Okigbo And The Makerere Conference

Christopher Okigbo

BY JAMES GIBBS

What happened at and after the Makerere Writers Conference held in June 1962? The significance of the Conference of Writers of English Expression held in Makerere College, Kampala, during June 1962, continues to be pondered, and rightly so. As I write, a conference to mark the sixtieth anniversary of that gathering is being organised by the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA), Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL) and Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), and is scheduled for June 23-26. It is to be hoped that questions raised by the original meeting will continue to be considered. There is certainly much about what happened 60 years ago that should be examined closely and, indeed, I note that, myth-making is still in progress. This was illustrated by the use of a photo-shopped picture to illustrate the article about the PAWA Conference by Akintayo Abodunrin carried in the Nigerian Tribune of June 19, 2022.(See ‘Ibadan hosts Pan-African Writers conference, 60 Years After Kampala’.) This is not the first time that this particular photograph has featured in relation to an event marking an anniversary of the 1962 Conference.

In London, during 2017, the same picture was used by the organisers of a London conference marking the 55th anniversary of the Makerere Conference. It is reproduced below, along with a ‘key’, and the full title that includes the words ‘artist impression.’ At the 2017 anniversary meeting, the picture filled the cyclorama behind the speakers who included Wole Soyinka. During an early session, I raised the question of the origin of the photograph, and went on to point out that whatever it showed it did not reveal the organisation that had funded the event. That is to say, it did not hint at the presence ‘behind the scenes’ at Makerere of the Central Intelligence Agency. As has since become common knowledge, the 1962 Makerere conference was financed by the CIA, then operating clandestinely through the Farfield Foundation and the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom. The betrayal of trust involved in this deception has been chronicled in detail by Frances Stoner Saunders in her exposé of ‘The CIA and the Cultural Cold War’ entitled Who Paid the Piper? (1999).

The ‘photo-shopped’ photograph used in London in 2017 that has now resurfaced was a shoddy piece of work on several levels. To ‘pick apart’ the photograph, we must start by saying that it shows the heads of some of the writers present at the conference ‘grafted’ onto to bodies in a fairly formal picture of a group that may be of members of a Makerere College Society. This is monstrous enough and to imagine all is explained or excused by the description ‘Artist impression’ is preposterous. The deception is compounded by the fact that the picture does not show all who were present. A full ‘gallery’ would include, for example, critics, publishers, and editors, at least one of whom was a long-serving agent of the CIA.

The objectionable photograph is, I understand, the work of Dada Khanyisa for a website called ‘Chimurenga Chronic’. It was irresponsible of the London 2017 conference organisers to have used it in 2017 without a clear ‘Warning’, and it is sad to see it being used again, once more, without warning. Incidentally, it may be of interest that when Soyinka was button-holed after the first session of the London conference, and asked what he made of the picture, it was apparent that he had not ‘recognised himself’ in the podgy, suited figure on the extreme left. In part explanation,he pointed out that he had stopped wearing ties and suits long before June 1962!…It is to be hoped that the 60th Anniversary gathering will get off to a better start than the 2017 event, and that there will be a determination to get to the bottom of what really happened at Makerere in 1962. Despite the presence of Soyinka – and it should be said of Cameron Duodu -at the 55th anniversary in London, the gathering did not by any means sort out all the issues raised by the 1962 conference. Many loose ends remain. Serious research into archives are among the steps required to discover who expected what from the gathering.

Over the years, details about individual experiences at Makerere 1962 have emerged but the conference is still surrounded by uncertainty. Perhaps fifty-five years was too strange an anniversary to celebrate. It smacked of organisers who had failed to mark the fiftieth anniversary sufficiently and feared that none of the original participants would be alive at the time the sixtieth celebration – that has now ‘come along’.Perhaps the 60th Anniversary Conference will fare better?

