I met Sele in the mid 1990s during the campaign to save the remaining untouched Nigeria’s rainforest located in Cross River State. I was the press officer of the Cross River National Park and she had come with a team of journalists to do a story on community forestry and the activities of logging companies in the state. Nigeria’s remaining five per cent of pristine rainforest located in the state was under severe threat.
Sele’s total dedication to duty, high level of professionalism and knack for being detailed were infectious and made her stand out. She could make extremely interesting stories out of the most insipid of events and happenstances. Many still remember the Newsline story of “Tunde” the sitatunga antelope brought from the Drill Ranch in Calabar to the Lekki Nature Reserve of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) in 2002. I was by then the Communication Manager of the organization.
“Tunde,” the antelope, had been bought off some traders in the Lekki market in Lagos in 1994 by the then General Manager of the Cross River National Park, Mr. Clement Ebin, flown to Calabar and handed over to the managers of the Drill Ranch, Mr. Peter Jenkins and Ms. Liza Gadsby for upkeep. The animal was domesticated and eventually grew beyond what the ranch managers could handle. They personally requested that the animal be returned to its natural habitat in Lekki. It was Sele whom I invited to cover the arrival of the antelope at the Lekki Nature Reserve. That day was a Sunday. She waited patiently for the more than the six hours it took to break the wooden cage in which the animal had been brought and still had time to weave the story that same night for NTA Newsline.
Sele’s story on the arrival of the antelope elicited uncommon interest among Nigerians, and human traffic to the Lekki Nature Reserve increased tenfolds in the coming weeks as people thronged the reserve to see things for themselves. It was this general interest that informed the outrage that greeted the killing of the animal a few months later by some road construction workers who mistook it for an ordinary “bush-meat.” Sele was on hand again to cover this tragedy and even presented it again in Newsline in a most compelling manner by incorporating footages of the animal’s arrival. National interest in the matter soared and many other media houses followed suit. The police took the matter seriously and went ahead to prosecute the culprits. According to the then Divisional Police Officer of Ajah Police Station, “it is only somebody who doesn’t like himself or his job that would toy with such a matter that appeared on Newsline last night.” The families of the culprits had come to the police station to plead for an out-of-court settlement.
Sele was one of those who made the word “endangered species” commonplace in Nigeria’s lexicon. She contributed to environmental conservation in Nigeria more than even some people who regard themselves as environmentalists. Anything that had to do with the natural environment and the downtrodden and less privileged segment of our society attracted her attention. She also hated injustice of whatever shade.
She did not only love her job, she believed in national development, education and entertainment through the instrumentality of the television.
I remember sometime ago during the attempt to revive the New Masquerade, the long-running weekly television drama series. Sele had worked late into the evening as many of her colleagues did and still do and took a walk from her office at the NTA headquarters in Victoria Island, Lagos, across the road to a restaurant located in a petrol station close to the television house. The restaurant was an evening meeting point of NTA staff and people of other professions including my humble self.
When Sele walked in, an episode of the drama series better known as Zebrudaya was showing on television. I started an argument that the series were no longer as entertaining as they used to be years earlier when we were children. Sele disagreed, saying we had simply grown older and no longer looked at things the way we did in the halcyon days of childhood. Then came a scene in the episode that parodied Nigeria’s healthcare delivery. Clarius, Chief Zebrudaya’s houseboy, had moved up to become a proprietor of a rural pharmacy store. A client or patient who had had the sole of his right foot pierced by a six-inch nail that got stuck, came for treatment. Clarius bit his finger and shouted “Oh my God!” “E mean say you no go fit help me?” asked the client. Clarius replied, “No be so. I forget my screwdriver for house.” Everybody burst out laughing.
“Have they not made all of you to laugh?” said Sele. She won the argument.
Sele’s uncommon humility and unassuming mien should remain qualities for all of us to learn from. She was very uncomfortable with any professional elevation that alienated her from fieldwork. The lives of some Nigerians should remain inspirational to all of us; they should regenerate in us the sensibility that our country didn’t lose it all and never will. One of such lives was that of Selegberha Eradiri.
Adieu my beloved friend, the consummate news hunter!
Ezeala wrote in from Dakar, Senegal [email protected]
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