Suzuki, Peugeot, Kingsway and John Holt

Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah has alleged that I have the memory of an elephant. Maybe the allegation was divinely inspired but I grimaced when I heard it because it reminded me of a film clip I once watched on Nat Geo World. It was about a herd of elephants that sacked a village in Sri […]

Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah has alleged that I have the memory of an elephant. Maybe the allegation was divinely inspired but I grimaced when I heard it because it reminded me of a film clip I once watched on Nat Geo World. It was about a herd of elephants that sacked a village in Sri Lanka. A huge bull elephant threw a 50 year old man to the ground and raised its foot to stamp on him. Miraculously, the elephant shied away from killing the man and actually helped him back to his feet. Park rangers later determined that the elephant recognised the man because they played together as kids four decades earlier! In contrast, I had trouble remembering a shopping list given to me last week.
Elephantine memory or no, many readers sent messages last week to remind me of several popular products that I failed to mention in last week’s column on Peak, Coke, Omo and Robb. They include Flight, High Society and Mai Bicycle cigarettes, Pronto beverage drink, Bazooka Joe chewing gum and Surf detergent. How did I forget Surf with its popular jingle “Surf mai karfi kato, na wanke tufa kal kal [Surf the huge and powerful man, washes clothes very well]”?
Many other nostalgic readers protested that I left out many product groups from the discussion. Today, with the memory power of a goat, let us wade into product areas that were marginalised last week, beginning with bicycles, immediate successors to donkeys, horses and camels as our main means of transport. The most popular bicycle brands in the 1970s were Raleigh and Rudge. Bicycles for hire was one of the most prominent trades in Nigerian towns into the 1970s. In my hometown, the top bicycle hirers were Imamu Shehe and Yahaya Nabilbili. It cost three pence per hour to hire a bicycle. In 1972 my grandfather bought a Raleigh bicycle for Mainasarawa from Danladi Spikin’s shop for 18 pounds. He then paid another three pounds for the headlight. In those days, to ride a bicycle without headlights could land you in prison, unlike today when tipper trucks drive about without headlights.
The most popular motorcycle brands in the 1970s, which were heavily advertised in newspapers, on television and on large billboards were Japanese-made Suzuki, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Honda as well as the Italian-made Vespa Scooter. Before them there was the 50cc Mobilete which was midway between a bicycle and a motorcycle. The most popular Suzuki brand was Suzuki 100. It was so tough that it was used to ferry farm produce. Yamaha 100, Yamaha 125 Electric and Kawasaki 100 were popular too but less sturdy. Also popular was Honda 110cc Benley, which was very fast. The most fashionable however was Honda 125 CG which had a distinct sound, slanting silencer, two speedometers and was extremely fast. My father bought one for me for 420 naira in 1978.
Among older men, Honda CD 175 was the choice motorcycle of rich Igbo traders and school headmasters. Later on came Honda 185 Road Master, a powerful machine whose only equal in speed was Yamaha 200. Vespa was later upstaged by Honda C 75 which was called “Ladies.” In the late 1970s a motorcycle called Dala was assembled in Kano. It was of very poor quality and it fell to pieces after an accident. It soon disappeared.
By far the most popular cars on Nigerian roads in the 60s and 70s were Peugeots 403, 404 and 504, Volkswagen Beetle and Mercedes 200. Also common were Volkswagen Passat and Igala, Opel Record, Datsun, Mazda, Volvo, Toyota Corona, Toyota Crown, Honda Civic, Fiat, Renault and Citroen. Toyota Corolla’s sellers did an advert blitz calling it “King of the Road” when it won the Argungu Safari Rally in 1974. Civil servants bought Russian-made Lada, Moskovich and Volga because they were the cheapest cars. In the mid-1970s a Peugeot 504 GR cost 4,200 naira; Volkswagen Beetle cost 3,500 while Lada cost 3,000 naira. Peugeot 504 station wagon, which debuted in 1971, soon became the top intercity taxi.
The most popular small buses were Ford Transit, Toyota Hiace, Daihatsu, Mitsubishi and Volkswagen Kombi, which was mostly used by NEPA. It regularly caught fire on the streets. The Federal Government imported hundreds of Leyland and Scania luxury buses for the All Africa Games in 1973 and again for FESTAC ’77. After each event, it shared the buses among the states. Bendel Line, Northwest Lines and other state transport companies arose from those buses.
The most popular trucks and trailers for goods transport were DAF, Bedford, Leyland, Mercedes 911 MAN Diesel, Comer and Toyota while the most popular trucks for passenger transport were Austin, Morris and GMC. The centre of truck body-making was Laranto, Jos but in my hometown truck bodies were made by a skilled carpenter called Adamu Bode. Up till the 70s, most cars in Nigeria were owned by civil servants who bought them with government loans. The loan terms required them to service them monthly at authorised vehicle workshops, the main ones being SCOA, Mandilas, J Allen, R T Briscoe and UTC. There were few roadside motor mechanics at the time.
Five motor assembly plants were established in Nigeria in the 1970s, namely Peugeot in Kaduna, Volkswagen in Lagos, National Truck Manufacturing Company [Fiat] in Kano, Mercedes in Enugu, Leyland in Ibadan and Steyr in Bauchi. Don’t ask me where they are today. In 1975 government introduced the new vehicle number plate, which was when we began to have numbers such as KD 1234 KA and SO 8888 SD, my old number plate. In medium sized Northern Nigerian towns into the 1970s the most popular store was Kantin Jan Hwal [John Holt], G B Olivant and PZ.  In the biggest cities the superstores were Kingsway, Leventis, UTC and Chellarams. Leading the construction companies was Julius Berger but others such as Costain, PW, Taylor Woodrow, Daral Handsah, Dumez, D’Alberto & Bogialla, Impresit, Sterling Astaldi and Strabag were close competitors.
As students in the 1970s we loved cameras. The best brands were Kodak, Minolta, Yashica and Polaroid. The original “wait and get” camera was the Polaroid Land. This camera was invented in 1948 by Dr Edwin H. Land, President of Polaroid. He snapped a picture of his small daughter, who demanded to see the picture and began to cry when he said the negative must be developed first. To solve that problem Land, who was an engineer, entered his laboratory and designed a camera “with an inbuilt darkroom.”
In the 1960s all our music blared from hand-winded gramophone records. Electricity-powered gramophone discs then replaced those, followed by tape recorders and huge disco machines such as Kenwood. Blaring from them was the music of I K Dairo, Haruna Ishola, Fela Ransome-Kuti, Ebenezer Obey and King Sunny Ade. Top hits from abroad were from James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, Miriam Makeba, Boney M, Tina Charles, Dolly Parton, Diana Ross and the Jamaican reggae artistes Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and U Roy.
Up until 1972 we were spending pennies, shillings and pounds in Nigeria, with the face of Queen Elizabeth II adorning our currency. The coins were of half a penny, one penny, three pence, six pence, one shilling and one guinea while the notes were in one, five, ten and twenty pounds. Naira and kobo became legal tender on January 1, 1973 even though the five and ten kobo coins were released six months earlier. At 6am on April 1, 1972 pupils lined up the streets to see vehicles stop in their tracks and change lanes as Nigeria changed over from left-hand to right hand driving. Most cars then spotted a sticker saying, “Right hand driving, no hand signal.”