Upon returning to his native Nigeria in October, Henry thought jail was a real and immediate possibility. But so far, so good.
I met Henry back in September, when he was finishing a year working on infectious diseases at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton. He was leaving within weeks to go back home to his job as a professor at the University of Nigeria.
He's been at it for years, as a speaker, an organizer and a prolific essayist, and his activism has cost him. He's spent eight “indefinite” periods in what he calls detention and what you and I might call hell.
He once spent days in a cell the size of a standard closet with 25 other men. And yet when I asked him about that dismal time, he said the ones who really suffer are the women whose men are taken away.
They are beaten, sexually abused and further impoverished. They have no idea whether they'll ever see their husbands again.
So much is wrong in Nigeria that it's hard to know where to start, but Henry's view is that the most corrupting element at work in the country are the multinational oil companies that have bought off government officials.
“Those oil companies have ruined our country, they are ruining our culture, and they are doing it by paying off their ‘boys,' the government officials who do what needs to be done for those companies,” Onwubiko said last September before he left for Africa.
After Henry's story ran, I was deluged with e-mails from people who wanted to somehow help out in Nigeria. Others wanted me to stay in touch with Henry, to keep telling his story.
I committed myself to that, but not for the reasons readers mentioned. When I met Henry, I got the same feeling I get in the presence of some natural wonder, the water-carved canyons of Utah, the towering granite spires of the Alps, the sere, vast sweep of the High Atlas of Morocco.
I am not religious, but I felt I was in the presence of a holy man of sorts.
After three months of e-mailing Henry, I still feel that way.
When Henry writes, he writes not about fear and despair, but of the sound of rain on his West African roof. He tells me how luscious the oranges taste.
Of course, he urges me and other Americans to remain steadfast in support of Nigerian freedom. He writes with wonder about our willingness to support his cause from afar, thinking, kindly, that we have done something for him.
And this is what I find a little overwhelming. Henry thinks I'm brave for saying that huge oil companies are ruining parts of Africa.
But he's wrong. I say it because I am free and it is true. It takes no particular act of bravery on my part. For all our country's problems, and despite the efforts of the current administration to make us less free and more fearful, we are still at liberty to say what we think.
Sure, I might get a tongue-lashing from some oil company flack who wants to tell me all the wonderful things his company has done for Africans. But so what. He can't put me in jail.
Henry's willingness to speak truth to power, on the other hand, is dangerous for both him and his family. And yet he continues.
Recently, he and others have started a group called SURVIVAL, whose goal is freedom from the tyranny of corrupt government.
“We shall see what progress we make ... with time,” he wrote.
Still, his e-mails always seem to turn back to the gratefulness he feels toward me for writing about him. I can't convince him that I am the one who is honored, that he is the one more worthy.
“How reassuring it was for me to also meet a person who saw the struggle against the multinational oil giants as his own personal struggle!” he wrote.
This Sunday, I'm going snowboarding with the family. I've got some errands on Saturday, maybe find a few books with a gift certificate I got for Christmas, or perhaps see if REI puts its climbing gear on sale.
Probably the bravest thing I'll do is read the newspaper.
And yet here is Henry, urging me on: “Stay alive, Mike, and keep our struggle against the multinationals in the forefront,” he wrote.
Stay alive? While snowboarding? Or shopping?
For Henry's sake, let me today take in my right hand the only sword I have, the word, and strike my tiny blow. My left hand, I'll extend across the land and sea to brave Henry, a simple grasp of solidarity that means something to him that my comfortable life can barely fathom.
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com.
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