ISABELLA THEATRE: THE MONUMENT
THAT ARRESTED THE IBUSA YOUTHS
PROMINENT INDIGENES RELIEVE EXPERIENCES ON YOUTH LEISURE CENTRE
-
B Emeka Esogbue
(Pen Master)
Before now, the Ibusa
community in Oshimili North Local Government Area of Delta State was rich with leisure
which engaged the teeming youths of the community and beyond within the Anioma
axis. It was one community that attracted and fascinated them during the
holiday periods mostly when they returned to glue themselves to Ibusa. Two prevailing
centres at this time were the Awele Cedar Palace Hotel located very close to
the present site of a petrol station in Umueze near the Palace of the Obuzor of
Ibusa with its activities mostly centered on disco night clubbing and Isabella
Theatre which at the time, provided the community night clubbing and
cinematography. In those days, the spots which usually opened late at night
provided the youths with uncommon entertainment. Nevertheless, The Ibusa Town Hall,
Ogbeowele Town Hall, and Ashia Eke have been used for showing movies but
Isabella Theatre overwhelmed these places due to its purpose-built nature.
This piece is particularly
about Isabella Theatre, Ibusa's most famous leisure centre owned by Mr. Eddy
Nwaokobia and patronized by youths of Ibusa which held the community spellbound
at the time they needed to be made accessible to the world of entertainment. The
Isabella Theatre was an activity that was entertaining and held the
attention of the youths of the time.
For more than a decade, it
stood to engage Ibusa youths, tingled them with feelings so hard to find elsewhere
or define, and also provided them a source of happiness. Set in a near obscure and
atrocious corner of the time, precisely the tail-end of Isieke, in-between
Umuekea and Umuezeagwu” in the Umuekea Quarter of the community, the Isabella
Theatre was an activity that afforded the Ibusa youth pleasure and
gratification. The mentioned “Isikisi which lies almost opposite the leisure
centre, in ancient times is full of history for the Ibusa community. It relished
notoriety for vice being a horrendous ‘habitation’ where people with abominable
deeds in the society were dumped but it particularly had no bearing with the choice
of Isabella Theatre that only found the locality nearby to serve the youth
leisurely purposes. Yet, the indecipherable location seemed appropriate for the
pleasure-seeking youths who monopolized the arena purely for no one else but themselves.
Recovering information by
mental effort, the account of Isikisi was provided by Ben Ejete, the Production
Editor of Agogo Igbuzo and a native of the community from the Umueze section who recalled
that the Isikisi road was customarily an avoidable path for every human being
who valued his dear life because it was dreaded. Those who must walk the path
must do so in the broad daylight but not early morning or night and even then they
hurried their advance by step and never talked to anyone or looked back. To date, traditional Okanga dancers on procession also have to stop playing once they
get to the deadly location perhaps as a sign of honour for the departed souls
‘living’ in the Isikisi. Such was the fear associated with Isikisi Road. Since
it was a site for dumping people who died what was considered abominable
deaths, it was feared that spirits that didn’t die naturally or “Nwankebeli”
could deal with the living perhaps by abducting them.
The favour Isabella Theatre did
Ibusa was that it opened up the Isikisi area for the normal course of human
activities. Once Eddy made the choice of location for his cinema business,
the area became boisterously, vivaciously, and optimistically accessible to
jaunty youths who feared no evil. The sprightly attitudinized Ibusa youths
occupied the lonely and dreaded field, planting gleeful activities all around
much to the surprise and mortification of their mouth agape with parents. Ejete
recalled that Isabella was not alone but that there was a certain white garment
church that also occupied the area but it was the Eddy Theatre that did the
magic.
Isabella Theatre also called
“Eddy Cinema” or “Eddy Theatre” was one leisure centre in Ibusa that shaped the
life of the Ibusa youths and gave them the rare opportunity to intersperse and to
consort with themselves. However, it was not all about Ibusa as youths from
neighbouring communities as far as Agbor were also readily on the ground to
patronize the monumental leisure centre. It set the Ibusa on the social melting
pot of the Anioma nation among the youths and made it the envy of other
communities since it was a regular show nearly everyone looked forward to
attending. Although it was seemingly an association of people with similar interests, there also existed cliques of ‘big boys’ separate from the ordinary
boys. It was the big boys that archetypally and behaviorally determined affairs
inside the theatre such as where to sit or which lady to do the dance step with
which usually culminated in rivalries among the goers but it was scenically
usual among the youths.
