Ndionyemma Tells of Neglect, 16 Years After Ikeja Cantonment Explosions
SBennett Oghifo
he was barely four years old when, for still undetermined reason, bombs in the arsenal of the Military Cantonment at Ikeja, Lagos exploded, causing panic, disorientation and death within and outside the barracks.
It was a sunny Sunday on that January 27, 2002 and everyone in Lagos went about their business, particularly their social affairs as scheduled or impromptu.
All that peace was shattered within a split second when the first blast of the exploding bombs rent the air throwing up silver flashes. Flying shrapnel killed some people and the loud sound ripped the internal organs of others, causing them agonising deaths.
A more painful mass death occurred down the road away from the barracks, of men women and children, who were disoriented and fled in all directions from the wrath, but most of them thronged towards the north side of Lagos where their path was checked by a canal with putrid water covered by water hyacinth.
Ifeoma Evelyn Ndionyemma, 4 years old, saw the huge crowd racing towards their home close to the canal but did not know what to make of it. She only realised that there was some form of urgency when her terrified mother pushed her towards the canal. Already on her mother’s arms was her 13 month’s old brother and they surged with the crowd to the canal and commenced the journey across the narrow stretch, but none of them could swim.
Up till this day, neither Ifeoma nor her mother could figure out how she crossed that canal and survived, but her brother unfortunately did not make it across. Their mother hit the water and sank and when she came up for air, the baby was no longer in her arms. Her mother-instinct took over and she lunged down trashing wildly in the black water until she realised that death was close and then she crossed. Sympathizers took over the search for the boy and for other drowning people but the child was not among the bodies they brought from the bottom of the canal.
Ifeoma wailed beside her mother inconsolably for the number of days the search for bodies lasted and that was when the family attracted the attention of Alhaji Atiku Abubarker, who was Vice President then and who visited to see the canal where the avoidable tragedy occurred.
Fill with compassion, Vice President Atiku Abubarkar carried the 4-year old Ifeoma in his arms and consoled her family.
Sixteen years after, on January 27, this year, Ifeoma took to social media to tell her story and she immediately caught the attention of former Vice President Atiku Abubarkar, who promised to visit the family and make a difference in their lives.
Last week, Ifeoma and her parents relieved their experience and the bomb blast that brought them desolation. “I looked through my dad’s bag and found the newspaper which had a picture of me in the arms of Vice President Atiku Abubarkar. Since most people now say their story online, I decided to say mine too. I did a short video of me with the newspaper so that I’ll have evidence to show so that it does not look like a fake story. I posted it on Istagram and after that day, I received a call, I don’t know how, from Alhaji Atiku Abubarkar. I spoke to him and he spoke with my dad.”
Alhaji Atiku Abubarkar, who was Vice President when the tragedy occurred, visited on behalf of the President Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration and he read out a long list of what the government would do to heal their lives, but none came.
Regrettably, 16 years after, the government has not kept its promise to compensate all the victims of that dreaded bomb blast, according to Ifeoma’s father, Emmanuel Ndionyemma.
Ifeoma’s father, a commercial motocylist, was one of the several people displaced by the tragedy, which threw his family into sudden destitution.
Last week when THISDAY visited his abode, Ndionyemma described a very pathetic livelihood the family has had to endure all these years, after they were dislodged from a home he build by the canal, which he moved his family into a couple of days before the bombs went off.
So, 16 years after, Ifeoma is still struggling to make meaning of her life. She could have had a better life, she said. Certainly, not as she does with her four siblings and parents at her home in an informal settlement at the edge of the canal on the fringes of Mafoluku, a community off the Murtala International Airport.
She told of her pain and distress all these years, particularly the bitterness that came when she was old enough to realise that she could have had a better life if those bombs did not go off on that fateful Sunday afternoon.
Ifeoma said, “The international community gave Nigeria a lot of money to assist the victims. The government said it was going to compensate us but we haven’t heard from them.”
They hate living in squalor, said Ifeoma’s father. “There are a lot of pythons in this place; two were killed here last week and our house gets flooded whenever it rains and we stay out until the water ebbs.
“We need assistance to live in a better place,” said the father of four girls and a boy.