#Roadtrip (somehow): The journey from Abuja to Umuahia via Port Harcourt

Ahh! I’ve missed blogging! Like, I love the #31Days31Writers series (really, really love it), but the entire month I feel like everything I publish that’s not a part of the series detracts from it.

But, I feel like I need to share details of this trip, and I’ll catch up on my trip to Rwanda earlier in the New Year. Ready?

So, Monday night was amazing (and that’s all I’m going to say about that), and somehow, my night wound up about 1am with me buying an Aero Contractors ticket headed to Port Harcourt that same morning. By 7.15am (I know, I’m crazy, but there’s a thing about friendship that will make me turn my plans on their head to be there for someone).

Of course seeing as the decision to fly was taken a few hours before while I was out with my nephew (gorgeous, adorable kiddo), I was unpacked, no idea what I even wanted to take on the trip, and cashless. Cashless because of my nephew actually; we’d gone to Silverbird Entertainment Center’s arcade. The End. One game after the other, till my purse emptied! And the ATM’s weren’t dispensing (of course, SMH). But it was a wonderful evening out, and Boo Boo was so happy with this wings and magic wand (which I didn’t plan to buy, but bought, lol)!

Back to me in my room, smiling like a Cheshire cat (for reasons y’all don’t need to know except you already know then you don’t need to ask or need to be told… lol, I’m rambling I know) but trying to figure out how to get to the airport in time for my flight, what to pack, etc. Managed to throw some things in my little suitcase, and then I settled in to sleep.

Woke up (with a start) at 5.30am, showered, zipped my box, and knew I wouldn’t find a taxi. So, I drove! Not going to tell you how quick I got there (‘Lewisa Hamilton’ in the building ladies and gentlemen), but I got in, then rang my cabbie to come pick up the car.

Boarded, and can I take a minute just give a big thumbs up to Aero Contractors? On their website they apologized, saying some flights might be delayed because of the weather and poor visibility sometimes. I thought it was really thoughtful of them to say that. But, we were in the air at 7.17am! Not waiting for a passenger, not even taxiing; we were airborne! I was so tripped!

So, got to Port Harcourt about 8.30am, and had to wait for my hosts to come to get me. So I sat down, and ‘people-watched’ for a bit (I like to do that sometimes).

Can I take another minute to discuss the horror that is that airport? God forbid. Absolute disgrace. Like, all shades and levels of shameful.

Anyway, so I sat down, waited, started working on some documents (we must s-l-a-y financially in 2016 biko), and then this lady with a dirty but super short, clingy pink dress comes in. So short her crotch was almost on display. Not my business really, what got my goat however was how dirty the dress was; imagine lots of streaks (maybe from fingers), wet patches, that kind of thing. I sneaked a photo but I’ve since deleted it *re-adjusts halo*

Long, unnecessary story about the long wait for my hosts so let’s just say that I ended up in GRA, at Genesis Cinema where I had a meal, and saw a movie. #SpoilerAlert It was ‘Point Break’, a film about some people who were doing some outrageous, extreme stuff in the name of connecting with Mother Earth, fulfilling the dictates of some leader, etc. It was nice to watch but I would have been happier spending that time on a cartoon. Thank you Kevin for being a great, great host!

Met up with my friend, and we started the trip to Umuahia, which was lovely but a few things stood out.

• The Port Harcourt/Umuahia expressway is a mess.
• Aba is filthy. Like ‘turn up your nose at it’ kind of filthy.
• In Aba there were a number of cars sporting the Biafran flag. I hope they know Nnamdi Kanu has a Nigerian and British passport, ha n’ezuzu ifa.
• Pretty much everyone was driving in the middle of the road, and it wasn’t about avoiding bad roads. So frustrating!

Long story short, we got into Umuahia and then my friend’s village in one piece, safe (despite the communal clash my friend and the driver stumbled on in Rivers State), and we met everyone at hers hale and hearty! Thank you Jesus! Bed time now!

Looking forward to the return leg of this trip (not sure of the date yet), because I get to use another airport I haven’t used in more than ten years! I really do love travelling!

TechHer – from where I stand

I’d like to tell a story (one that is long overdue); one that I hope will inspire you, confuse you (like it did me at some point), and more importantly open you up to do things even you thought you were unable to do. Ready?

So, I studied social media for a Master’s Degree, knew as soon as I was done that much as I loved my job at the BBC World Service Trust (now Media Action) producing the award-winning Story Story, I wanted to start a consultancy, teach people to communicate with their audiences using social media. And I did. I’ve been privileged to work for the best of the best since then.

