Out of Warri

Out of Warri, many stories are born.

Some whispered in courtyards where kola nut was broken,

where mothers prayed over restless sons,

where visitors were welcomed with drinks poured and laughter shared.

Some carried in the creeks,

where the paddle once struck water in rhythm with trade.

My first taste of learning was at the akara school on Ogboru Street.

The teacher came to the house to gather us.

We marched in line with our wooden slates,

chalk dust on our palms,

hope in our hearts.

It seemed everyone sighed in relief —

“Finally, Uvoh is in school.”

My mother would shake her head and laugh,

“Uvoh no dey hear twelve.”

Restless. Curious.

Always looking beyond the four corners of the house.

My friend Akunne said : “ I am surprised you have not been diagnosed with restlessness !!

Grandma Akpororo’s words carried more weight:

“Hold your pencil well.

Do not be like your great-grandfather.

He was strong, yes,

but he sold people into slavery.”

History was never far in Warri.

The land remembers.

The creeks bear witness.

Before oil, there was palm oil.

Before palm oil, there was the trade in human beings.

Warri was a post in those days —

a riverine market where fortunes were made and lives were lost.

The Itsekiri middlemen rose to prominence, guiding commerce with Europeans who anchored their ships just off the coast.

The Urhobo and Ijaw brought produce and, at times, people, to the markets.

And then came the Royal Niger Company,

a chartered merchant empire in disguise.

By 1884 they claimed the rivers,

by treaties and by trickery,

signing away lands that elders scarcely understood.

Guns for palm oil, gin for signatures.

A town was entangled in the web of Empire.

This was the Warri I inherited —

a place rich with history and heavy with contradictions.

A land where greatness and betrayal walked side by side.

And in that land, I tried to find my path.

I dreamed of the Nigerian Defence Academy.

I dreamed of uniforms and honor.

But in Nigeria , doors often opened for those with a “mouth.”

A name to be called.

A connection to push you across.

I had none.

So that dream drowned in the waters of disappointment.

Still, life had its detours.

After dental school, I found myself again drawn to the army.

This time I wore the uniform —

yet saw the discouragement, the politics, the weight of a system not built for merit.

And when I first touched down in America,

I went to the recruiter’s office.

I told him I once carried slate to school in Nigeria.

“Can I join you, even if it is only to carry things?” I asked.

He smiled.

Play-play talk turned real.

And somehow, I blended in.

Out of Warri I came.

But Warri never left me.

It lives in my mother’s laughter.

In my grandmother’s warnings.

In the creeks where the Royal Niger Company once set its flag.

In the restless ambition of a boy with a slate.

In the contradictions of oil wealth and deprivation

Finding Warri is finding myself.

Out of Warri — and yet always returning.

Because the story of Warri is the story of memory and forgetting,

of legacy and loss,

of a city that shaped the world while still searching for its own soul.