My grandma whipped our headmaster!

He polished General Benjamin Adekunle’s boots during the Nigerian Civil War. Years later, as Governor of Delta State, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan recalled the childhood experiences that shaped him: a formidable grandmother, a policeman father who gave him Psalm 23, and an unforgettable encounter with one of Nigeria’s most famous military commanders.

In this archival interview with Mike Awoyinfa, Uduaghan takes us back to the people and incidents that helped make him the man he became.

There are interviews a journalist conducts and files away, never imagining that one day they will become a window into the life of a departed man. This is one of them.

Years ago, when Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan was Governor of Delta State, I interviewed him for my series, 100 Fathers of the Famous. He spoke about his father, Chief Edmund Dudu Uduaghan, who retired as a police inspector after 33 years of service, but also took me on a journey into his childhood in Sapele during the Nigerian Civil War.

Two stories have stayed with me: how he became General Benjamin Adekunle’s shoeshine boy, and how his grandmother once whipped his headmaster.

With news of Uduaghan’s death, I returned to my archive and found his voice waiting. Here, let him tell his story.

I WAS GENERAL ADEKUNLE’S SHOESHINE BOY

My father was Chief Edmund Dudu Uduaghan. He died some years ago. He was a policeman for many years, retiring as an inspector after 33 years in the force. He later became a chief in the Warri Kingdom.

I did not live much with my father. He was polygamous, with all the challenges that came with it. My grandmother took me in when I was about three years old, and I spent most of my childhood with her and, later, my aunt.

But my father never forgot us. Every Sunday, he came to the village to see me and check my schoolwork. My grandmother was illiterate, so he took a personal interest in my education. When I entered secondary school in Warri, he continued visiting me on his bicycle.

He had studied only up to Standard Six before joining the police, but he believed strongly in education and was a deeply spiritual management.

One of my vivid childhood memories is from the Nigerian Civil War. Biafran soldiers occupied part of the then Midwest Region and took Sapele. The policemen sent their families away because the police station was usually among the first places the soldiers captured.

The Biafran soldiers stayed for some weeks before Federal troops came to liberate Sapele. With the rest of our family in the village, I was the only one living with my father in the barracks.

Opposite our quarters was the inspectors’ house, which Brigadier-General Benjamin Adekunle took over as his residence. For the few days he stayed there, he would bring out his boots, and I would clean and polish them. He told me he liked the way I shined my father’s shoes.

So, during the Civil War, I became General Adekunle’s shoeshine boy. He might not remember that today, but I remember it.

THE FATHER WHO GAVE ME PSALM 23

My father’s favourite prayer was Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd.”

When I was going to secondary school as a boarding student, I spent the night at his house before leaving for school. He woke me up and said, “My son, as you are going to school, I don’t have anything to give you, but I give you Psalm 23.”

He then recited the psalm for me. It was something he believed in deeply, and it was the spiritual inheritance he passed on to us.

There is another thing about my father that I still practise. He never ate alone. Unless his children were not around, he would not eat by himself. Even if you had already eaten, you had to sit with him and join him at the table.

That was the kind of man he was.

My father was a frank man who said things as he saw them.

There was a case involving the Okotie-Eboh family in which one of the wives and a daughter sued other family members over their entitlements. My father, who was then president of a customary court, was invited to testify on the customary aspects of Itsekiri marriage.

He told the court that, according to the custom as he understood it, a wife was regarded as part of a man’s property to be shared, and that the children had to be included in the distribution. He maintained that the man’s property should be shared among his children, regardless of whether the marriage had taken place in church or elsewhere.

His testimony helped the judge resolve the case and, as I remember it, helped children who had been left without a share obtain their entitlements.

As governor, I miss my father most when I have challenges with some elders. Because he was a chief, he could have approached them and spoken to them as an equal. Instead, I sometimes have to sit down with them myself.

Whenever some of them give me a lot of trouble, I tell them, “It is because my father is not alive! If he were alive, he would be the one talking to you, not me coming to sit with you.”

My approach to elders is not to abuse them publicly. For someone to become an elder, he must have passed through a lot of experiences. There is wisdom in old age, and even when an elder is in opposition, not everything he says is useless.

I listen and try to identify what can make society better. Criticisms that are not constructive, I set aside. Even if someone abuses me from now till tomorrow, I will not react. I advise my loyalists against responding because the more you respond, the stronger the other person becomes.

My approach to elders is not fire-for-fire, but water-for-fire.

THE DAY MY GRANDMOTHER WHIPPED OUR HEADMASTER

My most unforgettable childhood memory is the day my grandmother went after my headmaster for caning me at school.

My grandmother was a tough, no-nonsense woman. If you were caned at school, you had to tell her. She would investigate. If you had committed an offence and deserved the punishment, she would give you her own caning at home.

One day, however, the headmaster caned me mercilessly, and I believed I had done nothing wrong.

In those days, I was the mail boy in the village. I went to the post office in another village to collect letters. This was how I developed a passion for stamp collecting. Before handing over a letter, I would beg the recipient to let me remove the stamp. Everybody knew I was a collector.

We also wrote to different companies requesting catalogues because we wanted the stamps that came with their replies.

One day, I was absent from school, and another boy went to collect the letters. The headmaster noticed a letter addressed to me and questioned why I was writing to companies for business. I explained that I was interested only in collecting stamps. For some strange reason, he caned me severely for writing to the companies.

I told my grandmother what had happened. She could not understand why I had been punished, so she waited until Sunday, when my father came to the village. I explained everything to him, and he was shocked that I should have been caned for stamp collecting, a harmless hobby enjoyed by many schoolchildren.

My grandmother decided to take matters into her own hands. She knew the headmaster passed in front of our house on his way to school. She carried a chair, sat beside the road and waited for him, armed with a long cane. When the headmaster approached, he slowed down to greet her. But before he could finish his greeting, my grandmother whipped him.

“Who are you to be whipping my son for not committing any offence?” she demanded.

That was how my grandmother confronted my headmaster.

It is an incident I have never forgotten, even after all these years.