Ninety-two-year-old Chief Emmanuel Omuodu Amadi looks strong and healthy. He does almost every chore himself. Life for this man who retired in 1995 as Chief Accountant in the Rivers State Ministry of Finance is filled with amazing tales. PRECIOUS DIKEWOHA met him.
Tell us your life pattern and how God has been able to keep you.
My parents were Christians. My father’s name was Jacob Amadi. I was very young when I saw him worshipping God. He was a very strong Christian and he raised me in that direction. Some of my father’s children died, including the first and the second and when I was born, my parent said: “This one will not die”. That was the reason why they called me Omuodu , meaning “I will not die” but unfortunately my father died when I was very small. But I will not forget that I only knew him when he was serving God as a church usher. When my father was dying, he called my mother and said to her “if you don’t train Emmanuel, I will kill you”. That was why my mother decided under suffering to train me by grinding and selling garri at the Ojukwu market. Then, when I was in standard four at Saint Cyprain in 1943, we used to carry garri from my village to town and after then, I would go to school. Before I went to Cambridge in 1951, life was too tough for me. I suffered so much to get to where I am today.
The style now is dating a lady before marriage, was it the same thing during your time?
No, in our own time, when you saw a girl you like, somebody would recommend her to you. In my case, someone recommended my wife to me and I went there and saw the girl. We negotiated; then in 1962, she joined me in Lagos. In 1963, we got married. Our first issue was born in 1965. We got the second one before the Biafra war broke out in 1967. My wife is still alive but she divorced me during the Biafran war. She left me in the refugee camp, where I had to choose another wife. By the time I went back to see my wife if she was alive or not, another person had married her.
You didn’t bother to fight and reconnect with your wife
No, it is because during the war when we were running away, as a chairman of Christian Association in 1966 when I returned home, we realised that Nigerian soldiers had taken over the town and all Igbo residents in Port Harcourt sent their wives home to defend Port Harcourt. They came to stay in my village. In settling in my village what they did was to loot everything in the village but we as Christian Association, we harboured them in the school, gave them all they needed. But when Nigeria entered to liberate Ogboboro community, the natives just came to my house and searched for me, but they didn’t see me. What they did was to burn my house. In which case, if I had not left, they would have killed me. By that time, my mother had crossed to Ogbakiri, one of the communities in Rivers. I had left my son, my wife and my small sister in Isiokpo in Ikwerre Local Government before I crossed over to Iba. We were there as refugees. Incidentally, when my mother in-law, who was staying with my wife died, then my mother came and carried my wife. As they were there, they found out in the night that my wife was no more there. So, the following morning, before I got there, they had buried my mother in- law. Then their family said I should pay 10 pounds to bury my mother-in-law. But my mother had given them five pounds. I borrowed 5 pounds and gave to them. I told them I had no other money as refugee. Because of that, they seized my wife. I was there negotiating with them on one Sunday night to release my wife, when Nigeria soldiers entered. As I was running away, my wife refused to follow me.
How did you remarry?
Yes, I remarried. That was the best option to take care of my children. I could not come home because my house was burnt. I stayed in the refugee camp from 1969 to 1974. I was there struggling for life. The war continued until 1970. From 1968 to 1970, I was struggling as a refugee. Fighting and struggling and fortunately for me, God blessed me; I became very rich there through some businesses I was doing and people who could not do or struggle like I was struggling became jealous of my progress and success.
When said you were very rich, does that mean you were driving expensive car and living in a mansion?
Nobody was living large. Everybody was the same. Everyone was a refugee. Nobody was driving a car and that time because of my hardwork, I was getting more money to train my children and to feed them. They regarded me as lord, even the natives started to envy me because I was selling plantain. They arrested me and locked me in. But God being with me, I was rescued; then I went back again trading. Fortunately, when I stopped trading, I started selling kai kai. I went to Abua to buy drums of kai kai to supply to soldiers. So, I stopped that of plantain, it was not lucrative as that of kai kai, and I was heavily patronised by soldiers.
