Mr. Victor Haffner, an engineer, 95, was the Managing Director of the Nigerian External Telecommunications and one time President of the Administrative Council of International Telecommunications Union. In this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE, he shares his experience as a career engineer in the early 60s and 70s and during the Nigerian Civil War
How did your family come about the German name Haffner?
If you go back in history and read the books, they will show you the position of Ogun State relative to the old Dahomey in Benin (now Benin Republic). I got to appreciate this when I had to install the first satellite station for Nigeria. I installed two satellite stations which we used for communications in Ibarapa. I found out that my roots were from Abeokuta, Ogun State, my mother was from Ibadan area. If you get to Meko, after Idere, coming through Abeokuta, it was the common boundary between Ogun State and Benin Republic which used to be Dahomey. If you walked across, you were in Benin Republic, about three or four miles. During the time of the slave trade, the people from Dahomey made a lot of money. The slave trade was such that when the people who wanted to buy slaves got to Dahomey, they came with big bags of tobacco and drinks, which they used to exchange for slaves. They would take men and women to their place and then adopt them. Some became their wives, and sometimes you found that some women who were really tough, would pretend to be their wives, kill them and find their way back. At the end of the slave trade, majority of people from Itoku (until you almost got to Iberekodo), had English names, German names and all sorts. Those were the names they inherited after the slave trade. My ancestors were in Sierra Leone, and I belong to the Kisi tribe- a very forward group of people near the coast. That was before my grandparents moved here. Even in Ghana, you will also find some Haffners there. Haffner is a German name. There is a Haffner symphony by Mozart, a famous German composer. People also ask me that, but what’s in a name? Yes, some people change their names. There was no need to change mine.
How does it feel to be 95 years old?
You are the second person to ask me that question. It depends first on your breed, your lifestyle, the way you lived when you were young, and the training you had. I was a little boy in Lagos. As I sit today, I’m thinking of what I’m supposed to do tomorrow and I write them down. I don’t live a life such that I wake up and say what am I going to do today, I already know what I’m going to do tomorrow. I may not be able to finish everything. That is the only way to know you are living, otherwise, you are dead. It makes you blind and it dulls the brain.
Health is a very important word. If you try and do everything in moderation, you will be all right but it doesn’t mean that you will escape because you could have accidents. I’ve had a lot of accidents in my life and I’m very lucky to still be alive.
What happened to you?
If I tell people some of the medical treatments I’ve had, nobody would believe me. I’ve been in the theatre under full anaesthesia nine times. The first accident happened just before I returned to Nigeria. The colonial office had asked me to go for a check-up. Then I had an injection which caused a lot of damage and that was the beginning of my problem. I was all right until I came to Lagos and realised it. So I had to go back to London and I was in the theatre about six times. It was the first time I had the experience of going under anaesthesia, and they almost cut me into pieces to keep me alive. That was the first operation I ever had. The second operation I had was during the time I was on study leave abroad after I had returned to Nigeria and was working with the Post and Telegraph. We were going on an inspection on a fateful Friday afternoon in Exeter, Devon, England where I had my post graduate training. It would have been my last day on earth but I was saved. The senior executive engineer was driving the car, I was on the left (beside him). We had to cross a road. It was a hilly place with no traffic lights and I looked on the right and saw a car coming at a high speed. I said the best thing was just to keep quiet and wait for it. I knew it was coming, and the next we heard was ‘bang.’ Our car was hit on the driver’s side. All the doors on the car were jammed except my door. The engineer collapsed with his collar bone broken. I thought I was all right and since my door was open, I got out of the car and dragged the man out. It is not like Lagos; onlookers had already phoned 999. Before I got to the kiosk to inform the office about the accident, the police and the fire brigade were already there. That was the first time I understood what is meant by having a shock after an accident. By the time I got back, they put me in an ambulance. The fire brigade had put the fire out and the police officers asked me which direction we were coming from. I had been there for one year and had walked round but I went blank. