Ndy Akan Film present, Ireti Doyle (Adiaha Edem), Sola Sobowale (Market Leader), Sam Dede (Chief Warrant Officer-Okpala), Becky Odungidi (Affiong), Ndy Akan (Arit), Uduak Odungidi (Iquo), Tony Solomon (District Officer), Prince Iyke Egwasi (Chief Warrant Bulu), Etini Essien (Mission Teacher), Thelma Ukeme (Ebong’s Daughter. Story, Moses Eskor; Screenplay, Moses Eskor, Winifred Rosa, Idiongomfon Akpan; Production Manager, Aniekan Ekanem; Director of Photography 1, Emeka Ezemonye; Director of Photography 2, Kingsley Bassey; Producer, Ndy Akan; Associate Producer, Victor Akan; Executive Producers, Anna Afangideh, Moses Babatope, Ndy Akan; Director, Moses Eskor. © 2019.
A LETTER TO A GRANDDAUGHTER IN ABA,
I just got through watching an important historical movie on the Amazon network, which I thought I could share with you. Your grandmothers may not have been born in November to December in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-nine when five hundred or more of your great-grandmothers perished at the shores of Imo river, in the hands of the British Warrant Officers and soldiers.
I must tell you as I sit on the shoulder of Moses Eskor, who tells the story in moving pictures, looking into the distant past, in the life of your great-grandmother. The African sun was up and bright that day, torturing in a sense when your great-grandmother and women of her class joined hands to brave the nozzle of the colonial warrant officers’ gun to defy taxation of women in their district. Taxing women has never happened before. I must tell you, it wasn’t a feast but a catastrophe that day. Even the bright sun deemed at the sight of such holocaust. Your great-grandmother perished that day.
Take a minute my dear, and read my letter, will you? I have to tell you this story as told to me by Moses Eskor, a great storyteller, so you can remember what strong womanhood your ancestors were. Oh, they weren’t any joke. Men, including the youths, have all gone into hiding, into the bushes, into caves, running from the wrath of the Whiteman and his taxes. They, your great-grandfathers put up a feeble resistance from their hideouts. Warrant Officer chasing after one of your great-grandfathers, fell into a trap and pierces his very heart. But the women, I mean your great-grandmothers, weren’t afraid. They braved enough to look into the nozzle of the officers’ guns and defied the authority of the almighty British. That was no small feat, for a woman.
This is what happened in the last two months of nineteen twenty-nine: The colonial administration found out they couldn’t get the men in Aba to pay taxes, so they went after the women. In Aba, before and then, women weren’t taxed, and it could be an abomination to ask them to pay taxes now, yet the British, aided and abetted by the newly elected warrant chiefs, enforced the taxes on the women. They didn’t receive this enforcement sitting down. They stood up and fought back.
Listen carefully, because you must relay this story to your young ones. The District Officer, sent Warrant Chief, Bulu to go out into the district and censure all businesswomen in Aba. Bulu delegates the command to a Mission Teacher with a handful of warrant officers. Their first attack was on the Market Leader. She was mishandled. News of this affront went around the villages and all women with palm fronds and reeds merged together and went to the District Officer. In the process, Bulu was disrobed, but the British weren’t finished with the tax issue and the women too weren’t satisfied as they asked the District Officer for a written commitment as not to tax them, which the District Officer couldn’t do.
There’s a stalemate, granddaughter. The British ban all women who defy paying taxes from selling in the market and those who disobey are locked up. The women rise up and march to the District Officer and demand release of their fellow women. I can see the gallantry of your great-grandmother among those women, waving her palm fronds, singing and dancing to the District Headquarter to demand the release of the women. The women thought he had promised.
District Officer said, “I gave you no word. I don’t know why you fail to understand. I am a man under authority. District Chief gave me his command, and I spoke with your chief who understood me and gave his support. The tax law is implemented in every district and you must abide by it.”
You must wonder what one of your great-grandmothers said to him: “Trust me, sir you have not heard the end of me. We are coming back.”
