Enugu, the coal city, clocked 100 years few years ago. Plans to mark the milestone were in top gear by the state government before its abortion. The Sullivan Chime administration planned that the entire former Eastern Region will go into wild celebration to mark the 100 years of the founding of the town by the Colonial Masters. But that could not hold due to political differences among some political personalities in the state. The chairman of the centenary celebration committee was Chief John Nnia Nwodo, a former Minister of Information. Nwodo resigned his appointment in the middle of the intense struggle of who to control the political structure of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) between Governor Sullivan Chime and the then national chairman of the PDP, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, a sibling of the chairman of the centenary committee.
With everything put in place– billboards, radio jingles, souvenirs among others, Enugu was set to host the world in December 2009. It would have been an opportunity to showcase the natural and human potential which abound in the coal city. But it never took place, and Enugu, the city of coal, thrives on.
Enugu came into existence in 1909 after the discovery of coal by the Colonial Masters. The discovery of coal in Enugwu Ngwo, one of the 10 villages of Ngwo clan, was incidental. It was from this village that the town derived its name Enugu up till this day. And the story goes that in 1908, a British expedition on its way to the Middle Belt from Awka, sighted the hill at Enugwu Ngwo and reported back to Lagos. Interest in the hill compelled the colonial government to send a team of mining engineers to the area in 1909 to prospect for silver. But the team, led by Engr. Kitson, struck coal instead.
Another team of mining engineers led by W. J. Leck, arrived in Enugwu Ngwo in 1914 to open up a coal mine. They arrived with a team of African labourers under the headship of one Alfred Inoma from Onitsha.
The Europeans settled on top of the hill at Ngwo now called Hilltop. At the slope to the south, they set up another settlement for the African labourers. The settlement is known as Alfred Camp or Ugwu Alfred.
Both settlements have expanded. The hilltop settlement has been modernised and extended to the place where the Enugu State Broadcasting Service has its transmitting station. The Alfred Settlement, a cluster of mud houses, quaint to behold, can be sighted on a walk along Murtala Mohammed Way (Kingsway Road) as one nears the the old site of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital.
With an eye on the plains of the Udi Hills, the government, in 1915, constructed a road linking the hill station to the plains. Called the Milliken Hill Road named after the head engineer roads, a ride through the 4.8km road is a bend-drive course at a speed of 8km per hour. And soon after the opening of the coal mine in 1915, the management of the colliery embarked on massive recruitment of labourers to work in the mines. The then colonial governor, Lord Fredrick Lugard had, as early as 1912, decided that the Enugu Coal Field would be worked as a state industry in contrast to tin being mined in Jos as a private enterprise. This, he reasoned, was because of the importance of coal in the development of the Nigerian economy, coupled with the difficulty which he thought would be experienced in finding labour to work in the coal mine.
“I understand that except by compulsion, it is impossible to get labour in Southern Nigeria,” Lugard had said. He argued that since the government would have to provide force to regiment the labour, government might as well work the coal field itself.
By the first year of its operations in 1916, the colliery had in its register about 800 daily paid labourers, who in addition to the better established technical cadre made up of clerks, technicians, foremen, continued a huge influx of immigrants to thecity at the early stage of development. While these later grade of workers came from districts outside Enugu in such far away places like Sierra Leone, Calabar, Warri, Owerri, Benin, Onitsha, Port Harcourt and so on, most of the labourers were from the neighbouring villages in the then Udi Division.
Within the next couple of years, over 3,000 men were working in the Enugu Colliery, while the Eastern Railway line that passes from Port Harcourt through Enugu to the North had about 5,000 labourers, majority of who had made Enugu their residence. These immigrant settlers who came with their families and relations constituted a big strain on the young town since there were yet no permanent residential structures there. This posed a new challenge not only to the Colliery Management, but also to the colonial administrative officers posted to the town, who as an interim measure, had embarked on erection of Colliery Villages to accommodate the coal miners.
In 1917, Enugu was declared a second class Township and divided into four zones viz- the European Reservation Area, the Neutral Zone, the Residential and Business Area and the Native Locations. A township Advisory Board was set up to take care of the political administration of the area. In 1920, the colonial government moved down the administrative headquarters of the then Udi Division to Enugu Township and renamed it Enugu Ngwo Division. But this lasted for a while as the headqarters were again transferred back to Udi 1929 as a result of several logistics problems connected with administering the entire division from the township.
One aspect of Enugu which most people do not know, even those who now claim authority of the city is that Enugu was once the headquarters of the Southern Provinces. Before transferring back the Udi Division headquarters to Udi, the colonial government had decided to move the headquarters of the Southern Provinces comprised of Onitsha, Ogoja, Owerri, Calabar, the Cameroons, Ijebu, Oyo, Abeokuta, Ondo, Benin and Warri Provinces from Lagos to Enugu. This was due to mainly the importance of coal to the development of the economy of the country. Enugu remained the capital for 10 years from 1929 to 1939 when the Southern Provinces was split into two – the Eastern and Western Provinces with headquarters at Enugu and Ibadan respectively. While the Eastern Provinces comprised Onitsha , Ogoja, Owerri, Calabar and the Cameroons, the Western Provinces was made up of Ijebu, Abeokuta , Oyo, Ondo , Benin and Warri.
