CNN called him “Sahara explorer taming the desert” in a February 2013 article. But although he is widely known for having successfully travelled across the Sahara three times, Dr. Newton Jibunoh is more than just a desert explorer. He is an environmental activist, nature lover, art enthusiast, historian, and much more. His long-time effort to draw attention to the dangers of desertification through Fight Against Desert Encroachment (FADE), a non-governmental organisation that he founded, is well documented. His love for art led him to establish Didi Museum, the first private museumin Lagos. An ardent disciple of Nelson Mandela, he has named a garden he is building inside Asaba Airport in Delta State, South-South Nigeria, after the late South African president.
Jibunoh, who was the first African managing director of Costain West Africa, attained the glorious age of 80 on January 1. Ahead of his 80th birthday anniversary, ZEBULON AGOMUO, editor, and CHUKS OLUIGBO, assistant editor, had a chat with him at Didi Museum. Surrounded by sculptures, paintings and other art forms from some of the world’s best, Jibunoh talked about many things, from the personal to the national and global. Excerpts:
Congratulations on your 80th birthday anniversary, sir. How does it feel to attain the age of 80 in a country where the average life expectancy is about 53 years?
I am humbled. I have looked back as much as I can, especially my growing up years and transiting from childhood to adulthood, and up till this moment I have not been able to fathom it or even come to terms with it. There was a time I told myself that if I lived to be 50 years old, I would be a very happy man – because of the low life expectancy you mentioned. In fact, it was on my 50th birthday that I got drunk for the first time in my life. I was celebrating and before you knew it I had taken more than necessary. I was told that I was drinking from everyone’s glasses on the table. But I passed the age of 50, went on to 60, then 70, and now 80. It is very humbling. And it is yet to sink in. Every morning I wake up thinking that something would change, especially from my physical person, from the health angle, but I haven’t seen any such thing. I just go on doing those things that I had always done. As I said, the only way I can describe what I feel is just to say that I am humbled by the Maker, and by Nature that has kept me so far.
You are associated with some quite risky expeditions. Looking back at your life and some of the things you have done, are there things you feel you could have done differently if given the same opportunity?
Do you know that if I was to live my life all over again, I would probably go about that same path, as life-threatening as it may have been? Those challenges, or explorations if you like, helped me in knowing the person that I am. I have always believed that nothing is impossible if you apply yourself properly, and that was how I managed and I kept on. Even at this age I still want to explore. If I go on for 10 years without carrying out a major exploration, I don’t feel very well. Some people will look at it and say, ‘Do you want to go and kill yourself?’ But I know it’s not that; I love my life very much, but I love my life better when I’m able to achieve those near impossible things.
Today we are saddled with cases of our young people crossing dangerous paths to go abroad, becoming slaves in places like Libya. What is the difference between your expedition and the type these youths are embarking upon?
I didn’t know about such things until I started my second expedition. I didn’t know then that people were leaving this country to go through some African countries by road and then attempt to cross the Sahara to Libya, Morocco, Tunisia or Algeria in North Africa in an attempt to cross the Mediterranean. It was during my second expedition in the year 2000 that I encountered them, in Burkina Faso, in Mali. They were under the watch of security organisations most of the time because you don’t just enter other people’s country without adequate documentation. So, security organisations that saw me initially would want to treat me as one of them, until they saw my documentations, not just for myself but for everything – my life insurance, insurance for my car, and so on. When they saw all those things, they began to see the difference between those other migrants and me. They started telling me, ‘What is wrong with your country? Why are these boys and girls subjecting themselves to these dangers?’ And I had the opportunity of talking to some of them.
So, there was a big difference between me and them. I was on an expedition. It was my first expedition that exposed me to the Sahara. That was in 1966/67. I knew then that the Sahara was going to become a major threat to the entire continent if nothing was done to contain or tame it. I was young then. On that very first expedition, I can’t remember seeing any one of them. It was during the second expedition that I encountered them. What shocked me was that they were not welcomed in almost all those countries, so they were always being detained, locked up, or killed.
It took me five to six days to cross the Sahara the second time. The first one took me eight days to cross. When I finally crossed the Sahara the second time and got to the checkpoint at Tamanrasset in Algeria, the authorities there asked me, ‘How does your second expedition compare with the first one?’ I was backed by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, so the authorities there knew I was coming and they knew who I was. So I told them that the Sahara was bigger, and at the same time that I saw so many dead bodies on the way. They said to me, ‘They are all Nigerians.’ That was how realisation dawned on me, and it touched me. It touched me badly because when you walk past a dead body, you don’t want to ask what nationality, but to now be told that they are Nigerians? And I’m not talking of a few dozens, I’m talking of hundreds inside the Sahara.
