The peace of my otherwise serene world was shattered at 7. 29 am on Monday, December 19, 2023, when I received a phone call from Samuel Iorlemem, a classmate of mine at N.K.S.T Secondary School, Adikpo in Benue State where I began my secondary education in 1973 and ended it in 1978. Sam called to inform me that Maxentius Jime, my close friend from the school, had died. Samuel spoke to me for 9 minutes and 27 seconds during which time he said, among many others, that my friend had died in Calabar, my state capital, on his way to Cameroon where he was to deliver an academic paper. Max was a very senior lecturer at the Benue State-owned Polytechnic, Ugbokolo.
The info that Max had died in my “territory”, so to say, heightened my grief as I wondered what circumstance on earth was responsible for my state becoming the graveyard of one of my best friends. It also heightened my anxiety to know more, and very soon too, about the real cause of his death: was it an accident or did he die naturally in his sleep? Where, exactly, was he going to? If he was going to Cameroon as I was told, did he need to go to Calabar before going to that neighbouring country, except he arrived by air from some destination? Ought he not to have stopped in Ikom, some 200 and something kilometres away from Calabar, to go to Cameroon if he had travelled by road from Benue and passed through my very village as I suspected? The info also imposed a sense of responsibility upon me that if need be, I may have to go to Calabar or anywhere else in CRS to see what could be done to help if any help was needed.
Fortunately for me, I was then in my village, Gakem, in northern CRS, very close to the Benue State boundary and was preparing for a possible trip to Calabar or Ikom the next morning as Samuel promised to find out some more details about the circumstances of Max’s death and the mortuary and town his body was deposited in and give me an update later in the day.
That day was about to pass and Samuel had not called. I tried his number several times before sleep time and was told repeatedly that it had been switched out. This effort and the corresponding response about his number being switched off continued until the fourth day when I tried Sam again and luckily for me, he picked up my call this time around. Unfortunately for me, Sam said he was unable to gather any more information about Max’s death that I sought to know to act one way or another. I felt defeated and deflated because there were no more classmates whose phone numbers I had and could call to throw light on Max’s demise.
Friday, December 22 came and it was time for me to leave the village for Abuja to be with the family for Christmas. On December 26, 2023, with access to my smartphone, I knew now that I could connect with many more friends get to know what happened to Max and find out about the date and place of his burial so I could attend.
I sent a WhatsApp message to another classmate Daniel Orhembega Kaaer who told me Sam had been buried that very Friday, December 22, 2023, that I was on my way to Abuja!
My friend Max was born in Jato Aka, not very far from Adikpo, the headquarters of Kwande Local Government Area of Benue State. Jato Aka is also the birthplace of one of Nigeria’s most famous Experimental Psychologists, Dr. Paul Iorpuu Unongo. When we became classmates and friends at tender ages, Max used to regale me with stories about his village, about the wealth, riches and wisdom of Paul Unongo who had just returned from Canada to begin an amazing career in politics and humanitarian service. Unongo was something else in Tiv land and Nigeria in the early 70s right up to the time he died a few years ago. He established Juladaco transport buses, Juladaco schools, Juladaco hospitals, Juladaco stadium and a football club called Juladaco Bees. But I never had a chance to visit Jato Aka before we left Adikpo on completion of our secondary school education.
The years after our Adikpo days must be considered the Silent Years of our lives. It was the ‘’analogue’’ days in the life of Nigeria until the Digital Age came in the early 2000s. Max and I lost contact. But we and some of our mates reconnected at the dawn of the Internet. We were very much in touch and saw each other six or seven times before his demise. But despite our inability to see in person more frequently, the warmth of our relationship never declined.
Unfortunately for us both, the challenges of the times we live in made it impossible for both of us to meet and become familiar with our wives and children which is why I could not contact his wife or children to know what had happened to Max when I was desperately in need of that information.
After Adikpo, I went on to graduate from the University of Calabar and worked in several places before our reconnection in the early 2000. Max too went on to graduate from a university I never had the presence of mind to ask and worked until he became a lecturer at PolyUgbokolo.