The citing of the administrative headquarters of the Southern Provinces in Enugu in 1929 had brought about the setting up of various administrative structures with civil servants recruited from different parts of the country to man these structures. There were civil servants recruited from Ibadan , Calabar , Benin , Abeokuta , Warri, Ondo, Aba , Owerri, Onitsha , that took residences in Enugu . Even after Ibadan became an administrative capital along with Enugu , many of these civil servants still elected to remain behind to work in Enugu . This was primarily due to the friendly disposition of the people of the area.
In 1928, two Africans were for the first time, appointed into the Enugu Township Advisory Board. They were John Anyansi and Lawrence Onwudiwe. The Latter was forced to resign in 1931 following his indictment on corruption charges. He was replaced by A. R. Broderick, a prison contractor from Benin . This was followed by the appointment of Chief Sani, a Yoruba, into the board in 1936. With the death of both Broderick and Sani, C. D. Onyeama from Eke, Udi division and S. A. Strong, a Sierra Leonean, were appointed to replace them.
The first democratic election into the newly constituted Enugu Urban District Council was held in 1953. Those elected into the council included Samuel Wilson, Dominic Oluka, Lawrence Ezechi, Sam Anyogu, C. O. C. Chiedozie, Michael Ajoku, B. C. N. Okeke,Josiah Agu, John U. Okoro, D. T. Inyang, S. Odume. Walwin Ebreneyin, G. K. Igwe, Gabriel Agbo, Nelson Onwudiwe, Joseph Ogbu, Ezekiel Eze, Michael Onovo, D. A. Nwandu, Hermas Adigwe and Patrick Ozonu. The councilors sitting among themselves later elected Walwin Ebreneyin, an Urhobo man as the chairman of the council with Patrick Ozonu from Ngwo in Udi Division as his deputy.
And in 1953, Mr. Ebreneyin was succeeded as chairman of the council by Mallam Umaru Altine, a Fulani cattle dealer from Sokoto. Altine later became the first Mayor of Enugu when the City was elevated to mayoral status in 1956.
In 1967, a committee under the chairmaqnship of the then Attorney General of the former Eastern Region, Dr. Graham Douglas, recommended the creation of 20 provinces in the region and 33 divisions. Enugu in addition to retaining its position as the capital of the region, was as well granted a provincial status with F. O. Iheanacho from Owerri as the administrator. He was later replaced by C. C. Onoh. And in the same year, when Republic of Biafra was declared, Enugu became its capital. And at the end of the civil war in 1970, it became the capital of the defunct East Central State and later the capital of the old Anambra State when East Central state was split into two – Imo and Anambra states. Today, Enugu is the capital of the state named after it, Enugu State .
At the time the planning of the aborted centenary celebration was on, Governor Chime had this to say about Enugu: “Our city has contributed so much to our lives and businesses and this is the time to show appreciation by supporting the Centenary celebrations.
“We are celebrating a city with great significance, an enduring and rugged city which has stood tall in good times and bad times, in times of peace and in times of war.”We are celebrating a city which means different things to different people but means one thing to most of us- a home.”I remember with nostalgia growing up in this city, the diverse experiences we had and the many friends we made from far flung places because Enugu was and is still home to all. ”When my father who was a parliamentarian sat in the Eastern Nigeria House of Assembly, he did not only sit with the Nwodos, he sat with the Akpabios, the Emoles, the Imokes, the Okparas and many others. For us children, we neither knew any divide nor did we reckon with tribes, we were simply Enugu boys and girls and we had great fun.So today we celebrate the city that held us all together, a city where I, like many others here today was born.”A city that was home to the great Eyo Ita, the first premier of Eastern Nigeria and the Zik of Africa, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe. ”A city in its dynamism produced sports legends like Dominic Nwobodo, Emmanuel Okala, Christian Chukwu, JayJay Okocha, Innocent Egbunike and great actors like Chika Okpala-Zebrudaya, Pete Edochie, Nkem Owoh, Patience Ozokwor, Kanayo Kanayo, Zack Orji and many others.”In every facet of human endeavor Enugu has produced notable icons, be it in medicine, law, media or academics and because of these giant strides, we think it is important to celebrate our great past. In doing this we also want to look at where we are now and draw a road map for the future. ”When we mounted the saddle in May 2007 we met a mountain of challenges which we have studiously confronted, ranging from infrastructure collapse, poor city sanitation, insecurity, incapacitated transportation system and many more. We discovered though sadly that if drastic actions were not taken we were at the brink of losing our dear city hence our aggressive approach to urban renewal and our effort to make Enugu a modern city.”I am glad that today our efforts to renew, reclaim, recreate and restore Enugu are yielding fruits and that millions of people who turned their back to our beloved city are now returning home. Our hospitality industry is booming again and tourists are flooding back. ”One of the things we want to do is to focus attention on the great potentials inherent in our state and zone and the new opportunities available to investors, entrepreneurs and visitors.”
