Jonah Chiehika Aliche (1908 – 1984): A Son Remembers, Honors
Back in October 2010, Prof. Kenneth Hardy of the Couple and Family Therapy department at Drexel University, Philadelphia PA had asked me what I considered very interesting question. I had finished my presentation, with a genogram and all, of my family of origin in the Person of the Therapist (POTT) class. Looking me pointedly in the face, Dr. Hardy asked if I thought I was a better father than my late father, Jonah Chiehika Aliche. My answer came swift and unequivocal: I am not, probably not! My dad raised us in a different age and circumstances, I added. The point here is that if my dad had brought us up here in America, and with all the resources at my disposal, he probably would have done a better job at childrearing than I’m doing today.
Of all the things that I do, on a regular basis, none is as important and emotionally rewarding to me as playing dad to my four young children! I really love it and often I second guess myself whether I’m doing the best that I can or even flog myself for not squeezing out more time to be with them and help nurse them. If you ever knew Chiehika Aliche, you’d not wonder where I acquired the interest and learnt the importance of playing dad. My late dad was a practical and hands-on father. Please, show understanding if I boast about this! Unlike many other men that I knew, growing up, my dad cooked and cooked and bathed us! On those early mornings when my late mom would go to the mission (church) to attend “class,” my dad was always there to get us ready for school. He was palpably possessive, protective or even obsessive about us!
The best thing about my dad was not so much about his role in the home, as his foresight! Arguably, more than many of his contemporaries, my dad knew that the way to the future was in acquiring formal education. He didn’t have the opportunity to go to school but he managed to attend night school to learn to write his name and speak smattering English! However, the revolutionary thing he did was in supporting others, and eventually his own children, to attain some level of formal education, the best he could, given his own lowly circumstances. My dad supported a few people, particularly two women in my family, when we were not even born. A few other people in our village he encouraged and assisted in small ways to go to school. These people are still living. My dad also told us stories of people from other villages that he helped gain entrance into the St. Luke’s School, Osusu, the only one, many years ago, that had Standard Six class in it.
Incidentally, by the time that my dad had us, six of us, late in his life, he had little or no resources to pay our way through school. It was a struggle to go through primary school, even, and secondary school was out of the question, until providence intervened. My dad spent his early years at Amorji with his maternal relatives. At that time, he was doing well trading in palm produce. Following an encounter with his dad on the way to Nbawsi, my dad returned to Osusu in early adulthood. Following a few but major events, he spent much of his wealth taking care of family matters and never regained momentum. Meanwhile, the more dominant section of our extended family had secured the family land to the marginalization of my own section. That explains why we had to be buying land and farming in far places, such as Ikem Nvosi, Umungaragu, Ehuma, etc. One thing that my dad had in abundance, though, was raw energy and determination to succeed. There was no odd job that was too bad or too difficult for my dad, if it produced money with which he’ll take care of his family! There was hardly any rich man in Osusu - Njoku Agharannya, Nwadike, Nwalocha, etc, - that my dad’s sweat did not help to make rich, as he tended their farms and did other menial jobs! Although I did not witness the interactions between my dad and these “big men,” I have a big stock of interesting stories that my dad shared with me of their antics and how he dealt with that.
Back to my dad’s love for education and his determination to have his children acquire it. For primary school, my dad made sure that we started and completed with our age mates. It wasn’t easy, though. The good thing was that my dad had a way of striking arrangements with the school authorities that ensured that we were never kicked out of school for nonpayment of school fees. The school authorities would honor their own part of the agreement and my dad will pay, not as and when due, but as soon as he could, in installments. And it worked! My dad’s knack for making friends and striking agreements that mattered also helped us during the Biafran War survive without the scourge of Kwashiorkor. His friendships with a man called Oribor in Okpuala Ngwa at the time and with Pastor Akandu’s wife ensured that we had “relief” materials enough to stave off hunger and ward off Kwashiorkor. When my older brother and I graduated from primary school, one year apart, we had reached our ceiling. Luckily for him an older cousin of ours in Amaekpu took him in to assist with his trading in bicycle parts from where he subsequently learnt to trade and establish on his own, eventually. For me, the initial arrangement to have me learn the vocation of shoe making did not go through until it was decided that I should go off to serve as a houseboy, which I did at Aba.
While I was houseboy, my dad never really accepted that fate for his son and the very first day he came to visit me at Aba, he took me home, unplanned! He didn’t like to see his son with bucket of water on his head climbing flights of stairs!! Subsequently, my dad arranged with Eze Nwagwu, a rising star in my village at the time, to have me attend Sam’s Commercial School Nbawsi. The arrangement ensured that Dee Eze paid my fees en bloc while my dad paid him back in installments, through the weekly Ogbo. And it worked! Yet, my dad was not satisfied. He aspired for something better than commercial school education for his son. As soon as word came out that a five-year teacher training program, preparatory to the introduction of Universal Primary Education (UPE) in Nigeria, was in the offing, my dad had me on the back of his bicycle to Ihie where we met mu uncle, Mr. O.O. Evurulobi who taught at the TTC Ihie at the time, to ask for assistance to help me get the entrance form into the program. A few days later, I was to ride with Evurulobi in his Peugeot 403 car to the regional education office in Aba for the form. Eventually, I was not taken in the program that year (1974-1975). As God will have it, I was successful the following year! There began my road to post-primary education, the one that my dad was comfortable with. While we were at Azuiyi Oloko TTC, my dad will ride in his bike from Osusu to Azuiyi Oloko, something in the neighborhood of 15 miles, every so often to visit me at school. He was about the only father who did this so often. In any case, this was the East Central State and some students came from as far as Enugu, Onitsha and Ukwa, whose parents cannot come that often.
As a freshman at the University of Lagos, in 1984, I had come home for the Easter break. As I prepared to return to Lagos, my dad called me aside and told me to return home, as soon as I was told that he was dead. I laughed this off and jokingly queried him how he could die now when he had survived complications from stroke in the past two years and had regained much of his mobility and speech. It was only two weeks after this ominous conversation that my cousin, Ndubuisi Njoku, appeared at the campus of the Unilag very early in the morning. He had traveled with the night bus, bearing this obviously devastating news! It was May 10, 1984 and my dad had passed on the previous day!!! It is instructive that I had gone to school in Lagos, from Osusu, because my uncle, Michael Uleanya, one of the people that my dad encouraged while they were is school was now an administrative officer at the NNPC Lagos and he was supporting me with pocket money when he could. One good turn, they say, deserves another.
For 23 years, after my dad passed, I agonized over how best to honor him, my hero. It did not take me time to arrive at the conclusion that the best way to honor my dad was to establish an institution that promotes education, his first love and passion. The problem was funding for any such project. Eventually, I registered the Chiehika Aliche Memorial Early Childhood Education Center (CAMEEC), in 2007, with Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission, Abuja, as a charitable organization. CAMEEC was conceived as a center of excellence in early childhood education and research. Last September, CAMEEC opened its gates with 50 students, ages three and four. In two months, the second week of July, CAMEEC will be formally opened, during which a deserved credit will be given to a man, Jonah Chiehika Aliche, my dad, who gave his all for the welfare of his offspring. I’m grateful to the people who have donated to the CAMEEC project in the past. If anyone wants to contribute to the grand opening of CAMEEC, please visit www.alichechildcenter-ngr.org to make a donation, using your credit card. If you prefer, you can also send your check to Azubike Aliche, P.O. Box 146, Millville, NJ 08332. That way, you’ll be helping to give honor to who honor is due!!!
Azubike Aliche