The ‘Eddy Cinema outing’ dates
were usually days that young Anioma men and women looked forward to with adrenaline-charged feelings or stimulating inclinations. That was when the Ibusa peaceful and
brotherly relationship was extraordinary, said an aged Ibusa woman who didn’t
want to mention it. Anyone unfamiliar with its activities lost a sense of belonging or
quality of the present because the theatre instilled a spirit of modernity in the
community. The commonest phrase that described the journey to Eddy
Theatre was “ka nje Eddy cinema” Also dominating discussions among the youths
was the usual question: “Iga bia Eddy cinema tata?”
It was not all about seeing
movies as there were also performances of disco nights but it seemed more
famous for the cinematography i.e. motion-picture photography that it supplied
the youths, something rare, singular, and exceptional in those days. The disco
days of Eddy Theatre were the musical eras of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bruce
Springsteen, Phil Collins, The Police, Eddy Grant, Cool and the Gang, Fela, and
many more around the world, too numerous to mention were globally conspicuous
to success. Surprisingly, the music genre that blared out mostly from the
centre was foreign so that rarely was the Igbuzo kind of dance overheard. It
was a disco arrangement after all with commensurate disco dress style where the ‘labu-labu’ or ‘bongo’ style of trousers was the fashion for men that discoed
all night.
Washington-based Chinaza Onianwah,
writer, publisher, director, and cinematographer shares their experience on Eddy Theatre:
During my high school years
from 1975 to 1980, I visited Igbuzo every long vacation from Lagos. Before that, I lived in Igbuzo during the entire Biafra War. Finally, I was
apprehensive about going to Igbuzo during my first year in high school because I
feared there could be another war but my grandmother assured me there wouldn’t be
another war. One of the highlights of my holidays in Igbuzo was renting a bike
from Abuah who lived across the street, Umejei Road, from our compound in
Ogbeowele. At that time, you could rent a bike with 50 Kobo for an hour and
that was at dusk when we returned from my grandfather’s farm. I was a young lad
with so much energy to burn. My older brother, Christopher was in his final
year at St Patrick’s College, Asaba. He was known as Bobby Cha after his idol,
Bobby Charlton of the English soccer team. He was beyond burning his energy
going to the farms and riding bikes. He burnt his energy with girls. He had his
energy with girls. He had his own room with a bed, a chair, a table, and a
transistor radio. There were always many girls that always came to visit him
and spent the night. When I entered class 3 in high school, I told my
grandmother I wanted to move in with my brother. That was how I started hanging
out with him and his friends.
Onianwah continued:
I went everywhere he went and
I attended a discotheque for the first time in my life. The discotheque was
Isabella. It was owned by a guy called Eddy. I knew who he was because he owned
a pepper soup joint opposite my grandma’s house next door to Abuah. I used to
see him drive a Mercedes Benz Station Wagon with his beautiful wife. They were
the celebrity couple of Igbuzo at the time. Usually at Isabella, there was a
cinema showing a Kung Fu film, and afterward, the disco would start. Life at
Igbuzo then was so pleasant I could not wait for the long holidays to go to
Igbuzo. Even though Asaba was a more popular town, Igbuzo was where the party
was. Young people from all over Anioma used to come to Igbuzo to attend Isabella's film or disco.
Onowu Mark Nnabundo, the
Director of communications to the Chief Whip of Delta State House of Assembly
shed more light on the subject:
Between the 1970s and 1980s, we
attended disco and film sessions there in our teenage years. It was the best
place in town for entertainment followed by Awele Cedar at Isieke end then. People
used to come from other Anioma towns. Eddy Nwaokobia was the talk of the town
and also a very glamorous man who drove beautiful cars. He had 280 sleek
Mercedes Benz that was one in town then, which was sky blue then, I
think. He was a very rich man at that
time. He had people working for him and was always there to monitor events. He
dealt with stubborn people who were always out to cause trouble”.
Erudite Prof Fred Osita Osade acknowledges
his audience of the Eddy Theatre and gives further insight into the youth
centre that arrested the pleasure of the Ibusa youths. He said:
Yes, I did in those days. As
crude as the system he uses was, compared to 10 years ago, not even today’s
level may beat it. It sure provided an avenue for guys to let off the steam. You
took your first date there to show you belong, you saved up your hard-earned money from carrying blocks for builders, to go see the predominantly Indian
movies and a few Cowboy displays with sword tackles. I mean that it was almost
all there was in town to do over the weekend. Amidst these excitements, you dare
not flaunt membership to this ‘morally tinted society’ as our parents would
call it then. Remember you were a student. How can you explain the fact that
someone is paying your school fees and you are there attending Eddy Movie? Sometimes,
the movies stop halfway and never come back. The little you saw was enough
to form the story of what the theme was and what would have been had it not stopped
abruptly. But then who cared? It was a meeting place for us who voted most likely
not to succeed. Nevertheless, it served the purpose for which it was
established by some of the loneliest and wishful thinkers, which is what
today’s movies do anyway.