Christopher Okigbo and Makerere 1962

To shed light on the 1962 Conference and to gesture towards areas where work is still required, I am going to bring together some reports and thoughts about the experience of the poet Christopher Okigibo at Kampala. I am doing so in the hope that it will provide an insight into what was going on below the surface and behind the scenes. Okigbo presents himself as a suitable subject for this exercise because he has been the subject of a scrupulous biography, Thirsting for Sunlight by Obi Nwakanma (2010), and because a significant ‘industry’ has gown up around him his life and works. For example, during 2007, he and his works were considered at a four-day conference held in Boston. Okigbo was easy to find at the Makerere Conference: he put himself forward, contributed to discussions, delighted in shocking the more staid of his fellow delegates, and generally ‘made his mark’. He did this by, for example, declaring that he did ‘not read his poetry to non-poets’ and he also took a leading role in ensuring that the social side of the conference was ‘memorable’. First some background to his presence at the Conference:

Okigbo graduated in Classics from University College, Ibadan, and embarked on a career in the Civil Service. However, that did ‘not work out’ and he moved into teaching. In the meantime, he had begun to write poetry and had had some success, notably with verses published in the Ibadan-based Black Orpheus. That publication had been founded by Ulli Beier, and had been put on a fairly solid financial basis thanks to grants from the ‘Farfield Foundation’ – that Saunders and others have exposed as a CIA front. Okigbo’s writing has long intrigued and pleased. By 1962, he had already attracted the interest of Donatus Nwoga, who was a member of the Nigerian delegation at Makerere and who must be briefly introduced here. By the time he set off for Makerere, Nwoga had completed a Dublin PhD and secured a lectureship at the University of Nigeria. He was, in fact, one of the first Nigerian literary critics to establish a reputation and it was inevitable that he would engage with Okigbo’s work. The two men had much in common: they were near contemporaries, and both had been brought up in Igbo families that had been exposed to Catholic missionary influences.

The Makerere Conference has become known as a ‘Writers Conference’, but this has tended to obscure the presence of critics, such as Nwoga. The same, misleading ‘short-hand’ has tended to obscure the presence at the Conference of others who were not writers. The ‘delegates’ included, for example, broadcasters, editors, and publishers, and people who were ‘more than publishers’ – see below. Okigbo clearly made an impact on the deliberations of the Conference. He did this, first of all, by his contribution to a discussion at the heart of the conference: the answer to the question: What is African writing? To this Okigbo responded abruptly, ‘finally’, and, as many must have felt, frivolously, by saying: ‘There is no such thing as African writing. There is only good or bad writing.’ (Nwakanma: 182.) Of Okigbo’s other contributions, Nwakanma records that in the session on Language and African Literature the poet threw ‘many of the writers into guffaws when he wondered aloud about the kind of Pidgin English Nigerian prostitutes spoke in Lagos.’ This topic – The Language Issue – has, of course, been of consuming interest to many, including one of the younger writers at the conference, ‘James T Ngugi’. One can’t imagine Ngugi wa Thiong’o – as he was later known guffawing at Okigbo’s irreverent answer.

At one of the reading sessions, Okigbo, declared, as noted above: ‘I don’t read my poems to non-poets!’ Nwakanma describes this as an ‘impish’ moment, however delegates at Makerere might have categorised it in other terms, as, for example, aloof, pompous or elitist.

‘A cool place for a conference’

Whatever others made of him, Okigbo described Kampala in positive terms. He thought it was ‘a cool place for a conference’, and, ever alert to recreational opportunities, he said it offered ‘more than adequate outlets at Top Life and White Nile’. (Night clubs visited by delegates.) However, he went on to describe Makerere / Kampala as ‘a literary desert’ and he expressed the hope that the Conference would do ‘what irrigation does to the Sudan.’ (It being understood that the image was of a ‘literary desert’ in need of water.)

Nwakanma gives further insights into Okigbo at Makerere by writing: ‘During the conference Okigbo was always to be found in the company of the Ugandan playwright and journalist Robert Serumaga and he struck up an easy friendship with the South African writers and exiles, Bloke Modisane and Lewis Nkosi.’ (181)While in Uganda, Okigbo also got to know Langston Hughes and Otis Redding. Nwakanma offers that the latter’ shared many views, especially on the meaning of international blackness and against racial essentialism in cultural production.’ The lastsentence of the paragraph on these interactions reads: ‘Okigbo and Robie Macauley, Editor of the Kenyon Review, discussed the possibility of publishing Limits and the early version of “Laments to the Silent Sisters.” But nothing came of it.’ (181)

In sifting these pieces of information, it is interesting to note that Serumaga’s name is omitted from some lists of those present at the conference. The fact that Nwakanma’s book makes it clear that Serumaga was not only present but interacted with Okigbodraws attention to the need for fuller, more authoritative documentation of the conference, and who came and went during it. Perhaps Serumaga’s established contacts with the University and his interests in both journalism and playwriting made him ‘persona grata’. He certainly sems to have moved in and out of the conference easily, and to have mingled with the visitors.