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ they said, ‘go and have a check at the Royal Exeter Devon Hospital to know if you’re all right or not.’ I was stubborn because I had the intention of going to London that weekend to see my wife, so I went straight to the railway station. I was expecting my first son. I appeared to be all right. Then after the weekend, I came back to Exeter and I noticed that my neck was stiff. I couldn’t turn it right or left. Still stubborn, I did not go to the hospital. After one month, it eased. I thought I had escaped but did not realise that I was not out of danger. I got back to Lagos and nearly 10 years after that accident, one day, I was in church and tried to kneel down but couldn’t. My knees were all swollen. So I went to the orthopaedic hospital and was given some medicine. Then my birthday came and I danced and it started again. I went to the hospital again. The medical director did the x-ray and said there was no fracture. He asked me to go straight home to bed but I did not know he had deadened my knees, so I went to the Metropolitan Club instead. After lunch, I found that I couldn’t get up. The doctor later said he had deadened my legs so that I would not be able to move for three days, but I had already moved. So I got over that. But that was not the end, apparently, there had been additional damage which I didn’t notice until I started feeling pain in my head and I thought that my time was up. So I went back to my doctor. An X-ray later showed that some cartilages were damaged on my knees. The vertebra was damaged on impact after the motor accident. My spinal cord had shifted and so I felt pain everywhere but they couldn’t operate it. They gave me retraction equipment. I used it in my bathroom, fixed it to the neck and it pulled and put the thing in place. Then the worst accident I had was when armed robbers came here when I was 78. I was too bold because they entered the house. My wife and my niece were upstairs and my nephew sat here when they came in. I came home just at past 7pm. That was when armed robbery incidents were rampant in Lagos and they would say you shouldn’t look at them. I got up and bluffed them and said look, if there is anything you want in this house, you can take it and get out. My wife didn’t know that I was back. As I climbed the stairs halfway, I spoke in Yoruba ‘won ti de o.’ They had ransacked the wardrobes, my niece was standing and my wife was stunned. So I turned back and put my back on the door. Then the next thing I heard was a click. The one following me released the catch on the gun. But he didn’t realise my strength. He thought I was an old man, so before he knew what was happening, I had removed the gun from his hands. I held onto it and he could not take it from me. One of them came from the bedroom and they could not take it from me. Then the gun went off. When I found out that I was all right and got up, the robber took the gun, turned it round and used the butt to hit me in the eye. If he had hit me in the forehead, I could have been a vegetable. He hit me on this side and the eye came out; the cornea and everything with the nerves, the veins and the arteries. I could see my left eye with my right eye. The gun had hit one of them and then they ran away. I was taken to the hospital.
I had about 13 stitches here. There was blood all over the place.
At 78, you were so daring. What were you thinking?
I don’t know, maybe he was threatening by releasing the catch or I thought he was going to shoot, so I said I would take the first chance and take the gun from him and I took the gun from him. He was shocked and couldn’t believe it. It was a big army gun.
What would you say has been responsible for your strength?
I’m an engineer. Sometimes, there would be a fault as high as 100 feet up and we had to climb up and fix it. So I was training myself.
People are warned not to drink or smoke. But you did those things and here you are at 95.
Oh! I was a very heavy smoker. I gave up smoking and drinking anyway around 1989. I just gave it up. It was funny. One day, I just said no. That day, I really got fed up. I was smoking a cigarette and there was another one burning in the ash tray. I told myself that it was enough. Giving it up made a lot of difference; it saved me a lot of money because most times, I had burns on my very expensive suits. Then the cough; first thing in the morning, I must smoke. At night, I would smoke and it became a real nuisance. I just gave it up and I don’t know how I did it. It just happened one day.
Congratulations on the launch of your memoir. At such an advanced age, you still have a remarkable memory of major events in your life. How did you do it?
