Eze Okafor wakes before dawn in Surulere, his
fingers still smelling of roasted kolanut and
palm oil, the same scent his father carried from
IjebuOde in 1948. He sells five nuts a day — one
for the gods, one for the market, one for the
child, one for the wife who left, one for the
silence. The colonial law banning native trade
was repealed in ’60, but the new republic’s tax
men still call his stall “unregistered relic.”
No one dares touch it. Not since the last
officer who tried to confiscate his basket
collapsed midsentence, mumbling about ancestors
in the roof beams.
His son, Chidi, nineteen and sharpeyed from the
University of Lagos, wore a tie to protest and
came home with a passport stamped “Rep. of Ghana.
” He had studied engineering, but the
scholarships dried up after the 1965 oil pact
with Britain. The army came at 3 a.m., took him
for “unauthorized travel,” and shipped him to
Accra with three hundred others. Eze never saw
him again. No letter. No body. Just a receipt
stamped “DEPORTATION — STATE SECURITY.”
Three weeks later, the Ministry of Internal
Affairs declared kolanut vending “a subversive
ritual economy.” A squad in khaki arrived with a
sledgehammer. They smashed the wooden stall,
scattered the nuts, and burned the tarp. But
when the officer kicked the last nut into the
gutter, it rolled — and spoke. Not in English.
Not in Pidgin. In pure Yoruba: “Omo mi, owo mi,
omo mi.” My child, my money, my child.
The officer froze. His radio crackled: “Stand
down. Repeat, stand down. That nut is from the
1952 Oyo delegation.” The men retreated. That
night, Eze gathered the unbroken nuts from the
mud. He placed them on his wife’s old altar. One
by one, they cracked open — not to reveal
kernels, but faces. Chidi’s face. The face of
the man who sold him the passport. The face of
the general who signed the deportation order.
He did not weep. He did not pray. He walked to
the National Archives in Lagos with three nuts
in his pocket. He asked for Chidi’s file. The
clerk refused. Eze placed one nut on the desk.
The lights went out. When they came back, the
file lay open. Chidi’s photo. The signature. The
date. The same date the first oil tanker left
Port Harcourt.
At dawn, Eze stood outside the Ministry again.
He sold no nuts. He held none. But the street
vendors around him — the ones who had been
silent for years — began to chant. Not in
protest. In recognition. One by one, they
brought their own hidden kolanuts. Placed them
on the steps. The nuts did not speak. But the
air did. The wind carried the names of every
child sent away. Every father who buried silence.
Every mother who lit candles for ghosts who
never came home.
By noon, the Minister’s car stalled at the gate.
The driver got out, walked to Eze, and said,
“Sir, we have orders to remove you.” Eze nodded.
He handed the man one nut. The man did not eat
it. He dropped it into his pocket. And walked
away without speaking.
The kolanut trade never returned. But the
children who were deported? They began to return.
Not as students. Not as soldiers. As men who
remembered their fathers’ silence — and chose to
speak.