I want to draw this article to a close with the image created by Nwakanma’s reference to Okigbo in conversation with that other delegate who is glossed as the editor of the Kenyon Review, Robie Macauley. Macauley was indeed an influential editor, but he was also a long-serving CIA agent.

Macauley’s commitment to espionage is alluded to in on-line sources and in exposés of the CIA. From these it is possible to get a sense of how Macauley might have attempted to manipulate the ’soft power’ the CIA leveraged through its links to publications, its budget of $900,000,000, and the support it received from disenchanted Communists. Macauley was an experienced operator, how did he engage with the impish, witty, Okigbo? Did he, for example, dangle the prospect of publication in the Kenyon Review before the poet? If so, it can be seen that Okigbo did not swallow the bait – since ‘Limits’ first appeared in Presence Africaine (1966).

More research must be undertaken into what happened at Makerere in 1962. In the meantime, we must insist that coverage of the 60thanniversary conference risesabove photo-shopped images that have been concocted, confected, contrived, compounded, and cooked up. As a first step in searching for the truth about what happened in Uganda sixty years ago, it must be recognised that Dada Khanyisa’s ‘artist’s impression’ cannot be taken at face-value.

Gibbs writes in from Bristol, United Kingdom.

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Camouflage: Best Of Contemporary Writing In Nigeria

BY TOYIN FALOLA

Many critics have categorized the different periods of the Nigerian literary scene in different nodes from means, methods, and concerns. No matter the generation, worldviews are shaped by the problems facing them at that period. The literary and national consciousness of the first and second generation of Nigerian writers was predominantly dominated by the notion of instant Nigerian dream and gradual process of the views and moral standing of ethnic conscious Nigeria.

These two generations sought to carry out their intentions with different methods in a bid to reconstruct, adjust, refute and even restructure Nigeria’s history and European standards. As a result, most of their works were laced with complex language, obscure linguistic, and sophisticated writings, creating the notion that the average Nigerian writing across genres should have specific tenets or features.

Post-independence Nigerian writings are particularly rich in language, content, phases, trends, and even structure across all genres. The emergence and inclusion of migrant writers, considered contemporary cosmopolitan writers and domiciled outside their natal matrix but are still very involved in Nigerian affairs, is the game-changer in Nigerian literature.

Adesanmi and Dunton (2005), in a narrow but relevant scope, opine, “Third generation writers prominent among whom are Chimamanda Adichie, Sefi Atta, Helon Habila, Chris Abani, Chika Unigwe, Helen Oyeyemi, Teju Cole, Unoma Azuah, Biyi Bandele, Maik Nwosu, Okey Ndibe, Chuma Nwokolo, Segun Afolabi, Uwen Akpan and Uzodinma Iweala, were born after or around 1960 and were, therefore, temporally severed from the colonial event.” Though limited to Nigerian authors, their assertion reveals that migrant literature and writers constitute a significant generation in the periodization of African literature.

Furthermore, Adesanmi and Dunton highlight the defining characteristics of third-generation writers thus, “Third generation writers’ works are decentralized and not subject to conventionally erect structures or ideologies. They maintain that fluid plot, faster-paced narrative and language shorn of the domestication impulse of the first and second generation of writers with setting almost always urban and Euromodernist”. Still ascribing defining characteristics to third-generation writers, Olaniyan (2012) describes their literary productions as “an overall healthy development of cultural creativity, the type that continually breaches accepted boundaries and invents new forms and suggests new meanings.”

This anthology under review, Camouflage, edited by Nduka Otiono and Odoh Diego Okenyodo, assembles a new generation of writers in Nigeria and the diaspora ranging from the age of 24, which is the youngest, and the oldest about 46. Most of these authors are well known in various capacities, from writers’ forums to winning international awards. The features and ideologies of this new generation of writers in the Nigerian literary scene are in line with the notion of Nduka Otiono’s Introduction in this collection. Otiono established in “Of Chameleons and Gods: A Generation in Search of New Idioms” that there is a total disconnect “between learned critics and academics in the ivory tower and the creative activities of new Nigerian writers,” which has affected the outlook of the writers in the Nigerian literary scene.