I was hosted by the Nigerian ambassador in Algiers. He and I talked and I told him my story. He said he was going to organise a press conference to showcase me and what I was making the expedition for because since his arrival in Algeria two years earlier, all he was saddled with were reports of prostitution, drugs, 419 involving Nigerians; for a change he had something different to showcase. And he went and called a press conference and made the same statement. But then my biggest shock came when I was to cross the Mediterranean in a ferry. Then to cross the Mediterranean from Algiers to Alicante in Spain took about 12 hours. I think the cost then for me and my car was $700. The ferry was to leave around 7pm and get to Spain about 4 or 5am. Since it was an overnight trip, I had asked for a cabin to enable me sleep, especially with what I had gone through on the journey. I checked in and got to my cabin to discover that I was to share the cabin with somebody. I was in the middle of the Mediterranean, who do I argue with? Anyway, the unfortunate thing was that the gentleman I was to share the cabin with was smoking and the cigarette was bothering me. I decided to go to the deck to get some fresh air since I couldn’t sleep. It was a massive liner and the deck was open. At the deck I saw hundreds of Africans crossing the Mediterranean. From their conversations, some talking in Igbo, some in Yoruba, I knew many of them were Nigerians, but I couldn’t confront them. Then after about 10 to 15 minutes a security man came up to me – I think he saw that I was different – and asked to see my papers. I brought out all my papers, because I always carried them on me even while sleeping. He looked at them and said, ‘You better go back to your cabin.’ I asked him why but he said again, ‘Better go back to your cabin.’ He said they got information that the boat was going to be raided. When he told me this, I just went back to my cabin. We were going to dock at about 5 or 6 in the morning. At about 4am I decided to get to the deck, but I didn’t see any of those Africans. Where had they all gone? Hundreds of them couldn’t have been given cabin overnight, I thought to myself. As I was wondering where they had gone to, especially in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, fortunately the security man came by again and I asked him, ‘Where are all these people I saw here in the night? Some of them happen to be my countrymen.’ He said that they were all pushed overboard. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he said. In other words, I was lucky because if I had stayed, maybe I would have been pushed as well because those pushing will not ask you for any papers. When I finally took my car off the boat and parked, my whole body, everything in me was imagining human beings being pushed overboard into the Mediterranean.
So, when you talk of the kind of things that we hear today, why? First of all, it is kudos to CNN. Second, because Libya collapsed as a country. But for those two; in fact, but for Libya collapsing, CNN wouldn’t have got to any of those camps. I visited the camps myself and you don’t go into the camp anyhow. So, this whole thing has been going on. I talked about it, I wrote about it.
In talking to some of the migrants while visiting the camp, I saw that the whole thing boils down to a very powerful cartel. CNN addressed the issue recently. One of the girls said on CNN that she needed to pay back $45,000 to the cartel? When I did my investigation then, I discovered that Nigerians, young men and women, were paying N250,000 to whoever to get them to North Africa, then they are on their own after that. If you wanted to go all the way to Spain or Italy, it was N500,000 then. But from what we listened to the other day, it is now N1 million, that’s what they pay to the cartel. And for some of the girls, it takes them three years to work, make the money and pay the cartel. And they are all over, in Benin, in Asaba, in Onitsha, in Aba, in Port Harcourt.
Who sponsored your expeditions, or did you fund them on your own?