The mystery of how children, teenagers and adults meet and become friends and sometimes hold on to each other’s affection until death do them part is only for God to explain but from 1973 when we first met until 1978 when we left Adikpo, Max and I were very good friends despite our tribal, cultural and regional differences. This explains why Samuel Iorlemen thought that he needed to inform me of Max’s death, more so as it was said to have taken place on my part of the country.
In the course of our relationship, I found Max to be a considerate, selfless and loyal person. One particular incident sticks in my mind some fifty or more years later. It was the custom or tradition in our school in our time that anyone who emerged as the best-graduating student in the WAEC external exams is rewarded with a gift, usually, a very beautifully wrapped towel.
It so happened that in the year 1978, it was Idang Alibi, this child of God, who emerged as the best-graduating student of that set. Still, the Principal who had succeeded Mr Peter Iortsuun, whose name I never bothered to find out, refused to award me that prize because he felt offended that it was I, a non-native, a non-Tiv child, who got it. He said I ought to be content with a handshake from the Principal.
Although as a human I felt discriminated against, I did not hold this against all Tiv people because I knew that if it was the broadminded Mr. Kenti who was succeeded by the scholarly and liberal Mr. Iortsuun, I would have been given my crown.
When years later we re-connected, the first thing Max said to me was the injustice that that principal had done to me.
I felt very touched by his remarks because that incident is surely one of the pains I bore very deeply in that part of my life. More importantly, it revealed the type of person Max was. He always stood for justice.
But apart from the incident involving this misguided chauvinistic principal, my life in Adikpo and with Max was a wonderful one. I remember it with fondness. Adikpo of the 70s was a place for a young man who also loved football to be. As I have related before in some account of my early years of life, Adikpo of the 70s had a man called simply Mr Akpoo, who, I am convinced, was an angel sent by the god of football to establish a football nursery to groom young men to become great football stars in their later lives.
Akpoo was not known to have been trained by anyone or institution. Still, he became an established and successful coach nevertheless, not of any particular team but a coach for the whole community who later evolved a system called ‘’Akpoo System’’, a smooth, free-flowing and attacking style of football reminiscent of the Brazilians.
It was during that Akpoo era that a great footballing family in Adikpo was discovered. It was the family of Kpako which produced Kwagba, Terfa and Moses. Perhaps, Kwagba and Terfa came too early because it was their younger brother, Moses, who arrived at the right time and made it to the national football team, the Super Eagles.
Football aficionados will recall that Moses Kpako was used effectively by the Dutch-Nigerian football tactician, Clemens Westerhof, as a holding midfielder. Despite the existence of such legends as Rashidi Yekini, J.J. Okocha, Daniel Amokachi and Finidi George, Westerhof used to speak glowingly of Kpako as his ‘’policeman’’, the man whose brief was simply to police the identified play-maker of every opposing team his team was to play against. Kpako did his job so effectively that he was hardly absent in any of the men Westerhof paraded against any team.
Please, forgive me. It is my passion for Max whose surname used to be Anglicized by our Indian lecturer and other non-Africans as “Jaim” instead of the Ji-me the Tiv people pronounce that name that has taken me on this wide tour of the best part and time yet of my glorious life. From the little Tiv that I hear and can speak, ‘’Jime’’ means behind. Why did Maxentius’ grandfather name his son ‘’Behind’’? Names, we are told, influence the lives and times of people. Did Max’s surname impact his life? Was he behind in his life?
Although Max was not among the top three or four in academics in that our class of 73/78 set, the fact that he later grew to become a top lecturer in a polytechnic, delivering papers both home and abroad, meant that he was not an early bloomer but a later one. He was a middle-ranking student and not a bottom-of-the-park one. The honour for the top 3 or 4 belonged to Cephas Agbo, Nalegh Adzua, Daniel Orhembega Kaaer and Idang Alibi, who I said earlier, graduated top of the class in 1978.
A great son of Jato-Aka, a great son of Nigeria was buried with his virtues on Friday, December 21, 2023. A great friend of Idang Alibi and a beloved child of God was interred with the bones of his virtues. Fare thee well, Max.