Also, based on the criticism of the new generation of writings in Nigeria, Otiono shows how Niyi Osundare, Olu Obafemi, and Charles Nnnolim identify that pale work, ideological sterility, and lack of proper idioms are the significant problems associated with the works of these new writers. However, it is pertinent to state that this critical collection aims to delegitimize and reconstruct the notion that a generation is better than another generation ideologically, stylistically, or aesthetically. Following T. S. Eliot’s goal of his famous essay, “Tradition and Individual Talent,” which hinges on the idea of innovation and expressionism, the contemporary, evolving, and complex ways of living have inspired much of the new writing socially and politically. Even from the title, which shows borrowing and intertextuality, a modern technique by these new writers, from a giant from the African literary scene, Jack Mapanje, Otiono concludes “Camouflage, to the various guises and voices which our contemporaries deploy to speak to the Nigerian condition and to overcome censorship—be it under military adventurers in politics or under pretentious “democrats” in the new dispensation.”

Through the critical reading of the poems and short stories in the collection, the authors adopt the concept of realism as there is a sign of a tremendous pursuant and continuance in the idea of realism by early writers in Nigeria. Currently, most of these new authors take on the transitional role of realism, in which they use descriptive images and inventive idioms to represent the disillusionment and dystopia of the Nigerian space as it is. They are also observant writers, documenting everyday life in straightforward prose and accessible poems, with the skilful description of characters from all levels of the society, accurately detailing their manners and speeches.

In the interaction of the literary with the notable developments in Nigerian literature in different climates such as philosophical, social, or cultural, the various works of the individual authors in the collection shows the movement to a self-conscious trend which is unique and overtly contributes to the idea of generic instability which, even though is problematized, produced an array of resistance for older generations and also to the function of the contemporary Nigerian literary scene.

Following Nduka Otiono’s categorization of the authors in the collection and their specificity, ranging from “David Nwamadi’s “Boom-Time for Grave Diggers;” Angela Nwosu’s “The Final Tea;” Chiedu Ezeanah’s engagement of national tragedies; the unorthodox pidgin poetry of Victor Eboigbe, “Gari don pass Naira;” to the bold, feminist erotic offerings of some of the female poets featured, especially Victoria Sylvia Kankara, Lola Shoneyin, Nonye Bethel and Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo,” it is significant to point out that these instabilities and troubled canon convention by these new authors can be considered as a form of symbolic and metaphorical action that has further shaped our understanding of the Nigerian world and reinvented the Nigerian literary scene. These generic trends and conventional discourses confirm or answer what Okey Ndibe suggests on the idea that we need a new way of telling our stories.

As a result, these new writers have reinvented, reconstructed, and reimagined new languages and devices that justly adapt to the new Nigerian complexity. More importantly, to answer the older critics and how they harshly berate these new writings, I claim that these stories and new writings may seem to be “poisoning” the Nigerian literature, but it is also an antidote for the disillusioned and new Nigerian complexities. These authors’ reshaping and evident rewriting in the collection shows a performative aesthetics that offers and creates new ways of perceiving the new Nigerian reality.

Overall, the analyses of Camouflage’s poems and short stories address and open up many questions and interrogations, particularly in the Nigerian literary scene and space. One of such is the threshold of boom, prosperity and utopia, and postcolonial conditions that the typical Nigerian writer is opened to and its sustainability and continuance by the new crop of writers. In addition, the concerns and subject matter that permeate most of the literary works in the collection seek to continue in the vigorous pursuit of holding leaders accountable for the unpleasable, nervous, and traumatic conditions the average Nigerian citizen faces daily.

It is pertinent to state that these established writers in the diaspora tend to explore cultural diversity in their works. Each of the literary works in the collection is an authentic and apt representation of the numerous phases and chains of events that reeks of disillusionment, which has overridden Nigerians from the period of independence until contemporary times. They seem unchanged, and, obviously, these conversations and topics are what early writers dwelled on and what the new writers are seeking to pursue in different patterns. However, these literary works’ conversations include nodes of community sharing, a different or strange identity, and headstrong resistant literature that are significant stylistic deviations from the old generation of writers. More importantly, they are still relevant in the discussions about the dysfunctionality in the sociocultural and sociopolitical spaces of the country. Excitingly, this collection opens up new dialogues concerning genre, language, and idioms and draws attention to the disillusionment of Nigerian society. It is coming urgently when readers home and abroad are introduced or fed wrong notions about the Nigerian state. These works are a sort of re-representation of the Nigerian consciousness, contributing significantly to the postcolonial conditions of scholarship in Nigerian literature.