The first expedition was done entirely by myself. I had just graduated, worked for one-and-a-half years in the UK and saved money. It was that adventurous spirit in me. The joy for me was that I was going to do something unique, something different. I can’t think of any free thing I got, I paid for everything myself. But the second expedition came on the back of the fact that environmental issues had started and the United Nations was concentrating on saving the Amazon. One particular year the UN found $2 billion to invest in saving the Amazon. I sat back and thought: saving the Amazon, what is there? The Sahara was causing more havoc than the Amazon was doing to the rainforest, why would the UN concentrate on the Amazon? I reasoned that it was mainly because nobody was talking about the Sahara because it’s Africa. That was when I started to write, to talk about it. Because I was writing and talking about it, I was invited to the first Earth Summit in Brazil and I made a presentation. Subsequently, desertification became an issue and my organisation got accredited by the UN. With the accreditation and with the writings that I had done, it became a lot easier for me to get sponsorship. So, the second expedition was sponsored by different organisations. Of course, the third one was also sponsored by almost the entire people that sponsored the second one. As time went on, I was also getting old and needed to pass the torch on to the younger generation, so I started bringing people into it to the point where Lagos State government came in. I had gone to Governor Fashola to say: look, Lagos will soon be swarmed by the nomads. This is already happening now, and it is something very serious and I’m talking about it once again but people are not listening. I told him why they were all ending up in Lagos and that if something was not done about it, migration would continue. He invited me to the state executive council meeting and the state sponsored the fourth one, which we were not able to complete because that was when insurgency started. But the point I’m making is this, and I want people to think about it: migration has taken Nigeria to a very bad level in the sense that one-third, possibly a half, of Nigerians today don’t have any address. How do you then fight insurgency? How do you fight criminals? Chadians, Cameroonians, Nigeriens, Malians, Beninese are all coming through migration, they don’t have any address, and there are millions of them. But then, it will not happen in those countries. They will grab you. It is partly because of our porous borders, and we not knowing who we are.
You said during your first expedition you didn’t see any of these illegal migrants?
I may have seen one or two bodies. I was to be on that first expedition with a friend of mine, an Englishman, but he chickened out because we read something about two journalists that tried to cross the Sahara and died in the process. So when I saw one or two bodies, I kind of assumed they must have been those like myself trying to do the impossible.
But suddenly, the thing began to grow in scale. What happened? Does it have to do with any changes in the system of the country?
My straight answer is yes and I will explain it. Nigeria was destination for employment, especially skilled labour. We were importing labour from Ghana, Republic of Benin, Cameroon, Chad – they all came to Nigeria to look for work because Nigeria was industrialising and developing fast. By then I was becoming a player in the system. Nigeria got frightened that we may go on with this industrialisation without having the manpower and that was what gave rise to the number of polytechnics and colleges of technology that we started building all over, and as they were producing graduates we were saying to those foreigners, ‘Please go back.’ You recall the era of Ghana must go. We had six assembly plants in the country coming up, we had six steel mills coming up, we had six refineries being planned, we had the petrochemical industry being planned, we had the pulp paper mill, six of them, sited in all the geopolitical zones. You can imagine the amount of industrialisation that was going to come – people making upholsteries, shock absorbers, brake pads, all sorts of components for the cars and vehicles, mainly because the six assembly plants with the trucks were given 15 years or thereabouts to reduce their imported components to less than 25 percent or something like that; the rest was going to be produced in Nigeria. These numerous polytechnics and colleges of technology started graduating thousands of young Nigerian men and women, but then all these industries started dying. Where do they go to? I must also tell you that in talking to some of those migrants, a lot of them are graduates.
But I still have one problem with the research that I carried out. I have lived and worked all over northern part of Nigeria, and I have also been working on this cross-migration problem of the cattle-rearers, and I know that when you talk about poverty and hopelessness of people, it is worse in the North than it is in the South. But how come I have never seen one northerner doing this kind of migration? Not one. So I’m at a loss to sort of agree with the answer I gave you earlier that it is all due to looking for a better life, which is why I am almost coming to the conclusion that the whole thing must be the cartel. They have managed to get across to Europe hundreds, if not thousands, of Nigerians that are doing fairly well, that are sending money home, building houses for their parents, buying vehicles for their people, and the cartel is now using them to sell this idea. That is my conclusion. In my statement a few days ago I said the government must catch up with the cartel. I don’t know what legal instrument the government can use to go after them, but they are there. Even on CNN documentary, you see they even get their victims to swear to juju. And as we speak, they are recruiting thousands every day. You can imagine the cartel recruiting 1,000 a week and each of these 1,000 paying N1 million!
Could it also have something to do with the value system, or maybe greed? The older generation of Nigerians perhaps had role models they looked up to, but there is doubt that younger Nigerians have been so fortunate. Do we still have role models?
No, we don’t have role models. I gave a lecture in a secondary school not too long ago and I talked about the need for people to determine how they want to go in life, determine who to mentor them and who their role models are. When I started asking them, a lot of them said Dangote is their role model.
So, there is greed, as you said. But having said that, there is also something in the way we showcase our wealth, our riches. There is a lot of ostentation, and unfortunately, that is also what is attracting these young ones; they see people that spent a few years in Europe and are coming home with riches. And you see, that coming home is mainly to display, to show riches; it is not sustainable. So, I think it is the way we showcase our riches, the ostentatious lifestyle that we have, which is taking over these young men and women. I talked to quite a few of them that are into prostitution, and they will tell you that they can make $600-$700 a week prostituting in Europe, which they can’t make here in Nigeria. Some of the men, too, go into prostitution.
