■ Why corpse was exhumed after 35 years

■ Shocking discoveries in his grave

From MURPHY GANAGANA, Jos

NOTWITHSTANDING that 35 years have passed since his father, the first Gbong Gwom Jos died, 67-year-old Pam Rwang Pam, is still burdened with a heavy heart over the intrigues, injustice, pain, betrayal and grief that trailed the passage of the then paramount ruler of the Berom people.

But when he recently spoke with Sunday Sun on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon, Pam was in a jolly good mood as he chatted with his wife, Dudu, who had just served him a sumptuous lunch. He ushered this reporter into the sitting room in his residence located at the Bukuru expressway in Gyel district of Jos, the Plateau State capital with a disarming smile that seems to be his trademark.

And when he began to talk, Pam, the eighth child in a family of 11 and second son born to the first paramount ruler of Jos, His Royal Highness Rwang Pam of blessed memory, said the denial and injustice meted to the family of the pioneer Berom paramount chief deprived the late monarch of peace even in his grave and led to his corpse being exhumed 35 years after his death for proper reburial in the palace.

From teacher to royalty

Before becoming a traditional ruler, my father was a headmaster in Riyom, Plateau State; he taught in a primary school. At that time, the Berom chiefs used to congre­gate and have their meetings in Riyom. At that time too, there was nobody that could read and write among the chiefs. So he was al­ways invited by the chiefs, because headmasters, or generally, teachers at that time were highly respected. So as a headmaster, whenever the chiefs had a meeting, they always called him to act as their secretary, so he was taking the minutes of their meetings.

At that time, the Beroms had no officially structured traditional headship. What happened was that whenever there was a meeting, they appointed a chairman among the chiefs to preside over the meeting, and this was rotated among the chiefs who represent the various ruling houses. But my father was always the secretary at the meetings regardless of whoever was appoint­ed chairman.

This was during the colonial days, and when it got to a time they wanted to appoint a chief for Jos, and it was inquired among the ruling Berom chiefs who among them would want to go to Jos and stay, all of them declined, saying they would want to remain in their domains and cannot leave where they were and go to Jos and rule. Thereafter, about three or four per­sons were picked in a preliminary selection including my father, who was eventually elected among them to move to Jos and one of the main reasons was because he was so learned. Again, Jos was under Du district, and my father hailed from Du, so they felt he was the right choice to be the chief of Jos and it was unanimously accepted by the chiefs. The colonial authorities then notified the chiefs that my father whom they had all accepted to be the chief of Jos would be given a title, a condition that was also accepted by all the Berom chiefs. They said it was okay.

So, my father moved over to Jos in 1947 after his appointment as the chiefdom was approved by the co­lonialists. At that time, there was no place (palace) for him to stay in Jos because there wasn’t any traditional structure and he was the pioneer chief. Therefore, my father was given a place to manage, before the colonial authorities erected a place for him to stay, and that place they gave him was a garage that was demarcated and modified.

Having earlier told the forum of chiefs that the appointment of my father as the chief of Jos would be made hereditary and installed with a Staff of Office and they all agreed, he was consequently given a Staff of Office and installed as a 3rd class chief and designated as the Sarkin Jos. That title remained until the late Chief Solomon Lar became the governor of Plateau State. Lar said, ah, this position is a traditional title, why do you call it Sarkin Jos? There should be a name in Berom language for traditional title holders. He asked all chiefs in Plateau State to adopt indigenous traditional titles and that was how my father’s title was immediately changed to Gbong Gwom Jos, meaning a paramount chief and he was upgraded to a second class status before the title was eventually lifted to first class.

His role in the 1967 pogrom

After the 1966 military coup, which ignited a geopolitical divide, there was the clamour between 1967/1968 for all southerners living in the north to vacate and relocate to their place of origin. At that time, my father who was the paramount chief of Jos, physically mounted a Ministry of Information Landrover with a driver, took a loudspeaker and went round the whole of Jos, announcing that nobody should go anywhere and there should be no single bloodshed in his domain. He said everybody should remain calm, that he doesn’t want any disturbance. He made sure that no southerner was hurt, although there were some few instances where it couldn’t be avoided. He made sure that every Igbo man was taken to the railway station amid tight secu­rity and transported safely down to the east to avoid bloodshed. And for southerners going by road, he made sure security men were attached to them and escorted to the boundary of the Plateau before leaving them to continue their journey. Honestly, there wasn’t much bloodshed in Jos, down to other areas of the Plateau. So, during the civil war, the late Ojukwu (Chukwuemeka Odumegwu) heard of what my father did and said this man must be respected. He was aware of what happened and so much loved the Plateau people. This singular action of my father did not go down well with the Hausa/Fulanis. In fact, they were not too happy, but there was nothing they could do because the chief had said so and the security was there to deal with anyone who tried to molest anybody. So they had to cooperate, unless in some hidden areas where a few Igbo were attacked.