My memory must have been a gift. I would regard it as a gift that I could still remember a lot of things, mobile numbers, days, events and everything. If you read my book, you would see that I put so many dates there and they are the exact dates in which the events really happened in my life. They are not things that I like to think about but what happened was that government became rough. There were a lot of political rumblings, fighting and everything until it resulted in the first coup of 1966. Then, I was the Managing Director of the Nigerian External Telecommunications.
We know that Harold Wilson who was the Prime Minister of Britain knew there was going to be a coup, the night before, so he asked Tafawa Balewa to follow him to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The British, you can’t trust them. Balewa said he was too busy. The British High Commissioner asked him to come to his house, he did not go. People at the Island Club guest house were hearing noise outside; that was when (Emmanuel) Ifeajuna went into (Festus) Okotie-Eboh’s house and bundled him out. They said he offered them money but they wouldn’t take money. They went to Balewa’s house, his orderly drew out his gun. They said Balewa told him to put his gun away and leave them alone. He asked what they wanted. They said he had to go with them and he said okay. He went in and prayed and then went with them. Meanwhile, Remi Fani-Kayode, had come to my house to tell me about what happened in Ibadan. He said about 7pm that evening, a Land Rover came and asked him to get out. He said before they said come out, he was out. Then they drove to Ladoke Akintola’s house. They said he was well loaded with his gun, came out and started shooting. He knew something was on. There was an exchange of fire. Kayode was lucky that no stray bullet hit him. They gunned the man down and then left and drove to Dodan Barracks, Lagos, at around 5 or 6am with Kayode. It was later that Yakubu Gowon asked them to release him. So I was now in the middle of everything. News started coming into my office. Daily Mirror, Express, Mail, all of them were already in Lagos trying to file messages. When I read them, it became so hard to pass some of them across. It became so bad and they went and reported to (Aguiyi) Ironsi that I was censoring the reports. The journalists said they would lose their jobs, I said I also would lose my job if I passed all these out. I said they couldn’t go out. They saw the dead body of Balewa and Okotie-Eboh near Ota, Ogun State. They knew the bodies were dumped at LUTH. They got all the information and where I was sitting in my office, I knew what the reporters were getting. They were paying money to get information. It is sad but then many other things happened which I did not write in the book. My office became empty because the traffic manager was Igbo, so he took all the papers away. One morning in 1967, I was in my office when a Land Rover came and I was bundled and driven to Dodan Barracks in front of (Yakubu) Gowon. He looked at me and said, ‘you are Haffner.’ I said ‘yes.’ ‘You are in charge of external communications.’ I said ‘yes.’ ‘Do you think that messages can leak out?’ I said ‘yes sir.’ He said ‘can you stop it?’ I said ‘I can stop it.’ Then he said, ‘how will you do it?’ and I said, ‘I’m sorry sir, I can’t tell you, that is my secret.’ The soldiers thought I must be very bold to tell him that. He said ‘okay, how long will it take you?’ I said ‘give me seven days.’ The whole leakage was happening under my nose. What happened was this, you see Aminu Kano was in charge of procurement and buying all the weapons. General Ogundipe was the High Commissioner and Simeon Adebo was in the US as a permanent representative. They were communicating on what to do, everything they wanted and coordinating the civil war. Anytime the call came through, the supervisor who was Igbo would put an Igbo operator on that particular channel and get all the news. They were getting the scoops of all the preparations of the Federal Government. So we blocked it. Those who were supposed to be loyal were actually spies for Odumegwu Ojukwu. Before I travelled, I told my deputy to remove the communication gadget from Gerard Road and take it to Bourdillon, Ikoyi, Lagos in the night, then to Dodan Barracks, disconnect it from our office. Those people who wanted to speak would have to go to Dodan Barracks; that was how we had to do it.
What fond memories do you have of your childhood?
