Sam Omatseye
December 25, 2023 THE NATION
Barely 24 hours into the trip, he had developed a cramp, lost a tyre, gulped five energy drinks, walked three kilometres, been tormented by despair, hugged a rescuer, emptied his purse, slept at 3.30 am in a dingy hotel, pedaled on in the harmattan tyranny of northern Nigeria.
That was Samuel Erukoghene Okoro, 38, an Urhobo man of Delta State origin who transcended weather, landscape and the verities of human danger on Nigerian roads to make a statement for governance on a bicycle.
When he stepped foot on pedal, it was not about fear or courage. He was not immune to those sentiments. He was not above them but defied them. It was about the goal, and the goal was his state of origin where governance has been a challenge.
He said the initial steps of the new governor were promising: infrastructure work across the state, dispensing mercies in a depressed economy and a political tact that brought together even the sympathy of the opposition.
He had absorbed his biography as a public officer. So, to encourage him he was going to undertake a 1,200-kilometre trip from his residence in Damaturu, Yobe, to Asaba.
It was his journey, but it was a social one, too. He had engaged a WhatsApp group of 255 persons as angels over his shoulders. They monitored him as he moved from city to hamlet to village to city, all the way through the Middle Belt until he arrived at his state where he was received by, not only the Governor, Sheriff Oborevwori and his deputy, but also his wife, kids, mother and uncle, all of whom had waited, at times with fear, at times with despair, as he passed through the breathtaking physiognomy of grasslands, valleys, hills and rocky terrain to his home state for Christmas. His wife and two children left Damaturu by conventional transport to Asaba while he and his moving machine plodded through the adventure.
The journey began December 9. While he had a map in mind, the journey would impose another. He works for an NGO known as Cooperazione Internationale that works with the World Food Programme, and the job had opened routes for him in northern Nigeria.
“I had gone through routes in the north to distribute food for Boko Haram victims, so I know where is safe and where is not safe,” said Okoro, who landed the job after he served as a youth Corps member and never returned home, though he graduated in chemistry from Federal Polytechnic, Oko in Anambra State. He married there and has two children.
“I also asked the security officers and they asked me not to go through Kano and Kaduna. They are not safe too,” he recalled. He secured a clean bill of health from the University Teaching Hospital in Yobe, and he was set to go.
Between a sleepy town Darazo and Bauchi town, his tyre flattened – precisely 30 kilometres to Bauchi. He trekked for three kilometres with his fallen companion and stopped at a fuel station before calling a friend, Taiwo Ogundipe, who was studying for a master’s degree in town. Ogundipe fed him and arranged for a vulcanizer who said both tyres were bad and he obtained new ones. Ogundipe drove him to the fuel station where they picked him and he continued his trip to Jos.
Jos was hostile.
“Between Damaturu and Bauchi, the weather was too hot and my lips went bad,” he complained. In Jos with its joyful weather, it was the people who were inclement. Harangued by bandits, residents thought he was a spy for bandits. So, no one would tell him the way to Lafia, Nasarawa State.
“I was there for about three hours and frustrated,” he said. kindness came from a pocket of police officers after he explained the reason for his adventure. But he passed the night in a rundown hotel in Jos.
“It was like ashawo quarters,” he narrated with humour. At this time, he was already broke.
“My wife was the one sending me money through O Pay,” he said. The wife did not do him charity. He was going to pay back. He left Damaturu with only five thousand naira. Not that he had a bag of cash at home, but he did not want to impress robbers with a cargo of indecent sum.
The journey seemed free flowing until he arrived at a nodal centre between Akwanga in Nasarawa State and Makurdi in Benue. The village is called Camp Garuba, and there he met a hero’s reception. He was at a bukka when he relayed his story, and the villagers regarded him in the light of a local who had made a similar trip for popstar Davido. When they asked for his tribe, they introduced him to an Isoko man he recalled as Jonah Godspower whose wife – Blessing Oghenekome – made him a plate of yam and fried egg. But he was already filled up. Jonah’s second act of hospitality did not work for him. “Where he gave me to sleep for free was not good,” he said.
But it was in Camp Garuba that he changed route.
“They said I could not pass through Enugu because of stay-at-home order, and that it was not safe. They mapped another route through Kogi State,” he said. Meanwhile, at every stop he was feeding his WhatsApp group with pictures and videos of his stops, laments and triumphs. When he lay on the roadside, passed a road sign, looked like he was passing out, where he slept, where his tyre upended the journey, when he trekked beside his bike in a parody of Ebenezar Obey’s song, Ketekete. He saw valleys and hills, bushes and about a dozen snakes crushed to death by vehicle tyres more than twice the size of his bicycle. One slithering beast had a red skin. No wild beast menaced him.
Between Makurdi and Naka, he saw “hell.”
“We can’t describe it as a road,” he explained. He could not ride the road, especially through Ankpa. “If rain falls, you can’t pass it.” His vehicle collapsed. And he could not afford okada to the place as they wanted him to pay N1,500. And that was all he had until he explained his story to one of them.
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“You want to kill yourself,” said one of the men when he reached the repairer’s shop. But he became an instant celebrity as people flocked around him taking selfies. At Ayangba, also in Kogi, soldiers arrested him until he showed them pictures of his trip. Hostility turned to rapture and even roguish compassion. They asked why he was doing it the hard way when they could stop a trailer to deposit him near his state.
“What’s the honour?” he replied.
“You get mind o,” replied the soldiers.
At Okene, he confessed to his WhatsApp group that he was tired. He could not go on. The road was hilly, and ploughing through tasked the last fibre of his strength.
“It was gallop after gallop,” he recounted. “I would trek a little, ride a little.”
His WhatsApp group mocked, but he said it was no comedy. He had slept in shacks for hotel, barely ate a standard meal, drew strength from energy drinks, and trudged along with little for money. An incoming trailer barreling down a valley almost threw him off the road over a steep edge. Just before that, a woman had looked quizzically at him at a restaurant. “You dey do this for Nigeria? Dem go remember you?” He had retorted that if they didn’t remember him, at least it would be on record for his children.
When he was near Auchi, “I had no energy to push on.” He thought his bicycle was dead. When he took okada to a nearby repairer, the joke was on him. “The repairer was an Hausa man. He said he would not cheat me. There was nothing wrong with the bicycle. It was him that was tired. The vehicle only needed oil.”
His legs were now shaking, as he plodded along to Uromi in Edo State. This was day nine of his trip. Hotel price hit the roof at 12 thousand naira. He told his whatsApp group he had nowhere to sleep. His brother sent him N20,000 and members poured forth in naira donations. He had a fortune of N33, 000.
“I said I didn’t know I could get this much from the group. I only had to realise this as the trip was coming to an end.”
He called the Director of Protocol, Sunday Onoriode, to notify him he would arrive the next day. Onoriode asked him to stay another night at Uromi because Governor Oborevwori was out of town. He should proceed the day after. On day 11, he set out only to hear that the governor was still out of town.
“I slept at another ashawo quarters at Agbor in Delta State.”
On Day 12, he arrived in Asaba, the governor, his family, uncle and mother, all happy to welcome him. He presented the bicycle to the state government.
To quote T.S. Eliot, a hard trip he had of it. But it is a picaresque challenge of one man, two tyres, a felicity of WhatsApp friends, feet over pedals for over a thousand kilometres to his governor and political elite.
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