Let me tell you, because of my father’s announcement, while some of the Igbos were leaving, they handed over custody of their houses to the Hausa/Fulani till their return after the war. A lot of them did that and some of them actually returned to repossess their property. My fa­ther made sure that these properties were handed back to the owners, though a few of them couldn’t get theirs.

His mysterious death

It was not true that the Hausa/ Fulani killed my father because they didn’t like his protection of the southerners during the civil war, but he died of a mysterious illness. He was poisoned and nobody can tell you this is the person who poisoned him. Bitrus, my elder brother, was also poisoned. He was a prominent politician and Commissioner for Health in Plateau under Joseph Gomwalk’s tenure as military governor. He died in the same 1969 as my father, just within two weeks. My elder brother died on June 30, 1969 while my father died on July 14, 1969.

The death of my father was mysterious, just as my elder brother’s; everybody knew that he was poisoned. And I think it was people around him that poisoned him. Some of the people around him were Beroms, others were not. They connived, there was a conspiracy to eliminate him from the stool and because of the role he played during the civil war. In the course of ensuring that there was peace in Plateau, he developed some mysterious illness like hy­pertension and at that time, nobody knew what hypertension was, and that was how it all started. But later on, it emerged that it wasn’t what we thought because he went to the hospital and the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him.

I left the customs to save him

Yes, I was around him and I was between 19 and 20 years old. I was living with him in the palace when the sickness started and when he died, though I was away when the sickness became serious because by then, I worked with the Customs and Excise; that was as far back as 1965. Actu­ally, it was because of the sickness that my father said I should come back home and that made me to leave the Customs where I enlisted as a Preventive Officer and served for about two years. We were the first set of Customs officers to be sent to Police College, Kaduna, for training. Before then, Customs officers were sent to the Police College, Ikeja, for training.

When I was with the Customs, some people told my sick father that I had an accident and died. So my father raised an alarm. There was one police officer who was in Kano and he sent a message to him, saying this is what he heard about me and that he should find out. You see; the people who did that to him, who lied to him that I was dead, were the people that did not like him and wanted him dead. They knew my father loved me so much that in his sick condition, he could die of heart attack if told that I was dead. I was the second male child of my father, born after the first male and six females.

So, my father said he sensed that people wanted to kill him, that I should leave the Customs and come back home. There was nothing I could do than to obey him. So, I came down and he told my elder brother then, Bitrus, that now he wanted him to go and occupy his office, the traditional office, because he could no longer be going to the office. But my elder brother said no, he wasn’t going to because he was a politician. Rather, he said I should go and occupy the office because I was the next after him. That was the discussion we had at that time and whenever visitors came to the palace thereafter, my elder brother would ask me to handle them, to represent my father because he was so weak, very frail, and there was nothing he could do, but in so doing, I wasn’t going to the office. No, not that he said I shouldn’t go, but nobody told me to go anywhere. My elder brother told my father he wasn’t going to the office, but he was only coaching me first on what to do.

My father’s last days

In the last days of my father, he was no longer talking; the sickness rendered him to a state that he couldn’t utter any word, he just died quietly, though I was not there when he died. He knew he was going to die at that time. Though he wasn’t talking and didn’t say anything to anybody before he died, my mother who died in 1990 told me that he said to her: It is a pity that he was going to die, and imagining how she was going to cope with the family.

How Bitrus died mysteriously before my father

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This is the problem, because if he was alive, the ill-treatment meted to the family after my father’s death wouldn’t have been possible. Even as a commissioner in Gom­walk’s cabinet in Plateau State, my brother was appointed to the Board of a shipping line and had gone to Lagos for a meeting. While in that meeting, they served them tea. Unfortunately, there was a conspiracy between people in Jos and Lagos because they were monitoring his movements, so, they poisoned the tea. After taking the tea, he started feeling discomfort and told them he couldn’t cope with the meeting. It became serious and they had to fly him from Lagos to the Heton airport in Jos. On arrival, he was taken straight from the airport to Maternity Hospital, Jos; he didn’t even go to his house. At that time, Maternity Hospital was administered by white men; it was a very small hospital but one of the best in the Plateau.

After running series of tests on him, they were not sure of the blood again. So, they took a sample of the blood to either Ibadan or Lagos for further analysis, but before the result could be sent to Jos, the medical people over there asked if my brother was still alive. They said it would be a wonder if he was still alive because the blood was contaminated with poison, and someone who had taken the poison shouldn’t be alive by that time.

