21 Years of Sadness and Joy Price: N250

were a target for incarceration or extermination. I still don’t know how my name crawled into the evil register but I was accused of knowing about a pirate radio station, first known as Freedom Radio and later changed to Radio Kudirat. But it was all a cook-up. The long and short of it was that I needed to travel speedily and navigate through the forests of a thousand daemons.

I succeeded in crossing through a smugglers’ route into Cotonou, Benin Republic. I was too scared to stay too long in Cotonou and so decided to meander my way to Lome, Togo. Since I couldn’t speak any smattering of French, my best and ultimate destination was Ghana. I crossed the border at Aflao and waltzed my way to Accra that evening. I was instantly stunned by the peace I found on ground after the fiasco I left behind in Lagos and my young family I was forced to abandon without any chance of negotiation.

President Jerry John Rawlings was in power. He was the dream ruler Nigerians craved. We had been regaled with tales of an audacious revolution. Though many Ghanaians did not fancy his coup and bloodletting propensity, Nigerians felt our country needed such Rawlings’ treatment to teach our corrupt leaders an enduring lesson. I spent the next three nights exploring and plotting my eventual migration to the United Kingdom. I found Ghana very hospitable and discovered the true meaning of Akwaaba!

I departed Ghana on the night of July 28, 1995, and landed at London Gatwick on July 29. Ghana remained permanently etched in my mind. I dreamt of a day I would be able to return to the tranquillity of Accra. I spent the next three years under most excruciation conditions. Exile was not an Eldorado despite the unparalleled hospitality and avuncular protection of the British Government.

It was exile that miraculously gave birth to Ovation International magazine. Time would not permit me to go into the story of its Immaculate Conception (to borrow a popular Catholic expression) and delivery. That is for another day. Our Board decided on a few pertinent projections. We will promote Africa and debunk the malevolent prejudices against our continent. We will celebrate the beauty of Africa and encourage social and business interactions amongst our people. We shall produce a world class magazine that would be the pride of Africans at home and abroad. We decided to concentrate all attention on West Africa before spreading out to other regions. Nigeria and Ghana became our priority countries.

Before my first and forced trip to Ghana, I had encountered the old Gold Coast on the pages of literary works by The Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Kofi Awoonor, Ayi Kwei Armah and company. I was particularly enthralled by the seminal work of Nkrumah and the thesis propounded in his book Africa Must Unite. Nkrumah introduced me and got me addicted to pan-Africanism though I had read pan-Africanist and Negritude works by Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, Chinweizu, Amilcar Cabral, The Nwalimu Dr Julius Nyerere, Leopold Sedar Senghor and others. I was exceptionally touched by Dr Nkrumah’s vision and was particularly convinced that Africa would never make appreciable progress unless Africans can join hands and lift themselves up.