By now, even the chiefs are divided over the issue of taxing and imprisoning women. To level with the administration, the women kidnap Iqua, the only son of the Warrant Chief Officer, Okpala, and not be released until the market women are set free. By intrigue, the chiefs lied to Opkala that his son has been murdered by the women.
Okpala grabs a handful of officers and marches them to the Market Leader’s compound, and the last time we ever see her alive because she was murdered by Opkala. He murders the Market Leader and her daughter and the bodies were found in the bushes. The women bring the corpses to the District Officers compound and demand justice. The District Officer dismisses them and asks that they must respect the dead and take them home and bury them.
Meanwhile, Iqua the Chief Warrant Officer’s son, and Ebong’s daughter have been in their honeycomb playing love when they are told the murder of Ebong by Iqua’s father, Okpala.
Iqua shows up from hiding feverishly crying and queries his father why he has to kill the Market Leader. He runs from there to the Market Leader’s compound, and when the womenfolks see him, they jump him and murder him too.
If my letter is too long and boring, maybe you can stop halfway and come back to it later. For me, I must go on and get this wonderful story out of my system. It needs to be told you.
My granddaughter, you may be young to learn that the reason why the whole world went to war in 1914 was over an incident like this one in Aba. The assassination of Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand was the beginning of the whole world going to war. Now, that the market women have incurred two deaths, and in return, the murder of Iqua, the only son of Chief Warrant Officer Okpala, the war drum begins to sound. The Aba women won’t concede and the District Officer too won’t’ take it anymore.
A Warrant Chief reports, “So many women, hundreds of them all naked are coming, Sir!”
District Officer, “If they are naked, then they are not humans. Take your men to the beach and kill all of them.”
When all the women from the satellite villages, travel in canoes, or walk and converge at the shores of the river, they refuse the Warrant Chiefs orders to return to their homes. The Women’s Leader, Madam Adiaha Edem arrives in a canoe at the beach where all women have gathered, upon hearing that some of their folks been shot. You must have seen her solemn and determined face, and she stands up and let out a long wail:
“My sisters, our women who were on their way to march with us have been killed.” The women wail and cry.
“Women of Ibibio, Ebong!”
Women, “Ebong!”
“Women of Andoni, Orgoni, Ebong!”
Women, “Ebong!”
“Women of Opobo and Igbo, Ebong!”
Women, “Ebong!”
There’s little quiet as Adiaha waits for the long echo of “Ebong” that has been taken away by the forest and beyond to die out. She continues:
“Today, the sixteenth of December, we march in protest! We will march to the administration. We the women of Aba take our destiny into our own hands. We do not have bullets, but today, we break the taboo, and protest naked. If they want to kill us, let them kill us. And if we die today, history will record, we die for what we believe in.”
“In the name of the government of England, take these women back to their husbands!” Commands Okpala.
Madam Adiaha Edem the women’s leader stands her ground, her face resolute and determined, looking in the eyes of the Warrant Chief with his gun drawn.
“Turn your canoe and go back home…turn your canoe and go back home. One-two-two-three-three-three. Fire!”
When it is all over, my granddaughter, five hundred women of Aba and Ewere, including Madam Adiaha Edem, including your great-grandmother, lay dead by the British warrant chiefs’.guns.
I break a little here, to hold back my tears. They say men don’t cry, but I have to, granddaughter. When you see a group of people dying for what they believe in, and they follow through on it, and what other lofty pursuits of mankind could be compared to this. Your great-grandmothers lay in the bushes, on the roads all dead. The sun which has been bright went down with the face of such calamity.
Moses may have embellished the actual history by the tinge of romance he introduced in it. He involved the children in the story because the issue is about the future of these same children. In fact, you don’t want to get bored by a story of grown-ups fighting over issues all by themselves without romance plot. An older storyteller, Darryl F. Zanuck says, “There’s nothing duller on the screen than being accurate but not dramatic.
Wherever the British colonized in the continent of Africa, your great-grandmothers were the first to put up resistance to, and question the power of King George over them. When you become of a woman, my dear, make a pilgrimage to Aba Women’s Museum and pour a libation on its steps.
Until then may the soul of the women who died that day in Aba, rest in peace.
Grandfather, the Author.