I was by his bedside in the hospital that day; he stood up and went to ease himself and when he returned, he laid down again. I was standing and then, he asked me, ‘Why can’t you sit down, and I told him not to worry. He spoke to me in Hausa and that was the first time my elder brother talked to me in Hausa language. He said, kazuana ma na, I said don’t worry. I thought this man was okay and I left the hospital; about 30 minutes after, a friend of mine told me he was informed that my elder brother was dead and had been taken to the mortuary. I was shocked and said it was a lie, but that was how he died through poison. Two weeks after, my father also died of poison.

Life after my father died

We stayed in the palace for a period of less than a year after my father died; I was supposed to be the next person to sit on the throne since the colonialists made it hereditary and I was the second male child, my elder brother who was the heir having died shortly before my father. I have minutes of meetings and several other documents as evidence. But immediately he died, people that were also interested in the stool manifested. The gazette which stated that assumption of the throne is by inheritance was altered and they now said every male child of 21 years of age was eligible to contest the Gbong Gwom stool in Berom land.

But some people who loved the family said no, that they knew the stool is hereditary, why should they now say it should be contested? Some of the chiefs said they don’t know, and I came out to ask who changed the gazette. Eventually, there was to be a contest between myself, Dr Fom Bot (second Gbong Gwom Jos), and two or three other persons were picked for the race. At that time, Fom Bot was the secretary of the traditional council and was never, ever on good terms with my father because he wanted the stool and he made other people around him to support him by all means to take the stool.

On the day of the election, I didn’t go inside; I was watching from outside the palace, which was opposite the local council (native authority) venue of the event in which I wasn’t even invited. The election was conducted three times. The chiefs selected me on the first ballot, but they cancelled it and said it was done wrongly. They repeated it and I still got my votes; they did it for the third time and again, I was still winning. Then, they came with the argument that I was a young boy even though I was 20 years old and already married. But because I was still winning, they said the best thing to do was to go and meet the governor and tell him the man that won the election, but also tell him that the person is still young, and they could give him the position. I was seated outside the palace and saw them when they drove out from the Native Authority office to meet Joseph Gomwalk who was then the Military Governor at the Assembly Complex where he was staying. Other contestants were there, but they did not invite me. So they went without me and told the governor lies; that I was young, and that I could not be the paramount ruler.

Then, the governor asked who came second in the election and they said it was Dr Fom Bot. So they said they wanted him to hold the stool pending when I would be more eligible and that was how he got it.

After getting the stool, he was still acting; he was not given Staff of Office because they told him to act. But later, he connived with some people that this thing became his own inheritance. So, the gazette was changed, everything about the stool was changed. They conspired and wrote a letter to Kaduna, that this is what the gazette is saying, that any Berom man that has attained the age of 21 is eligible to contest for the stool of Gbong Gwom Jos. So Gomwalk said he should be there until I am of age. And I am not still of age up till now (General laughter).

Forced to sell my father’s property

While alive and on the throne, my father borrowed an amount of money from then Northern Nigeria Development Corporation to buy a vehicle and even built a house in Zenta area of Jos, and it was the Native Authority that guaranteed the loan. So, when he died and Dr Fom Bot took over as the Gbong Gwom, he asked us to pay the loan for the house which was my father’s main building or else… So that made us to dispose some of my father’s properties to pay for the loan. We sold one house at New Market area of Jos, and another one to make up the money to pay the loan for the main building at Zenta. If not so, the local government wanted to confisticate it; and once they confisticated it, we would have had nowhere to stay. So, we were forced to sell a house close to the family’s main building also at Zenta area, and then another one at New Market, all in Jos.

Even the vehicle my father was using before he died which was also bought through a loan, because there was still some little amount of money to be balanced up, Dr Fom Bot said the local government should give him the vehicle, so he eventually took it away from us by force. That was just about a period of four months after my father died and by the time he was given the stool, he had no vehicle of his own to use. His friends were taking him from where he was to the office and he couldn’t come to the palace because we were still there. So, he had to force us out of the palace for him to come in, and we were forced to go to my father’s house at Zenta to stay. When we were leaving the palace, I took the vehicle along, but they said I should return it. I refused to return it because my father took the loan to purchase it in his own name, not in the name of the Gbong Gwom Jos, but Dr Fom Bot reported me to D.B. Zang, a very prominent Berom man and miner; in fact, he was the first miner in Nigeria who was very close to our family. He told him that I refused to surrender the vehicle to him. When Zang asked me, I said yes, because we were going to pay the balance of the loan for the vehicle. But D.B Zang appealed to me to give it to him; he said it was very shameful that a whole Gbong Gwom had no vehicle to use; he pleaded that I should be patient. So, reluctantly, I handed over the keys to him.