The globally-acclaimed Professor
while comparing the present society with the past said:
The current COVID-19 situation has proven to us that we can do without these fantasies. Would that stop us from
patronizing them as soon as the ban is lifted? Absolutely not, judging from the
number of people who rent movies nowadays”.
Eddy Nwaokobia was obviously
the most popular and glamorous Ibusa man of his time, respected for his personal
achievements and stupendous wealth specifically. His Citroen car, one of his
best of the 1980s was exotically, the car to behold. It was full of fables for
the youths and adults alike who admired the suspension on motion, screaming
“Eddy,” “Eddy, Eddy every time he was driving past them, especially on Isieke
High Street of the community. Indeed, the hydro-pneumatic suspension which
aided was a type of motor vehicle suspension system designed by Paul Mages,
invented by Citroen and fitted to Citroen cars. The suspension system enables self-leveling
and driver-variable ride height which in the process provides extra clearance
in rough terrain.
Eddy-Pool was a rich young man
at his age then and used state-of-the-art cars like Citroen which intrigued us
as youths, a car that rises and increases in height when turned on. Imagine the
look on our already amazed faces then. In his fleet was also a Mercedes Benz
280s stretch with the embossed registration number of MA 755 of the then
Midwest State. Eddy-Pool was a start and living and also living large then.
There’s no doubt about this, said
Peter Egbuchua.
Eddy would also appear as an
enigma of the time as he was also surrounded by fables of his time. For
instance, not only was he called “Eddy Pool”, he was rumoured to have acquired a lot of his wealth, one time from the pool, which is the jackpot. Perhaps, his
nickname was derived from this ‘pool’. He was an indigene of Isieke in Umuekea
of Ibusa and plied his business between the 1970s and 1980s. As far back as in
the 1980s, he was praised by Ibusa highlife king, Bright Osadebe in one of his
albums who hailed him, “Eddy Pool”. The particular story was told of how after
he jumped to the sky, descended with intimidating force, and somersaulted with
fingers threateningly positioned for one eye and the other for nose, the fear
of Eddy-Pool became the fear of wisdom for anyone planning to kick a row within
the vicinity.
Anioma traditional music
maestro who also hails from the community, Etiti Okonji was not absent from the
Eddy Theatre gusto of the time. Speaking to Pen Master on this, the popular
Ekobe musician enthused:
Yes, that was in the 1970s. we
were always there to see movies and also to dance. These were the good old days
that I will never forget. We walked from Ogboli around 9 pm in the night to
Umuekea to see movies and dance without any harassment. The theatre was called Isabella.
Eddy was one of the richest men of his time. He drove a Range Rover and whenever
he was passing, you would definitely hear the sound of horns on the street and
everyone would join to scream Enjoy!
The Eddy Cinema did not start
to exist all of a sudden. It was planned and constructed with the Ibusa youths helpfully
providing services by carrying blocks for the builders in what was called the “Olu
job” at the time, in the local parlance of the people. One of the people who engaged in helping the builders of Isabella Theatre to carry blocks was Chief
Amaechi Nwaenie, today’s Uwolo of Ibusa who comes from a humble background.
Behind this, he did not feature in the entertainment galore of the youth
leisure centre. Among other achievements of the theatre was the discovery of
several DJs that provided guests with quality music and they included Radio
Papa who hailed from Agbor, the late Derry Jay from Onicha-Ugbo and DJ Papa Rich
(Dave Ashikodi) from Umuekea, Ibusa. they had the opportunity to exhibit their talents in them.