What is the secret behind your strong look?
The secret is that I was not lazy. I was hardworking. I was carrying plantain from Umudioga to sell at Port Harcourt. What gave me the impetus, being a refugee I used Biafran money to buy two ridges of cassava in the bush. And immediately my wife paid that money we went to her place. After they started running back, I asked my landlady: “did my wife pay that money for the ridges?” She said “yes”. I had to go and ask the woman to use me to uproot the cassava; she collected the cassava and made it into garri in order to get Nigerian money. By the time we finished three ridges, they sold it and I collected the money to trade. I used that money to buy plantain at Elele. By trading with plantain, I was successful. What I meant is that suffering in the area of working hard and not staying idol would make you strong because that is constant exercise. It is better than staying at home. I was hardworking, I was trading, the condition had made me to trade. Trading under suffering because I had to go to far distance by trekking or riding bicycle made me strong at this age.
At a certain age, you must study your system. Like now, I can’t eat what you eat.
I want you to just recall one thing you can never forget in your life
I have a lot of them but I will pick one. There are so many in the past and present. When I was in the service, I was Chief Accountant under civil service commission. The last testimony I had, the driver of my commissioner sent some bills for me to pay them. He made some bills for me to pay them for the repair of his master’s car. I paid him with the documents and I filed it. Another week he brought another one again, I compared that with the previous one and they were both identical. Because of the forgery, I gave him a query to give reason why he should not be disciplined for fraudulent behavior. So, he gave that letter to his commissioner and the commissioner was not happy with me. We went to a meeting, because of anger he insulted me. I said “why do you insult me before everybody? Are you not stupid to insult me because I gave your driver query? Did I query you?” Because of that, they gave me a query. I used it to petition them before the secretary. Fortunately for me, the day I submitted that document the secretary and the military governor traveled to Bayelsa for the last visit before he retired. So, the secretary could not take any action. However, the secretary was a man who deceived me when there was opportunity in the ministry. What happened is that instead of taking my son he used his own brother and sent him to Abuja. Then because he did not give my son what belonged to him, his own brother went to Abuja; on reaching there, they disqualified him. Before he came back, the secretary died. He could not treat my letter. So, the chairman replaced me with another person because I petitioned them. The money I used to give them I refused to give them because the money was too much. So what he did was to bring another person and that person gave him the amount he wanted to travel to Lagos and on reaching Lagos he climbed upstairs and fell down and died. And before he died, he refused to give me my letter of retirement. I had applied for retirement because of the mess and corruption that was going on and they refused to give me my letter. But when he died, the following Monday they brought another commissioner and that commissioner gave me the letter of retirement.
names, so my cashier was operating and looting the money and I never knew. When the commissioner got the information the cashier was arrested. They asked him, “Is your master aware of this thing?” He said “no”. So they disciplined. They called me and asked, “Do you know that your department is fraudulent?” I said “no, there is no fraud in my department because I am a Christian”. I said “I am paying according to what was handed over to me”. All my handover notes were all with me; so all the voucher which I received according to hand over notes were all with me. So we brought those hand over notes and the voucher on which we paid. We started to tick them one by one. Fortunately for me, I was not involved in any ghost name. So what they did was to discipline that man after checking. They said “Mr Amadi you can go, you are a good man.”
Again I was transferred to Eche Local Government as sub treasurer. On reaching there, they sent me N400,000 to pay teachers. That amount in those days, how much was teachers salary? Very small. When I started to pay, I saw a lot of money, surplus and people were delegated to supervise the payment. I collected the surplus money and sent it to the bank. Then I knew some people who had not received their pay but I paid them to the bank. So the people who came to supervise said “Mr Amadi why did you send that money to the bank? Do you mean you have no problem in your family?” I said “Even if I have family problem is it stolen money that I will use to solve the problem?” That was in 1986.