Maybe because I belong to the old school, but in my days I worked in an organisation for 20 years before I became the managing director. Today, I don’t think young men are ready to work for 20 years before getting to the top. Things have changed and everybody is looking at becoming a leader in his/her own field but forgetting that you have to be led first before you can be a good leader. If you are not led, where do you learn how to lead? Unfortunately, that is what you find across our country. In the universities, that’s where it starts, then from there all the way to our various assemblies. Everybody wants to be powerful. So, you either make the money to buy power, or find power to make the money. But where does that take us to? It takes us back to that sharing mentality, and that’s where our problem starts because we all want to share, we don’t want to develop; we take and take and we don’t put back anything. And so, to answer your question, it’s a combination of greed and the way we handle our riches.
Let’s say there are young people out there that are truly in search of role models, will they be able to find role models?
You have asked me a very interesting question. You remember Walter Carrington, the former US ambassador to Nigeria? He and I were so close. He loved this country so much that, in fact, he almost got into trouble because of that. One day we were talking about this and he said to me, ‘Newton, give me 10 Nigerians that you can say are real role models for the younger generation. If you give me those 10 names, I will investigate them and I will take their names back to America and I will say: look, we have 10 people that can transform Nigeria.’ Of course, he gave me criteria to use. Three weeks later when we met, I didn’t bring it up because I was still looking for role models – all over the country. If there is anybody who knows this country today, it is me; I have lived and worked in virtually all corners of this country. In the end, I couldn’t find more than four people I could say that are truly role models.
The question is interesting because I had to live with models myself. Immediately after I left secondary school and started working, my role model was Nelson Mandela. Even though they were looking for him then to arrest, I said to myself: for this man to be doing this, there must be something different about him. I started reading about him. I followed his arrest, his trial; I was reading every day to know what was going on with him, until his imprisonment. I have followed him down to this moment. Even his family noticed me because of the things I was writing and saying at that time and the few ‘Free Mandela’ movements I joined in the UK. If you look at my collection, you would see my role models. I have had Nelson Mandela. I had Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Why? Because he said the rest of the continent would remain in darkness until the Sahara is bridged. He made the comment at Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos when they were having their heads of state meeting on April 24, 1964, I think. As a young man then, Nkrumah inspired me. I saw him as an African who was working for the rest of the continent. Then, of course, John F. Kennedy, because he was the one that started the space exploration – I have great love for such things. I have had three to four role models in my life.
But none of them was a Nigerian?
Unfortunately so. Awolowo was the one that came close because when I was in London, I became a member of the Action Group youth movement. But then, one or two scandals happened and they kind of pushed me aside – something that had to do with what happened at the Western House of Assembly. That was what took me away from Awolowo. I struggled to find a role model in Nigeria. If it comes to patriotism, I would regard myself as one of the patriots because I love my country, but I just couldn’t find a Nigerian. They may be there, but I just couldn’t find them.
And if you don’t mind, I think I will blame the press. The press is the fourth estate of the realm, right? But I feel that the press has not done enough in looking for and projecting those Nigerians that will inspire the younger generation. When I look at the awards that take place here and there organised by the media and I look at those they profile and acclaim, I get so worried. What I look for in those people, I cannot find. First of all, what will the younger generation gain from this hero, this icon? Is it the money? Somebody serves his country as a minister because the quota has been given to his state, or serves his state as a governor, do you then have to give him the highest award for the country because he served his people? But then, in serving his people, what impact, what legacy would you say that he left behind for the younger generation to follow?
Speaking of legacy, we find that in the developed world leaders write a lot of books. They write memoirs, they write about their time in office so that they can inspire the younger generation. Do you think Nigeria leaders are writing enough?
What have they written? They have not written anything. Those who have written have only talked about themselves. Let me also add that I have known professors, wonderful intellectuals who because of their intellect have been co-opted into government, which is good. If you know those that left government and went back to what they were doing before, please tell me. Professors in Nigeria don’t go back to their universities after being in government. I know of only Tam David West. Okay, Attahiru Jega also went back to Bayero University. You see, you quoted what happens in the civilised world; that is where they become more useful. If you look through all the secretaries of state in America, they all went back to the university. The universities are falling over themselves to take them back because of what they are likely to impart to the students, because of what they have acquired being in government for four years or eight years. Here you have a lawyer that goes on to become attorney-general, or an agronomist who goes on to become minister of agriculture, they then stay on forever, they don’t go back to their profession, but that’s where they are most needed. That is also another big problem for us.