While I was outside Nigeria, I benefited from a host of events, support groups, picked up tips and tricks, and generally enjoyed the opportunity to share knowledge, learn new stuff, stay on top. Some of these events were as particular as ‘black women in tech’, ‘black women who code’, etc.

I didn’t have that here in Nigeria, and after a while, I grumbled. And moved on. And grumbled, and moved on. I mentioned this need to my friends Fatu Ogwuche and Nana Nwachukwu once, talked about the need to hold an event/create a community of women, and still moved on. I even had a conversation with Iyin Aboyeji of Andela at Salamander Cafe and I remember him encouraging me to stick with women as against males and females for the event. Angel Adelaja of Zahara Spa popped into the cafe for a separate meeting but somehow joined our conversation and promised to support it!

One day in August 2015, I was in the office with Andy Madaki, and I said I was going to hold an event to see how many women were working in technology in Abuja, see what we could learn from each other, and how we could collaborate, and support each other. And while I was talking to him, I knew immediately that if I didn’t commit to it, I wouldn’t do it.

We talked about a name for it and for the sake of pride I won’t mention the names I came up with! By the time I was done with a concept note, Andy coined the name TechHer, and I loved it. And his designer created the logo, and I loved it too!

Then he showed me how to create a Google Form (I’d never had to create one before that day), and in minutes there were six questions and a link on Twitter. In 24 hours 45 women had signed up to attend. I thought, “huh? Where are we going to keep them?”

At some point we had to close our registration form because we panicked! Then we opened it the next day for another 24 hours because I got inundated with emails. What a great problem to have!

I told my bestie Wumi and my sister Adaora about it; also spoke with Tolu Onile-Ere of PlayHouse Communications, my friend Blaze Otokpa of Blazing Images, etc; by this time I was looking for gifts for our fishbowl raffle. Tolu immediately said his organization would give us N20, 000 worth of data. Whoop! They were our first donors and a much-needed boost at a time when most people I’d spoken to had started disappointing me, stopped replying emails, that kind of thing. *Smile*

I was with my mom and sister in my sister’s office one day, almost pulling out my hair cos we didn’t have a venue. And then I thought, “I’ll just call Jackie Farris”. And I did, and soon as I mentioned what I wanted, she said, “sure, come have a look and tell me what room you want.” Boom! Tears of joy baby! They ended up giving us the gorgeous Exhibition Hall of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Center, and sound equipment too! Thank you!

My friend Nana paid the stipend for the photographer Blazing Images gave us for the day, and I’m so thankful to Nana, and to Blaze because we wouldn’t have been able to afford their services!

There were also people like Amplified Radio and HolyHill Church who livestreamed, Zahara Spa who gave us a voucher to give out, and every other group who gave us gifts to give away.

Let’s backtrack a bit now.

When by the third day of the link being out, we had over 90 people registered, it occurred to me that this was becoming a little bigger than I’d intended it to be. That meant I needed to think. We decided to build a site and get on social media formally, and here I must thank Dimgba Kalu of Learn Code who built us a pretty website in less than 72 hours. Check on it www.techherng.com. We’re on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram too.

Where was I? The day was glorious (there’s a roundup here) –  big thank you to my dad for flying my mom in and out of Abuja to support me, to my sister who ended up staying outside the hall to pack the refreshments we got into bags, to Wumi who kept calling to encourage me, to Fatu and Nana – you girls will rule the world I promise – thank you! And to God, who placed the idea in my heart, who keeps strengthening my team and opening doors, we’re so thankful!

Since then, we’ve started a Whatsapp group where we have periodic giveaways, vote on whether Chrome is better than Mozilla’s Firefox, share opportunities, interesting stuff! We also send out periodic newsletters.

What else? On Wednesdays, we profile women in technology who are doing great things, on Thursday we teach a tech-related topic across all our social media, and on Fridays we publicise female businesses across our social media.

TechHer is hinged on three things – support, learning, and collaboration; the idea is to enable whatever women are already doing via technology, and everyday we think of new ways to achieve that. We think of going beyond the call to get women into STEM and are focused on how to keep the ones who are here; how to help them be better at things they do.

We also have to events planned in Abuja this month of November. The first starts on the 17th of November (next week Tuesday), and is ten classes on coding. There’s an entire module prepared for that; please email hello@techherng.com if you’re interested. It’s free.

We also want to teach our women to design, develop, and manage their websites themselves. That’s on the 27th of November, and is also free. Please register here.

Also, we’re planning a TechHer event for Port Harcourt this December, which I am very excited (and worried) about. I know it will come to pass, despite the odds we seem to be facing now.