This book is about the Nigerian post-independence conditions and new Nigerian realities, and it is also effective in problematizing and dramatizing the relationship between ideology and aesthetics that tends to reshape the Nigerian experience. Interestingly, the anthology litters the individual works of the contributors alphabetically rather than thematically, which gives the reader a memorable and fascinating surreal experience of encountering the unknown and navigating different styles and ideologies while digesting the collection.

Finally, the collection will contribute to the existent, vibrant scholarly discussions and materials on the Literature of Nigeria and the Diaspora literature. It will contribute to new trends and generic structure in this aspect of literature and will be helpful to sociologists, psychologists, policymakers, and other categories of people. This is because it will give exposés on the intricacies of the Nigerian daily experiences and image, which as Nduka Otiono rightly put, “Nigerian writers and intellectuals more positively project the country’s image internationally than the billions of naira spent on foreign missions and image laundering.” Thus, the array of writers portrayed in the anthology, Camouflage, confirms that literature and liberal arts in Nigeria are significant exports that should be seriously considered.

SOURCE: TRIBUNE

The Mkpuru Mmiri Scourge In The South-East

TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

Image via Youtube

ONE of the many lucid indications that Nigeria is ebbing dangerously into a dysfunctional society is the pervasive use of illicit drugs by many of its young people. There is hardly any geopolitical zone in the country where the use of one type of illicit drug or another is not a veritable issue of concern. It is a grave development that has the potential to imperil the country’s future. Currently, many communities in the South-East are reportedly grappling with the pernicious effects of the consumption of an illicit drug called mkpuru mmiri in the local parlance, which in literal translation in Igbo language means ‘seeds of water’. The pharmaceutical name of the illicit drug is methamphetamine and its use has been linked to various aberrant, anti-social and criminal behaviours by some young people in the zone. Cases of young boys raping grandmothers are on the rise, an indication that life has really broken down and moral values have become warped and twisted in that part of the country.

The drug is also believed to be a booster to the unknown gunmen whose level of atrocities in the South-East have become quite concerning locally and internationally. In other words, there seems to be a correlation between the use of illicit drugs and the spate of youth restiveness in the zone. Also, quite an intolerable number of young people in some Igbo communities are said to be having mental issues which tend to impair the quality of their decisions, judgments and actions because of their consumption of the drug. Thus, young people hitherto reputed for being diligent and meticulous at weighing various options before making decisions now seem to have become junkies, largely unconscious of their environment and lacking the mental capacity to evaluate the likely consequences of their decisions and actions. They are now uncharacteristically prone to violence and susceptible to taking precipitate actions because of paranoia and the hallucinatory effects of the use of narcotics, notably mkpuru mmiri.

Worse still, this prohibited drug seems to be readily available, very ‘potent’ and somewhat cheaper than some other hard drugs in its class. And that perhaps accounts for its popularity among young people in the zone. Again, there are indications that many of the laboratories that produce the dangerous drug are located in the South-East and they are reportedly owned by some members of Mexican drug cartels which came to set up the laboratories in the country in 2016. It should, therefore, not be surprising that the deleterious effects of drug use and abuse are palpable in the zone

In trade and commerce, the people of the South-East are arguably the most proficient and enterprising segment of the Nigerian society. It is rather sad that many of the young people in that part of the country have now embraced the destructive culture of illicit drug consumption that promises to dampen their otherwise impressive productivity and whittle down their economic importance if corrective actions are not taken swiftly to contain the menace. And that will be in addition to the consequences on the society of the ongoing wanton destruction of life and property in that part of Nigeria being orchestrated by misguided youths, most probably under the influence of narcotics. Unfortunately, while it is pretty easy to start the use of illicit drugs and become addicted, combating the threat of drug addiction is not a piece of cake, especially for a narcotic like mkpuru mmiri that can be accessed by users with relative ease. Thus, pragmatic solutions, far beyond mere rhetoric, outcries, lamentations and press releases will be required to rein in the scourge of mkpuru mmiri in the South-East.