You have written a couple of books in a country where it is said that people hardly read. Does it bother you that Nigerians don’t read?
People must read my book because I wrote it for the people, not for myself. I’m planning on going on a road show; I intend to take this book around the whole country because it will pain me if the book is not read. People must read it because I did a lot of research for that book.
The current book is your fourth. What is it about?
It is about power. The title is Hunger for Power. For me, it is interesting, but especially the title. One of the catchy statements I made in explaining the reason for the title is that people have gone from power to prison and from prison to power. Power is like fire, it depends on how you handle it. Fire can cook you your meal, but at the same time it can burn you to death. Those seeking power must be cautious. I then went on and did a lot of series on power – about eight to nine chapters on power, with case studies, what power can do, things I have witnessed in my lifetime. One of them has to do with the power of uniform. Take a policeman or a soldier, take away his uniform, no matter his rank, and find out if it is the same man that was in that uniform. I told the story of when my uncle who retired as a commissioner of police died and my people decided that we should inform the Inspector General of Police then, Ibrahim Coomassie. I went to Lion Building and saw Coomassie and he told me that the police would give my uncle a befitting burial, that they would handle everything. He then gave me a ceremonial uniform that would be used to decorate him. The uniform was so beautiful I decided to hang it in my car, rather than fold it and put it inside a bag. I was driving home for the funeral with a cousin, just the two of us. I don’t know whether that’s still the case now, but then there must have been 30 or 40 checkpoints between Lagos and Delta; it was nightmarish with all the queues and stuff. You can’t believe it that at every checkpoint, the policemen there would shout and salute and clear the road for me, without even asking a question. In fact, the journey that used to take six-and-a-half hours, we made it in four-and-a-half hours. As I was going, I was just saying to myself: just a uniform? We buried my uncle with the uniform and then, on my way back to Lagos, I had to stop and be checked thoroughly at every checkpoint.
You were the first African managing director of Costain West Africa. In our growing up years we heard about many of such companies that employed thousands of Nigerians. But as we speak, most of them have closed shop or gone under, and those who have managed to stay alive are gasping for breath. What went wrong?
Again, it all goes back to that story I was telling about Nigeria’s movement towards industrialisation. That story was not complete because our attempt to industrialise Nigeria was truncated. Just like America did – I think it was Eisenhower that started massive industrialisation of America – Nigeria tried to copy that under Gowon by putting the country on the road towards industrialisation. That process was truncated. I don’t know why, but somewhere along the line, it was truncated. When I took over as managing director of Costain, there were 37 or 38 expatriates and we employed 5,000 staff all over the country. I started reducing the expatriates because I was training Nigerians – architects, engineers, quantity surveyors – to take over. I was sending them to Costain UK and within two or three years I had reduced the number of expatriates from 38 to 18. And I said this in one of my interviews: Nigeria was the destination then because the most difficult job I had then was to call an expatriate and say to him, ‘I will not renew your contract next year.’ Some of them would cry because they wanted to stay. But the country started going down and down. Costain is gone now, Taylor Woodrow went, Dumez went, Guffanti went. How can you explain that? These were major international companies that employed thousands of people. Costain was not number one – maybe number 7 or 8 among the top 10 companies – but as I said, we employed 5,000 Nigerians and about 38 expatriates. We built Chevron under my watch. We built NECOM House, the tallest building in the country. When I was manager I built seven bridges between Warri and Sapele. But the country was no longer developing. It goes back to what I said earlier, the sharing mentality. We just want to share and share, we are not regenerating, we are not ploughing back. So how can you develop? And if you do not develop, you are not going to be in a position to absorb those leaving universities and colleges of technology. Your country must be expanding and because you are pumping money into those infrastructures. So, we must go back to find out what actually happened to the industrialisation policy that Gowon put in place for us. When the policy was no longer there, did you expect all those multinational companies to remain? Doing what? They folded up and went to places they can develop.
Older Nigerians always talk about the good old days, but for the younger ones, all they see is a country with a bleak future, and they are scared. When you look at Nigeria today, what do you see?
