BY TONY ERHA
Inside the capital of Taraba, the north-east fringe state of Nigeria, there lived a humane woman, a very closed friend of mine, who occupies my mind non-stop, until now. ‘Jalingo’, the name of the growing urban centre, that sounds like the Christmas bell, was a ‘captivity’ where Vicky, the sensational girl, was ‘rehabilitated’ from the ‘traffickers’ that attempted to smuggle her through the porous Nigerian borders, into a Cameroon transit, from where she would have been flown to a European owner, who had made a down payment of USD$6,000, to own the girl-slave.
The Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) belongs to the Primates, a mammalian group that includes humans, monkeys and apes, having large brains and other unique features. Vicky is from the filial group of the Chimp, which is about the most intelligent of animals, sharing the closest semblances with humans. While chimps actually behave like the human persons, Vicky, because she had had extensive socialisation with her keepers and other humans, soon learned to ‘ape’ or imitate some of the actions made by man. To the amusement of everybody, she performed some human acts like dancing, mocking, folding the mat to lie down etc. she was commanded to do. Indeed, once on the popular Newsline Programme of the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA), anchored by Kefas Sule of the NTA, Jalingo, Vicky had mesmerised viewers with her human mimicry.
Vicky, the jealous girl, seemed to have had a score to settle with some women of the vicinity, who jeered at and mocked her. She always mocked them back by showing off her little backside and patting her open palm to her mouth to hoot at them the way angry women do. Whenever she sighted these women from a distance, she would be ready to ‘deal with’ them. First, she suddenly realized that she was naked and quickly covered her waistline with a piece of cloth. Her mates mustn’t see her nudity, she seemed to be resolute! And she would pick another cellophane to cover her head, as if to say “I am also feminine like you”
Sometimes, the friendly women jokingly called me and Jonah Joel Kiado the husbands of Vicky, because they came to know that Vicky was really a jealous type who didn’t take kindly to it when both of us joked and teased the women, who constantly brought food drinks and other delicacies for Vicky, other chimps and the baboons that were housed in the several enclosures of the mini zoo. Vicky evidently thought that we were too closed to her and sulked all day when we interact with the women. She was so happy when a chain was bought to tame her, so that she stopped causing troubles around. At first, she was excited to wear it, thinking it was a necklace bigger than the ones, (in a defiance) her ‘fellow women’ would wear. She sooner got agitated when she could hardly frolic.
The baboons are the most jealous and rebellious. Anything they considered as favour, when it is done to Vicky and the other chimps, they hated. They stoned at us when we gave Vicky a waist fetters, but got hysterical when we gave them theirs.
In another exciting media expose, journalist Hendrix Oliomogbe of the Guardian newspaper worded a report on Vicky, which had thrilled his readership, including an Andy Akporogu, the late newsprint workaholic and guru of the Nigerian Observer and the Guardian fame, who was hardly pleased with news reportage. Same year, about the middle of the 1990s, Professor John Oates, the celebrated American primatologist, an expert on the study of non-human primates, was also ecstatic about the Vicky’s story, when I met him and a Dr. Lee White, a conservationist who later became a minister of Ecology to Gabon, his place of birth. Both had visited the former Okomu Wildlife Sanctuary, Arakhuan, Edo State, now called Okomu National Park.
Painfully, the story of Vicky and how she came to be ‘exiled’ in the animal enclosures at the former College of Education, Jalingo was a twisted one, which evokes empathy for the unfortunate girl-chimp. As aforesaid, she was one of the chimps and baboons that were rescued by a synergy work with the then Taraba State Forestry Department, headed by it’s the Director, Hezekiah Omiri, a keenest conservationist and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). Being a volunteer, who then carried out many rescue activities and welfare of animals with the animal Kindness Club, a global charity founded in 1959 by the late Canadian, Aida Maud Boyer McAnn Flemming (1896 -1994), I was readily disposed to the team that traversed wilderness of Taraba, Yobe, Adamawa and Bornu states, respectively, rescuing smuggled primates and sending their smugglers to jail.
The exercises took us to dangerous terrains of the tough and greater heights and deep terrains of the temperate Mambilla, a Taraba plateau that is the loftiest altitudes in Nigeria, at about 1,600 metres above sea level. In one of our intricate trips up the plains, to Nuguroje and the Nge Yanki (the forest of lions), in a Landrover jeep, we were so lucky not to have skidded side-way and tumble into the deep valleys below. As we descended down the steep mountain towards Mayo Kam in Bali local government area. It was raining slowly and our jeep had galloped to a sudden stop, in order not to hit a herd of the elephants, that slowly down the hills, as if they didn’t care that we existed.
It was likely that Nsentip Udom Udeme, now a doctorate lecturer with a Taraba’s higher institution in Zing, was in the team. In some other rescue trips, we stayed within the Hadeja Nguru Wetlands, and today’s forest of Sambisa, the launch-pad for several deadly armed groups that lay siege to Nigeria and the contiguous countries. Paddy Ezeala, a notable conservationist and publisher of the Development Agenda magazine, was also in a study group of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), who ran into us at the Sambisa thickets. Unfortunately, Ezeala, my long-time associate passed on two months ago.
One morning, as I stepped out of the mini zoom, Jalo Denda, a close friend, met I and Kiado on the way. He did not heed our advise not to tease Vicky and to keep his transistor radio from her. Now, Vicky loved music, the radio and anything else that played sounds. On our quick return, Denda was dispirited as we met Vicky admiring the carcass of the radio set that she hit on the concrete, when Denda was inattentive.
When my good friend and passionate conservationist, Jonah Joel Kiado, passed on, life was more difficult for Vicky, because he was her main keeper and benefactor. I got back to Jalingo thereafter and not only mourn the demise of my good friend, who was a head lecturer at the then College of Education, but also longed to see Vicky. Her where-about was initially unknown, until I was referred to Wukari town in the state.
Getting to Wukari on about three hours road distance from Jalingo, was like a much longer straight journey made to infinity. In her new enclosure, Vicky was emaciated and confused. I had approached her cage on a face-to-face gaze with her, making grimaces and hooting calls that she was used to. Severally, she closed and flipped her hopeless eyelids, until she raised an excited cry, forcing herself out of the cage. We rolled over on the ground, in our once familiar mode of play. She was caring and dutifully picked dirt off my head, just as I did same to her. Then she held tight to me, looked to my face and began to cry, with tears dropping he cheeks. I was an agonizing moment but relieved that she recognised me. The late Ibrahim Kefas, the good one, who loved animals, her new benefactor, was amazed by what he witnessed. I encouraged her to take a sedative to stop her from making scenes as I left after spending quality time with her.
Will somebody tell me where Vicky is? I long to meet her again and again!
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