There should be an all-of-society approach that will bring on board all stakeholders, including the family, religious, traditional and community leaders, and officials of the subnational governments to chart a new course out of the extant quagmire. We note the outcry by leaders of different hues to check the scourge of mkpuru mmiri but they will need to up their ante as the menace has continued to burgeon despite their efforts to curtail it. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) is also called upon to increase the tempo of its law enforcement activities in the South-East with a special focus on this narcotic. It must locate and destroy all the laboratories producing the drug, cut the supply chain, and make the felons behind its production and trafficking to face the wrath of the law.

Just as we recommend concerted actions by the relevant stakeholders to combat the use of illicit drugs, we also recommend the same for tackling socioeconomic issues such as youth unemployment which, to a large extent, birthed the consumption of narcotics among the youth to begin with. For many youths, the consumption of hard drugs, including mkpuru mmiri, is their own way of escaping from the frustration and hopelessness staring them in the face within the socioeconomic environment. For instance, a crop of gainfully employed young people and those who can see positive indications that they would be ultimately employed are most unlikely to indulge in illicit drug use. What obtains now is a quintessential case of an idle mind becoming the devil’s workshop. And of course, it is axiomatic that poor people who strongly believe that they have nothing to lose now or in the future would not mind to taking precipitate actions.

Truth be told, the current efforts aimed at stopping the use of mkpuru mmiri can only provide transient respite from the consequences of hard drugs use in the South-East. An enduring panacea to the scourge of illicit drugs in the zone and elsewhere in the country will depend largely on how effectively all tiers of government work in concert with other stakeholders to address the socioeconomic factors that made the consumption of narcotics attractive to the youth in the first place. No amount of official application of force to control the use of illicit drugs among the youth will be efficacious as long as socioeconomic circumstances within the domestic economy continue to force the majority of them to become or remain non-economic actors.

Fire Disaster: Ifeanyi Ubah Visits Onitsha, Vows To Put Measures To End Explosion

Ifeanyi Ubah. Image: Twitter

BY MICHAEL OVAT

AWKA (NIGERIAN TRIBUNE) -- In furtherance of his efforts to commiserate with victims of the petrol tanker explosions in Ochanja Market and Omagba, Onitsha, the Senator representing Anambra South, Dr Patrick Ifeanyi Ubah on Friday visited the scenes of the explosions and survivors who are presently receiving treatment at Toronto Hospital Onitsha. The Senator who moved straight to the scenes immediately after his return from Abuja urged the marketers to keep hope alive as efforts are already in place to give them every necessary assistance. He further informed them that he is relentlessly working towards a Bill that will prevent such tragedy across the country in the future.

In their response, the marketers who jubilated upon sighting the Anambra South Senator thanked him for his efforts so far in promoting the Igbo economy. They further said that the Senator’s visit is a big relief to them because he has given them more reason to keep hope alive. The marketers who spoke through their leaders further described Senator Ubah as a big blessing to Anambra State and urged him to keep the good works up.

After addressing residents and marketers at the scenes of the explosions, Senator Ubah went to Toronto Hospital Onitsha to sympathize with the survivors who are receiving treatment. At the hospital, the Senator prayed God to grant them quick recovery and informed them that he has already donated two million naira for their treatment and that a register has been opened for them under the Ifeanyi Ubah Foundation to offset their medical bills and feeding costs. Senator Ubah who also sympathized with families of those that lost their loved ones to the incidents prayed God to grant the souls of the deceased eternal rest and to also grant their families the fortitude to bear the irreplaceable loss.

In their response, the marketers who jubilated upon sighting the Anambra South Senator thanked him for his efforts so far in promoting the Igbo economy. They further said that the Senator’s visit is a big relief to them because he has given them more reason to keep hope alive. The marketers who spoke through their leaders further described Senator Ubah as a big blessing to Anambra State and urged him to keep the good works up.

Senator Ubah further visited Elite Club Onitsha who donated all the water used in extinguishing the flames caused by the tanker explosion that occurred early Friday morning in Omagba. At the visit, he thanked them for their service to humanity and assured them reiterated his zeal to put measures that will put petrol tanker explosions to anHopes high as Ifeanyi Ubah visits Onitsha, vows to put measures that will end petrol tanker explosion in Nigeria.

Senator Ubah further visited Elite Club Onitsha who donated all the water used in extinguishing the flames caused by the tanker explosion that occurred early Friday morning in Omagba. At the visit, he thanked them for their service to humanity and assured them reiterated his zeal to put measures that will put petrol tanker explosions to an end in the country. end in the country.

SOURCE: NIGERIAN TRIBUNE