IVA Valley is now a ghost town. The ghosts of 21 miners: fathers, husbands, sons, breadwinners, that fell to a hail of bullets on November 18, 1949 at the district’s troubled colliery, haunt Iva Valley even as you read. Sixty six years since their massacre, their chilling howls echo through six decades, like a falsetto of savage deaths. All those pierced torsos, skin slivers, bone splinters and bullet fragments swimming in bleeding wounds, jabber back like darksome memories of doom and death.

The grisly narrative is of course, most bizarre. Simon Asogwa, 78, recollects with grief, the tragic fate of the 21 miners brutally hacked to death by the colonial police led by Captain F. S. Phillip, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP). According to the former miner and father of nine, the slain miners had gathered to protest deplorable working conditions. Prior to their massacre, there had been cases of physical abuse. In one instance, on September 2, 1945, to be precise, Okwudili Ojiyi, a coal miners’ union leader, was slapped by a British manager called Yates, for reporting an assault case. On November 1, 1949, the frosty relationship between the workers and management aggravated when the latter rejected demands for the payment of rostering, the upgrading of the mine hewers to artisans and the payment of housing and travelling allowances. The workers then began a ‘go-slow’ strike action. http://9jatravel.com.ng/sorrowful-songs-from-the-valley-of-iva-in-enugu/