Perhaps it was Umuekea-born
Peter Egbuchua who broadly gave a vivid, glowing, and near-sufficient account
of the Isabella theatre that touched on the personality of Eddy Nwaokobia. For
him:
Isabella Theatre was the
biggest youth engagement that happened in the show biz industry of Ibusa way
back in the 70s. It was owned and managed by Mr. Eddy-Pool Nwaokobia. Before
the emergence of Isabella Theatre, there were places like Awele Cedar, Hotel
Rekado, Ibusa Town Hall, and Ogbeowele Town Hall that were used for events
but the Isabella Theatre was unique being that it was a purpose-built cinema
hall unlike when people trooped to Ashia-Eke market of the community to watch
cinema in the open. The maiden film was a Chinese movie that featured Bruce
Lee, the protagonist of Blessed Memory in his spectacular Kung Fu fight with
Angela Mao. It was quite exciting, putting the Ibusa community at the forefront
of the social strata in the defunct Bendel State. Eddy-Pool about the same
period, introduced a discotheque in Isabella Theatre and it became the talk of
the town as far as neighbouring Ogwashi-Uku, Asaba, Okpanam, Onitsha, and up to
Onitsha-Ugbo. Students from boarding schools would always stray out of boarding
to attend disco sessions and socialize with people from other institutions. It
was the disparate desire to disco with students from other institutions of
learning that earned any such outing, “Onye Egbene”, meaning “let no one miss
it”. The popularity and patronage of Isabella Theatre by young fun seekers
encouraged Eddy-Pool to open up another spot which he called “Enbo Inn”. Enbo
Inn was strictly for disco sessions while Isabella Theatre catered for cinema. Often, it differentiated the ‘local boys’ from ‘city boys’ who come into town
with the latest rare dance steps much to the admiration of the young ladies who
were being wooed, dazzled, and ‘super-rapped’ into courtship. Isabella Theatre
brought Ibusa to the highest level in the entertainment industry but not
without consequences. Ibusa became a bedlam for fun-seekers from far and wide
most especially Yuletide season. Young men would stray out late at night in
search of parties thereby indulging in all sorts of negative tendencies,
drunkenness, womanizing, dope-smoking, thuggery, and eventually fights would
commonly break out. It was one such fight that infamously led to the death
of one Aggrey Okogwu from Umuodafe at Awele Cedar Palace Hotel. This ugly
incident was the culmination of many of the fun-seekers taking flights into
exile outside Ibusa to arrest police arrests. It was a development that took the shine off the “Onye engine”. The camaderie that we as youths enjoyed during this
period started to die as social gatherings became limited to individual homes
and also strictly by invitation or popularity. Apart from these social ills,
Isabella Theatre was the amusement centre.
Sadly, the beginning of the
exit of Isabella Theatre from the limelight appears to be first and foremost, the commercialization
of movies, now converted to home use instead of the moneymaking view of the
time. With the increasing availability of video machines, families could now
purchase cassettes and view movies exclusively in their homes without any
necessary gathering in public. Some juvenile disturbances and clashes were becoming as frequent as modernity was dawning on the
community, often difficult to regulate. Unfortunately, a particular incident
resulted in the loss of an Umuodafe life which not only threw the community
into mourning but ended up denting the image of the theatre more than anything
within such a period that life was considered very sacred in the Ibusa community. Nevertheless,
the Isabella Theatre of the Eddy Nwaokobia family ended up linking the Igbuzo
youths and others from neighbouring communities to the global world of
entertainment.
Although he fought so hard to
sustain his business as revealed by Peter Egbuchua, it was only a matter of
time before an end came.
Lest I forget, you would never
dare to fight within the premises of Isabella unless you want to bear the brunt
of Eddy-Pool, the self-acclaimed judo or karate expert even though he was never
known to have attended any formal school of martial arts. His spectacular display
with fingers usually one for the eye and one for the nose, followed by a leap
high into the air, lashing out a devious kick to the opponent’s stomach or
chest was dreaded as well as avoided. But indeed, it was dramatically,
imitations of numerous Chinese films inside his library being the inventor of
Chinese movies to Ibusa.
The end of Isabella Theatre
came with consequences that touched the community according to Egbuchua.
Since the fall of Isabella
Theatre, Ibusa youths have had no form of collective outing capable of binding
them to date. Furthermore, the situation has degenerated into the formation
of cult groups. Again, peer groups have been restricted to ogbe levels or cult
membership. The camaraderie, shine, glitz, and glitterati associated with
“onye Egbene’ or the social life of the youths have died completely with nothing to
further bind them youths.
The Ibusa entertainment story
is incomplete without the mention of Pa Eddy Nwaokobia and his Isabella Theatre
which invited fame to Ibusa in the consideration of many. Nonetheless, many
would wonder why many who were beneficiaries of this centre rarely discuss the
significance of the social development of the community. The remains of the
Eddy Theatre are seen today in the conversion of a private school, obviously
the reminder of what easily passes for one of Ibusa’s social heritage sites for
the future generation.
@ 2020 Emeka Esogbue
Read also 24 Igbuzo that Amazed Pen Master in 2020 - Part 1
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