I share the same fear, especially for my children and grandchildren, which is why at 80 I’m still working because I have that feeling that I have to make some impact. I have acquired so much experience, I have seen so much in life, which is also the reason I’m writing. It is my desire to impact and to touch possibly millions of people, that is why I’m still working. If not, I should just rest. But I’m still working, writing, researching because I know that maybe I have not reached that pinnacle yet. Let me also say that all along I have been talking. Someone called the other day and said he read what I wrote many years ago, and people were saying if only they had listened to what I said 30 to 40 years ago about the disappearance of grazing fields, we would not have the herdsmen problem we have today. So, I’m looking for how to now put my message across so that people would begin to take me seriously. That is what is left for me to do and that is what I’m doing. About 30 to 40 years ago I said: look, the nomadic Fulani cannot be urbanised; there is no way you can expect them to come into an urban centre and have a normal life. I have stayed with them and I know what their lifestyle is like, not just in Nigeria but in Chad, in Niger. Even in the Middle East they are called Bedouins, but they have their grazing area. That’s all they do: take their cattle to the grazing fields and wander around taking in fresh air in open spaces, eat, and some can even sleep out there – that is what nomadic life is about. If you see two nomads piloting 200 to 300 cattle, don’t you ever stop to think, how come just two boys? The Fulani culture is such that once you have a male child, you give him 10 cows – five female, five male. They practice animal husbandry. For today’s world, by the time that child goes through secondary and possibly university education, those 10 cows must have got to a few hundreds. He becomes a captain or major or colonel in the army, he is the one that those two boys are working for, which is why sometimes you see them with AK47 because they have to protect their cattle. When they see that there are no more grazing fields, they either sit there and allow the 200 or 300 cattle to die, or they move to where they can graze them, and that may be your farmland. I started talking about this when it was the Middle Belt, now they have come down south. Can you imagine what we are investing now in security! That’s why I’m pained that people did not listen to simple things that I put forward then: let’s fight back the desert, let’s get them back their grazing fields. You know what I did? I went to the Kano State government, because Emir Ado Bayero was my friend, and asked to be given areas of the state most affected by the desert. Because of that, I went back to Israel, to Ben-Gurion University, to study the science of desertification. When I returned, I had to do a pilot project to show Nigerians how they can drive back the desert and get back the grazing fields for the nomadic Fulani. British High Commission gave me money, International Energy gave me money, Kano State government chipped in money, and I started. It took me four years to bring back grazing fields in Makoda, and people that migrated out returned. You know what they did as soon as people began to return? Before then I would take my tent and sleep out there because there was no hotel or any such thing. Once they began to return, the community went and built me a house there. When the house was opened, the British High Commissioner and his wife were there, Emir of Kano was there, the governor himself was there. I used that to show what could be done because the whole of Israel was recovered from the Negev Desert. If Israel could do that, why can’t we do it Nigeria? And how much then did I use in building water irrigation, sprinkler irrigation, in planting the trees and in grazing the land? Under N70 million. The governor told me that if that was to be done by the state, it would cost nothing less than N300 million.
You are a husband, father and grandfather. How has your family coped with your restless nature?
Fortunately for me, the restlessness started before my family. They came into my world seeing that restlessness, they grew up with it. Though it’s not been that easy for them, the best they do sometimes is to go into denial, like when I was making my second and third expeditions. But there was nothing they could do about it because they found out that is where my joy lies. As I said earlier, if I go on for 10 years without embarking on something unique and different, I’m not myself. So, they have lived through it, not that they fully support it. It was quite tough for them, but they have seen it as my nature. I don’t know if I would be doing any more of this again because of age, but my plan was to make sure I hand over to another set of people that will carry it forward.
At 80, looking back, what would you consider the secrets of longevity?
I have thought about it, a lot of people have also asked me. I have age mates, those born in 1938, and I see that most of them are not as healthy and as active as I am. I have asked myself that question several times, but you know, I have not been able to crack it because I do everything that they do. It may be my healthy eating because of my love for nature; I’m into a lot of nature. That is the only thing I can think of. I love nature, I live with nature, and I love protecting nature. I’m building a park in Asaba, the Nelson Mandela Park. So, I don’t know if that is it because that is the only thing I do that the other age mates or even those younger do not do. Two months ago I had food poisoning in Abuja and I was admitted for two nights. That was my first time of spending the night in a hospital since my life. And I know that a lot of my age mates, even those younger, have gone through a lot of health challenges. I have always known that the Creator created nature for us the inhabitants mainly because we the inhabitants, we and the animals, would need that nature to be able to survive. But how much are we doing to protect that nature since nature was there before us? Do we just keep taking without putting back anything?