It was good and very quiet. We had no problems; if you left something anywhere, you could come back for it unlike now when somebody will pick it up before you even leave the place. How can a governor say that he is not able to pay N19,000 a month salary? How much is it? The first is to have a new constitution. The 1999 constitution is not fit for this country. Where is the sincerity of purpose in helping people in this country when somebody puts a foot in APC and puts another foot in the PDP?
You attended CMS Grammar School, Lagos, one of the foremost secondary schools in the country. How was the experience?
We were just learning and didn’t find difficulty in learning and doing what we were asked to do. Parents were strict and would make sure their children did what they were asked to do. Now, they have turned everything upside. A parent engages in examination malpractice for his children. There is too much stealing going on now. Look at people who had worked hard for 20 to 30 years and don’t get paid. They have not paid my pension for nearly six years. They want to see whether you are breathing or not and then you find a director who is working in the pension office having 26 houses in Abuja which he built with the pensioners’ money. I don’t know whether there are no good instructions in schools like in the days when we were young, to bring people up to become men. We have to go right back to find out what exactly happened.
You retired at 55, some people will consider that as early.
I just got a notice that I was retired with immediate effect and should go.
In a bid to slow down people from the southern part of the country, the north used so many methods. The north tried their best to slow down the educational progress in the south and failed. They used all sorts of methods. Then in 1975, they did it by force. They thought since the educational qualifications were so unbalanced, they should slow down the progress in the south. They thought they could throw us out and put their people there to do the work. Bamanga Tukur was an executive officer in 1975, which meant that he was higher than a chief clerk, but not a professional. Murtala Mohammed became the Head of State, turned the civil service around like a pack of cards. They transferred somebody who was a technician in my organisation to the army, he became a major and then they made him the managing director. How can he run the place? They threw out highly qualified people with BSc Engineering and everything and put dead woods there. Another trick; they formed a thing in the north called administration. We had to go through primary, secondary and tertiary, but they said that after secondary, they would go through a sort of administration for about two years. Then they injected that person into the federal civil service and he superseded you, somebody you interviewed for employment now becoming your boss. You cannot turn back the hands of the clock; but that was what they tried to do and couldn’t.
How do you relax?
I read and listen to music. I watch television but I don’t watch dancing on television. I watch television to educate myself. I try to educate myself every time. (He brought out a book he was still reading and raised it up). Where do we come from? Where are we going from here? Forget everything about religion, where did it all start? They are still trying hard to see the possibility that there is another place where people are living like us. (Reading from the book) “We each exist for such a short time and in that time explore a small part of the universe. We wonder, we seek answers, living in this vast world… people have asked questions, how can we understand the world in which we find ourselves.” Are we the only ones? I’m sure not.
I know that you love music. Do you still play the piano?
Yes. I was in the choir and I was taught music. In the choir, we were encouraged to write external exams. If you take that kind of exam and you read the theory of music, you don’t need a beginner’s book to learn how to play a musical instrument. You can write music and everything.
How would you like to be remembered?
I will like to be remembered as somebody who came into this earth, was educated and tried to impart knowledge to other people as best as he could. Also as someone who tried to move forward but sometimes, there were certain things which prevented him from doing it.
When most people get to this stage in life, they get closer to God. How religious are you?
I’m very religious. I was in the choir for seven years. I could not serve as a steward in the church because I was working round the clock all over the place. Then we had to get a new organ, I was responsible for the installation. Yes, I get myself very busy.
Your uncle, Henry Carr, willed his library to the University College, Ibadan before his death, who are you willing your music library and books to?
I’ve set up a foundation and I’m going to give something to CMS Grammar School.
You lost your wife after about 50 years of marriage. It must have been very painful, how did you cope with the loss?
Yes, it was painful; nothing I could do about it. It was not easy. Most of the children don’t live here, I live here. We were married for about 51 years. When I was young, my mother taught me how to cook. I’m a good cook. So I was taking care of myself.
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