whose continous push made the dream a reality, and Professor Emenyonu whose battle it has been for years. When they meet, they should open a bottle of good champagne and clink glasses for a deserved victory.
But this write-up has veered off course. It was not meant to be on Emenyonu’s contributions to academics. It is to draw attention to his new passion, another annual ritual, this time, not in an academic environment but in his home at Umunjam, Mbieri.
When his tenure as the Provost of AICE ended, Emenyonu relocated to the United States of America where he continued to raise the banner of African Literature in a number of high profile Universities. His lovely wife of many decades, Pat, is an American. But every year, Professor Emenyonu makes it home – to his village – to, as they say, “spend quality time” with his people. And, so began his new passion and annual ritual.
Everybody knows how it was many years ago in the village. The beautiful years seems so long suddenly. At the time, once one was home, children usually paid visits for sweets, biscuits, ”blo-blo” and the lot. Does that still happen? Hardly. The society has been corrupted. And in our villages, it has become a taboo, almost, to give sweets to children. Trust is gone. And so has innocence. In their place, suspicion reigns. It no longer takes a village to train a child. Bad people abound. The situation is worsened by fake Pastors (men of God they call themselves) and fake prophets and seers who fabricate stories to deceive, cause confusion, and make money. One could give a child sweets, biscuits, “soft drinks”, blo-blo, and the next story will be that one has taken the “child’s luck”, or wants to use the child for ritual purposes.
Of course, these things happen before us. Innocent children are kidnapped and killed for ritual purposes. The devilish people use sweets and biscuits to lure them to their death. But Emenyonu damns all that. His is to give the children a sense of belonging. His mission began in a simple way. A child’s heart-wrenching request.
Each time he came home from his base in the US, children between the ages of three to seven, perhaps upto age ten would come in for sweets, biscuits, etc. But the story changed one day.
As usual, they had come. And after he gave them the usual, one of them, aged about seven years, raised his hands. He said he wanted to tell Professor Emenyonu “something.” Prof. was all ears. Then, the child began. He said they wanted him to give them cooked rice in place of the usual. Taken aback, he urged the child on. The child’s heart-wrenching story: “We don’t have rice to eat at Christmas. Our parents cannot buy rice. And those whose mothers cook rice for on Christmas days laugh at us. They make jest of us. So, if you give us rice, we can tell them that we had eaten rice, too, before Christmas. They will no longer laugh at us.”
It was a Professor, devastated by the story of that deprivation who from that year, began to host the children to an annual “rice party” just before Christmas.
The number has kept increasing, according to reliable sources. In 2021, there were a little over 100 of them. In 2022, there were over 200. One can, safely, assume that this year’s, which comes up on December 16, would attract more children than before.
And why not?
Things have gone from bad to worse. Hunger reigns. A bag of rice, now, goes for between N58,000 and N70,000. In a country where the minimum wage is N30,000, up from N18,000 which a number of State Governments still pay, many more children, even adults, will depend on the compassion of the likes of Professor Emenyonu to eat “Christmas and New Year rice.” Like my father of the blessed memory always said: “There is no capable shadow of doubt about that. Doubt it, who can?”
