By Ochereome Nnanna, just back from Otueke, Bayelsa State

Very early on Saturday, April 16, 2011, I was roused  from sleep in my hotel room in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State capital,  and informed that my fellow group of journalists from Lagos and Abuja, who were going to observe the President vote, were already downstairs and ready to leave for Otueke, the president’s hometown. I took a record 10 minutes to brush up, bath and dress to go.

The trip to Otueke lasted only 15 minutes as the road was well-paved and nothing was in the way to create a snarl. When we arrived, we were invited into the hotel premises where the presidential family stays when home.

Meanwhile, his new two-storey apartment is being built. The first family has to stay in the hotel because his modest duplex which he developed when he was deputy governor was blown up by militants during the Niger Delta crises while he was vice-president. Jonathan obviously decided not to renovate it because he wants it to stand as a memorial to the struggle and his own share of its painful side-effects.

Outside the hotel was stationed an ugly and squat-shaped machine; an armoured vehicle with fierce-looking soldiers and securitymen in suits milling all around. Once inside the compound, we discovered that the President and his family were  not actually staying  in the hotel.

A couple of modest bungalows hide behind the hotel compound, and this is where they put up temporarily. To give you an idea of how make-shift the place was, there was a canopy under which were some plastic seats where visitors such as us had to sit while we waited to be ushered into the presidential presence.

At 8.55 a.m., we were invited into one of the bungalows. Seated on one of the two-seat settees was the President in his trademark dark Niger Delta native suit and bowler caps, smiling as we approached. On one of the seats in the parlour, an elderly woman, the President’s mother, sat. We greeted the president one after the other with a handshake. Then, I delivered a message from one of my sisters-in-law, who asked me to greet the president for her when she heard we were going to Otueke.

The President’s eyes swept the room and he remarked, just like a typical politician: “Look at the number of votes we have lost today!” Of course, he got a laugh from all of us. Big men – presidents, governors, blue-chip company CEOs – don’t have to be funny to get people laughing when they talk. It’s part of their natural privileges. When they are actually funny like the Olusegun Obasanjos of this world, the situation is better experienced than imagined.

It was when the president proceeded to go for the accreditation that the First Lady, the ebullient and indefatigable Dame Patience Jonathan, made her appearance, dressed in pink fineries. The husband had moved on ahead and everybody with him, leaving the First Lady strolling with only a couple of female companions, one a relation and other a sleuth, from the looks of her. The crowd  moved out to a neatly-appointed polling booth stationed outside the president’s father’s compound.

 You can imagine it without my saying that observers, reporters, election monitors and visitors from all over Africa and the world at large constituted the large crowd  that gathered. Major television networks, particularly the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and Channels Television, had their outside broadcasting vans stationed near the booth, with scores of cameramen enveloped in their usual frenzy for prime spots for good shots.

Unlike during the federal assembly elections when the president reportedly queued for accreditation and voting, he was given the express privilege to be the first to be accredited and to vote when it was time for voting.

The line in the presidential voting booth was long, and it was obvious most people wanted to vote into the same ballot box with the president and his family. After voting, he made his well-reported undertaking to vacate office if he lost the election, as he would not want Nigeria to descend to the level of affairs in Cote d’Ivoire. He said that in reply to a question from a  reporter.

Since all political forces in the state were united in their resolve to support their own son, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, Bayelsa State did not record any major untoward incident. And, the weather, though cloudy with sunny intervals, remained clement and ideal for a day we were out voting with the president.

The “Ebele” mystery

We all know that the president does not have any obvious Ijaw name though his Ijaw roots are unquestionable. The matter of how he came by the name: Azikiwe, is pretty well-known. It was a praise-name given him by his doting grandmother after the father of Nigeria’s nationalism and first premier of the defunct Eastern Nigeria (of which Bayelsa was a part), Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.

“Ebele”, however, has not been as well explained, and I have been curious about this from the day I came across the phenomenon for the first time. You will recall that when Jonathan was freshly crowned acting president, as a way of worming herself into the centre of things, then Minister of Information and Communications, Professor Dora Akunyili, had pronounced “Ebele” to sound Igbo. During his swearing-in, Jonathan pronounced it to sound different as if to debunk Dora’s claim and emphasise its “Ijawness.” In Igbo, “Ebele” (or Ebere) means “mercy”, and it can be given to a male or female in some dialectal setting. “Ebele” pronounced differently means “gourd” in some Igbo dialects.

I wanted to find out what “Ebele” means  in Ijaw, and what better place was there to go other than the roots of the president? During the burial of the then vice-president’s father in Otueke on Saturday, February 8, 2008 which I covered, my enquiries did not yield much result but one source, an Okrika man from Rivers State who was one of a cultural troupe which had come to bury their father-in-law, Pa Ebele Jonathan, volunteered that it meant  “fire.”

A day before the presidential election, I went back to Otueke with Sam Oyadongha, our correspondent in Bayelsa, to find out more. We went into the native quarters of this tiny community of less than 5,000 population. What attracted our attention was an old storey-building built with bricks and wood, just like the ancient storey-building belonging to this writer’s grandfather in Abiriba, which was built in 1909. We found a young man named “Precious,” whose mother, Tina, was minding her household chores nearby.

Our enquiries yielded the fact that the old building (which is still inhabited) belonged to a member of the Ikati family to which our hosts and the Jonathan sub-family reportedly belong, though they come from different compounds.

Tina, who said she did not know the meaning of the name,  referred us to an elderly man, offer taking about two minutes to emerge from his cooking activity from within a house, proudly confided in us that he built the house  by himself. His name was Pa Egum Eguma. He disclosed that though he did not attain  formal education and did not know how old he was, he was already old enough to cut and bring heads of palm-nuts from palm trees when Goodluck was born.

He, too, did not know the meaning of “Ebele,” though he volunteered an opinion that the name could have been imported from Igboland, Isokoland or Urhoboland. He explained that Ijaw people name their children after important people and phenomena, warning us not to be surprised that since Jonathan was contesting a presidential election he could win, children born on  election day could be called “Election”, or “President”, or “Jonathan.” Well, someone named his son “Heineken”, and a militant from Bayelsa answers “Boyloaf”: so, what else?

Pa Eguma then referred us to his elder brother who happened to be Precious’s grandfather, Pa Saturday Ibuku. He was working on a site deep in the forest over to the other side of the Kolo Creek Bridge in the town. Precious took us to him. A preacher who was obviously more interested in heavenly matters than elections, Pa Ibuku laced his pronouncements with Biblical quotations and exhortations.

He said he was in charge of his family’s forest estate. When we posed the  question to him,  he needed a full minute of hard-thinking before he came up with an answer: “It means someone who comes from a household where great things happen.” Sensing that our mission was a failure, we thanked him and made to leave. But he called us backed and advised us to put Jesus Christ first in everything we did.

When I came back to Lagos and wrote an article entitled: “Journey to Otueke” narrating the futile search for the meaning of “Ebele,” I received a call from Warri on Monday after our usual editorial meeting. The chap failed to disclose his name but confessed he was Ijaw. He advised that if I wanted to get the real meaning of “Ebele,” I should consult the people of Kolokuma-Opokuma, as they had a dictionary done in their dialect listing words and names like that. Then he opined that “Ebele” means  a big drum used to bring out prestigious masquerades during wrestling festivals.

As far as I am concerned, the enquiry has failed. Even I know when to give up a hopeless quest!