So, that’s where we are, what we’re doing, and what we plan to do! From a trickle to a roar! Are you female, curious about or working in technology? You should join us! We might come to your city next!

 

Justice vs Jungle Justice

The post below was first published on the Future Challenges site on the 9th of October and was my first piece after joining the fold.

In my first year as a Mass Communication student at Ebonyi State University, I was terrorized by a course mate who started with wanting me to write up his essay for him. When I refused, he said if we were married I wouldn’t have refused him and so he was going to marry me. For the next six months this guy, a cultist, made my life a living hell. He stalked, mocked, threatened my friends and I, even bought matching rings and sent one of them to me. Long, horrible story. One day he yelled at me and then pushed me against a row of shelves in a book store opposite my campus, I fell (one of the most undignified moments of my life because I had a skirt  on).

Anyone who’s been through a Nigerian University in the last 15 – 20 years understands this experience. Some ladies got worse than I did, some were raped, beaten, even bathed in acid for refusing the advances of a cultist. Mostly, their assailants went free. Campus cultists are empowered by weapons and the occult. They decide who joins them, recruit whom they choose and wielding frightful weapons, wreak havoc on campus. Unforgiving, they would hunt offenders to the ends of the earth. Like Chima, who renounced cultism and left Abia State University for Enugu State University of Science and Technology, and then to my university.  They traced, found, and killed him in our final year.

And lecturers. The ones among them who had no idea what they were to teach, the ones who specialized in taking out their frustrations on the class, and then the ones who would pass or fail students based on financial or sexual gratification. Like the one who gave me an ‘E’ and, when I complained, remarked: ‘so I finally have your attention‘. My memories from that school would give you literature for days.

Then there are the armed robbers, devils whose sole mission is to dispossess others of their belongings. Without beating hearts, they plunder, rape, and leave tears, misery, and death in their wake.

One common theme in all these scenarios is that there is no justice for the victims. The victims do not speak up because they are afraid, ashamed, or simply because they know their complaints will be in vain. In vain because the perpetrators are never caught, and when they are, their wealthy parents get them off the hook faster than their hurt heals. Bottom line, there is no faith in the judicial system.

English: Map showing location of Rivers state in Nigeria (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On the four undergraduates at the University of Port Harcourt, ‘allegedly’ caught in the act of armed robbery, in Aluu, a small town in Rivers State, who were stripped naked then lynched by a mob that included women and what appeared to be teenagers, one may ask: who are the victims? The dead undergraduates, the mob or a society that is becoming increasingly inured to the bestial circumstances of daily life in Nigeria amidst the harrowing experiences of roof-high floods caused by a failure to build dams, Boko Haram attacks against students whose only crime is to seek ‘Western‘ education, policemen shooting a newly-wed groom and smiling young men, unapologetic sons of ‘big men‘  accused of engaging in  petroleum subsidy fraud. Who are the victims?

Have we become this debased, this morally bankrupt though? Have we sacrificed our humanity on the altar of  instant gratification and impunity? The Aluu lynching is so scary because people stood there recording the scene. They didn’t think to call the Police (would they have come?), or stage an intervention on behalf of the young men (and perhaps get killed along with the young men?). Someone uploaded a 3-minute video of the gruesome scene and for a few days that will be the news from Nigeria. How could anyone stand there and film the brutal murder of other human beings? Not even animals commit such random acts of senseless killing (yes, the hyperbole is deliberate).

You might say that if I’ve ever had a gun to my head, been the victim of a robbery, watched a friend or family member raped or killed by robbers I would be among that mob. I disagree. I am not an sub-human. We, Nigerians, are not sub-humans.

Two wrongs will never make a right. Those young men might have been armed robbers, but the mob that beat them are guilty of cold-blooded, vicious murder. End of discussion. Our justice system needs to be overhauled, and vigilante groups disbanded. The people’s trust in the laws of the land being enough for them needs to be brought back. Starting from the killers of these boys. Somehow, though, I wonder.

Related articles

• Arrests made over killing of 4 UNIPORT students-Photos (faithonavba.wordpress.com)
• A Song By Two #ALUU4 Murder Victims: Big L (Lloyd), Tipsy (Ugonna) – Heart of the City (silaszone.wordpress.com)
• (articles) Aluu Killings: an Eye Opener (djfinal.wordpress.com)
• UNIPORT: My son is innocent – Father of slain victim (vanguardngr.com)
• A Poem For #Aluu4! (ejaife.wordpress.com)
• Aluu Killing Update: Shocking-how Police Failed to Rescue Murdered Students As They Watched the Four Beaten,killed and Burnt Alive. (naijaspleen.wordpress.com)