Road of no return: Corps member’s memory of Ogume’s darkest day

By: Lukman Abdulmalik

Years ago, when Ivan Eagle Lawson was a young corps member serving in Ogume, a quiet farming community in Ndokwa West, Delta State, he encountered an event that would remain etched in his memory long after his service year ended.

He remembers the day clearly—the sun was harsh, the road was silent, and he was simply trying to return from a short break in Port Harcourt to resume his duties as a Creative Arts teacher at Ogume Grammar School.

The Ogume–Amai road is a long, lonely stretch of tarred path carved between thick forests and wetland.

Cars rarely pass there, and for minutes at a time the only sound is the hum of insects and the distant rustle of reeds.

Lawson was riding on a commercial motorcycle, hoping to reach his lodge before evening, when his bike rider suddenly swerved off the asphalt and plunged into the bush.

Confused and irritated, Lawson thought the man had lost control of the machine.

But the rider quietly signalled him to crouch low and pointed toward the road.

From their hiding place, Lawson saw armed men dragging a young villager onto the highway.

What followed was a violent confrontation—loud, chaotic and terrifying.

The youth, who appeared to be no older than nineteen, struggled as he was beaten and assaulted.

Lawson watched helplessly, unable to intervene, unable even to shout.

He and the bike rider waited until the attackers finally left the area, and then cautiously walked back onto the road.

They had hoped that the young man might still be alive, but the scene was far worse than they imagined.

His injuries were fatal, and any attempt to save him would have been impossible.

But the real horror lay just a few metres away.

Scattered through the surrounding bushes were more than twenty bodies of young men.

They were Ogume youths—farmers, apprentices, sons—none older than their early twenties.

Lawson remembers staring at the lifeless figures and feeling a hollow disbelief.

It was as though he had stumbled into a battlefield nobody had reported, a tragedy whose echoes had not yet reached the rest of the world.

He later learned from villagers that the youths had been sent by the community to peacefully escort a group of herders out of Ogume after repeated complaints that farmlands were being destroyed by cattle.

The village head had hoped for dialogue, not violence, and the boys had set out believing the mission was routine.

But somewhere deep inside the forest corridor of the Ogume–Kwale road, the escort turned into a deadly confrontation.

Only one of the youths—the young man Lawson encountered—made it out alive, and even he eventually succumbed to the brutality he suffered.

When the bodies were brought back to Ogume, the community descended into mourning.

For two weeks, families gathered in the village square to grieve their sons.

Adults smeared ash on their foreheads, a sign of collective sorrow.

The roads emptied early in the evenings. Mothers wailed openly. The names of the 24 youths were whispered across compounds like prayers, like wounds the community could not stop touching.

For Lawson, the experience reshaped everything he thought he understood about rural insecurity.

He remembers being warned by NYSC officials to carry his identity card everywhere, and to avoid moving around without reason.

The atmosphere in the community remained tense for months, and the Ogume–Amai road—usually quiet on a normal day—felt even more ominous whenever he had to travel through it.

What has stayed with him most is not the violence itself, but the faces of the young men he saw that day.

He imagines the families waiting for them at home, unaware that their sons were lying in the forests.

He imagines the hopes each of them carried—hopes for farming seasons ahead, for marriage, for a better life.

They had walked into the woods simply because their community needed them, and they never returned.

Today, Lawson says that road still haunts him.

Whenever he thinks about it, he feels the same unsettling mix of fear and sorrow that washed over him the moment he stepped into the clearing and saw the bodies.

He wonders how many rural communities across the country experience similar tragedies in silence, without headlines, without official reports, without anyone to tell their stories.

Time has passed, but Ogume remembers its 24 fallen sons.

Lawson, long after completing his service year, continues to carry their memory—twenty-four young men who began the day as peace messengers and ended it as a community’s deepest heartbreak.