A family abandoned

Since then, nobody, not even successive governments in Plateau State has done anything for us. Up till today, as I am talking to you, nobody has done anything for us. Nobody even cares to know whether the Rwang Pam family exists or not, and that is how we’ve been living, watching them. When Dr Fom Bot was alive and on the throne, I visited him when we wanted to construct a fence around my father’s graveyard along Zaria Road in Jos. You see, when my father died in 1969, he was not bur­ied within the palace; his body was taken outside and buried on Zaria Road. That particular area was reserved as a royal burial ground, and my elder brother was the first person to be buried there. Then 14 days later, we took our father there. So they were all there. But people were trying to encroach on the graveyard and because we wanted to make the place very beautiful, a kind of tourist attraction, I and some other family members went to Dr Fom Bot and notified him of our plans. We told him that the local council hadn’t done anything on the graveyard since my father was buried and it was becoming an eyesore because the place had become bushy and shameful to say that Rwang Pam, the late Gbong Gwom Jos was interred there.

So, Dr Fom Bot said our mission was ok and it was good that we came to discuss with him as a fam­ily, but that we should forget about it because it was the responsibility of the local council to immortalize my father. That he was going to summon a meeting of all the chiefs on how to go about it. Well, we said fine, but if they cannot do it, let us know, that we can do it. He said No, that we shouldn’t worry, but up till the time he (Fom Bot) died, nothing was done.

However, when Dr Fom Bot died in the year 2001 and was to be buried inside the palace, some Berom people said ‘no, that he can’t be buried there,’ that if he had to be buried there, my father’s body should be taken from Zaria Road and buried in the palace first before his burial, because he was the first Gbong Gwom Jos. There were heated arguments and series of meetings until an agreement was reached at a meeting chaired by the then governor, Chief Joshua Dariye who was represented by his deputy, Mr. Botman; that my father’s body should be exhumed and moved to the palace for reburial, and that was done.

But it was amazing that on the very day that we were to exhume my father’s body from Zaria Road to the palace for reburial, they in­structed us to keep it silent, that we shouldn’t make any announcement about it, and we asked why? It was during the peace meeting that our family was given the directive that everybody, especially journalists should be kept in the dark.

Surprisingly, while we agreed that the family and every other person should be at the graveyard before 7.30am on the day of my father’s reburial, but before we arrived there, the whole place was filled up with people. Who told them, only God knows! By then, Dr Fom Bot who died outside the country had already been brought home and buried within the palace based on agreements reached with our family that there was no point keeping the body, but that he should not be buried as the first Gbong Gwom Jos. And with the help of the state government, which contributed part of the money, my father’s reburial in the palace was properly done.

Shocker in the grave

On the day we went to exhume my father’s body, it was raining heavily; but to our greatest surprise, there was no water in his grave. Could you believe that 35 years after being buried, when we dug his grave, the skeleton of the coffin was still there; and to the greatest surprise of everybody, his clothes were still intact, the big gown we wore him was intact; his skele­ton was also intact. You could even wash his gown and put it on because a single drop of sand was not on it. The grave itself was dry and we had even gone there with a water-pumping machine in anticipation that there could be water in the grave because of the heavy rains. Thereafter, we dressed him up properly before putting him in a new casket for reburial in the palace. He was buried in the first position, followed by his successor, Dr Fom Bot. That is how they’ve been buried even after Victor Pam ascended the throne and died few years later. He is buried in the palace next to Fom Bot as the third Gbong Gwom Jos.

Visit to the palace

Of course, I visited the palace sometime, but it is a long time I went there. The present Gbong Gwom had not invited us, the fam­ily for anything, and I don’t know why. It is best known to them. The only person that called me after he was installed was Victor Pam. We sat and discussed and he said look, I know everything that happened from the beginning until I mounted the throne, so I recognize you. He even told the people around that nobody should come to the palace and wake him up if he was asleep unless me. If he were still alive, maybe something positive could have happened to our family.

It’s been a tale of injustice and deprivation; and even in death, my father was initially denied of his right to be buried within the palace. I was also denied of my right to ascend the throne; I am indeed, pained in my heart, but I take it that it is the will of God.

D.B Zang, the first miner in Nigeria told Fom Bot to give me an appointment, so he reluctantly gave me appointment in the Na­tive Authority as a clerical officer, but there was a time he called me when he heard that I had bought a vehicle. He asked me who gave me money to buy a vehicle, and that was the day I talked to him bitterly. It was only the two of us that were in the office, and I told him he shouldn’t forget that I was supposed to be the one on the throne he was sitting. I said to him, ‘You know it, and I know it; so you can’t ask me how I got money to buy a vehicle; after all, money was not missing in the lo­cal council.’ I then turned around, opened the door and went out. I am now 67 years old, and we are eight children still alive. I am the eldest surviving son.