Adieu, Black Scorpion

But you, the living, don’t know how, when and where the grim reaper will catch up with you. No matter our station in life, we are all potential corpses. Let the dead not mock the dead.I recoiled  in shock when I saw the bitterness with which many of my countrymen, notably my in-laws from Eastern […]

But you, the living, don’t know how, when and where the grim reaper will catch up with you. No matter our station in life, we are all potential corpses. Let the dead not mock the dead.
I recoiled  in shock when I saw the bitterness with which many of my countrymen, notably my in-laws from Eastern Nigeria, reacted to the death last week of Brig. Gen Benjamin Adekunle, also known as the “Black Scorpion”. Adekunle was a legend of the Nigerian civil war and there is a sense in which one could understand the various reactions of people especially when the subject is a great personage like Adekunle. But I cannot think of any justification for not only attempting to urinate on his grave but also demonising his ethnic group. None, except that some people are simply vendors of hate.
The Nigerian civil war was tragic, like all wars. Every sensible person that I know wished that it never happened, that the young army officers on both sides of the divide had found a peaceful way to settle their grievances. But that never happened and brother was forced to slay brother, children were dispatched to untimely graves, terrible things happened. That war ended 44 years ago. Indeed an Igbo man became vice-president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria nine years after the war, but some people have refused to move on. Instead, they are seizing every single opportunity to demonise those who fought to keep Nigeria one.  
If there had been no war, Adekunle could not have waged war in Eastern Nigeria. There was war and he was a soldier, a damn good one sent on a mission to reclaim Eastern Nigeria as part of the federation by his commander-in-chief. He did a good job of his task as far as the federal side was concerned — so good that he later consulted for some countries in southern Africa during the liberation struggle. To be sure, Adekunle was not a saint. None of us is. But neither was he Lucifer as some people have uncharitably labelled him. They were judging the masquerade without bothering about the man behind the mask.
My first encounter with the Black Scorpion was in the early 80s at an interview in his house in Aguda, Lagos. His notoriety for being unconventional was an open secret but I wasn’t prepared for what turned out to be an enforced visitation. The actual interview went well. As usual, the retired soldier shot straight from the hip. Although the interview was on tape, only a foolish journalist would publish everything Adekunle said. He was quite irreverent and some of his views danced dangerously on the edge of libel or slander or both. But he was an interviewer’s delight. After the interview, as I was packing up the tools of my trade, Adekunle ordered his security man to lock the gates saying that I could only take leave of him at his pleasure.
Then he ordered that a carton of beer (I can’t now remember which brand, but maybe it was Top beer) be brought to entertain us. To cut a long story short, against my personal wish and desire I was forced to entertain myself with five bottles of beer by which time we had already been in the house for six hours! When I told the story in our DRUM office, one of my senior colleagues said he wished he had taken the interview himself on account of the free booze even if under duress. In Adekunle, I thought I saw a simple lonely man who found it hard to deal with the plenty of time he had to burn having retired from the only profession he knew at a very young age.
I didn’t see the Black Scorpion again until about nine years ago at the local airport in Abuja (I mean the real local airport, the one that has now been taken over by private jet owners). He walked rather slowly carrying himself like a giant which he was not. A young assistant trailed behind him. I stood in his path. He stopped and looked up.

“And who the hell may you be?”
“Wole Olaoye sir.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“It has no bell, sir. I was the DRUM journalist you held hostage in your house for six hours and drowned in beer in 1982.”
(Laughing) “Get the hell out of my way! What are you doing here?”
“I’m on my way to Lagos.”
“Me too. I’ll sit beside you in the plane so we can talk.”
“I doubt that will be possible. What is your seat number, sir?”
“It doesn’t matter, I’ll sit beside you.”

He introduced me to his assistant and we all walked into the departure lounge. On boarding the plane, Black Scorpion settled down beside me in the economy class. The real owner of the seat showed up and simply bowed in respectful greeting before going to take the seat originally allotted to Adekunle.
We talked about everything under the sun: Nigeria, the armed forces, politics, Obasanjo etc. It was clear that there was no love lost between him and Obasanjo. What intrigued me was that you could hear every word of our conversation six rows away! I wondered if there was a security agent in the plane. I could be picked up for sharing a plane seat with a man who didn’t have many kind words to say about the incumbent president.
Adekunle was unhappy that his contribution to keeping Nigeria one was under-acknowledged. He was miffed that those he described as opportunists had stolen his victory at the war front. “I won the war but they removed me so that another person could take the glory”, he said repeatedly. When I asked him how he managed to clear the seaports in the 70s during the ‘cement armada’, he laughed, a cracking mix of guffaws and loud chuckles. “When I have a task, I do it to the best of my ability. I was sent to clear the ports so I cleared the ports, that’s all.”
Fare thee well, Black Scorpion, soldier-and-a-half, too much for one army, not enough for two!