..And In The Middle Of That Massive Ocean, The Boat Engine Went Off

It’s one experience that sends shivers down my spine each time I remember it. But then, that’s journalism for you – intriguing and yet usually throwing up daunting and sometimes life-threatening situations for practitioners.

 Even if you are not given to investigative assignments, but comfortable with your regular beat reports, you will never totally escape frontal danger. Truth however, is that you risk more with investigations.  And that was exactly what happened that auspicious weekend during an editorial meeting in my office in the Daily Times.

Yours sincerely had made an innocent submission of the desirability of a firsthand reportage of  activities in Bakassi peninsula where Nigerian and Cameroonian forces were already up in arms over control of the oil-rich territory; and there and then the Editor – and you know they are the dictators of the newsroom – decided that I went.

It was an assignment that brought me face to face with indigenous Bakassi people in Abana, Atabong East and West etc, but also proved life-threatening in many respects.

Point is that a good measure of the territory’s arteries had been mined, obviously a military decision, to deter the enemy, and you, a bloody civilian journalist should be wiser than attempting any movement without a military guide.

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Anyway, the two-day stay there had revealed so much- especially from the accounts of the several villagers interviewed, but something unexpected happened in the course of homeward journey.

I had boarded the flying boat bound for Ibaka, a riverine community from where to locate Oron, still amidst close scrutiny by the ground security there to ensure nothing untoward happened to the journalist from Lagos.

At a point in that journey, the unexpected happened, and this by the time we had lost sight of human habitation and had just water, more massive bodies of water ahead of us, behind, and on both sides of us

You know waters are in grades, and when it comes to these ones that traverse the route, you are talking in terms of an ocean. We were now in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden, the revving sound from the flying boat engine, seemed to drown and in the middle of that massive body of water, the engine, next went off.

My heart missed a beat, and then several in quick successions, for it was like stopping a tray on a bouncy water of limitless depth, and in the middle of nowhere.

To make matters worse, the tide had began to rise and the wave had began to toss the now life-less boat.

Did I even pray at the commencement of the journey, I wouldn’t really recall…then the boat began to dance,  in response to the unfriendly tides.

It was at that stage of an encounter when you begin to search your heart for stains, and to quickly restitute your wrongs, in case, just in case…

The driver, who seemed lost initially, had come to, beginning attempts at restarting the engine.

He kept trying and the waves kept threatening.

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Once, it ignited and went off again. He repeated the attempts and then revved and revved the reluctant engine and then recommencing the journey..

it began to glide atop the waters again, its sound changing with the intensity each of the driver’s press on the accelerator. All that while, honestly, I couldn’t give account whether my heart was still in place. All I eagerly awaited was a re-embrace with land….

it did happen, but the details of the rest of the journey back to Lagos, would not stick, What did was the close shave not just atop the Bakassi waters, but even making it from one community to another, where as it were, life had become endangered.

And you could imagine my sentiments, when safely back in the Daily Times newsroom, one Editor, in the process of commending my effort, broached the idea of a revisit….

For once, the courage to resist a newsroom command surged real in me, but of course, nothing the broached revisit happened, at least not on the short run.

Truly the reality of this time is that our hallowed profession has been so stripped of its relevance  that embarking on investigative assignments of the magnitude under reference, has become a rarity, in fact the exception rather than the rule.