That was the title of his father, Francis Awotongha Ololo, the old headmaster who walked with the swagger of a Michelin Man reaching out for an embrace, the air around him redolent with his avuncular laughter. The son, Otonye Francis Ololo, doesn’t have the same laughter, but he has his own unique way of generating happiness.
From his days as a boy, Otonye was known for his habitual whistling. Every morning, he woke up the neighbourhood with his whistling without meaning to do so. Not that he was holding a referee’s whistle between his lips, but what he did when those lips closed into a tight circle of muscles, the air from that pout hot with notes and bars, what he did was melodious to the ear.
He could complete a musical ensemble simply by whistling. Everyone in the kingdom had come to know him for that. He whistled when he took his bath. He whistled when he strolled casually through town, his arms behind his back, stopping now and then to take greetings. He whistled when he was at work, laying one brick upon the other, like the typical mason that he was.
Otonye knew that a revolution was already happening in the building industry before many of his friends could take note. He noticed that thatch houses were giving way to zinc houses, and then to block houses, so he quickly acquainted himself with what he believed would become a prosperous engagement in time to come. He became friendly with sand and cement.
He bought himself one head pan, a shovel and a wheelbarrow. With a trowel in hand, he whistled freely, and plastered cement into crevices created by blocks he had moulded until he constructed whole houses. His foresight was unmistakable. Before long, his services were in hot demand. More people pulled down their thatch huts and zinc homes, and opted for block houses, no matter how portable. Otonye was always there to build it.
As he put it: ‘I have built houses in Fantuo, Egwema, Akassa, Odioma, Twon, Okpoama, Liama, and Nembe, on both sides of the river. I gave myself a pension from the work of a bricklayer in 1980. I still pay myself a pensioner’s wages. I’ve got twenty-nine rooms in my compound on rent at the moment. I survive from the proceeds’.
The man, Otonye Ololo, was only being modest. In fact, he had his hand in another pie from which he survived. He was a major dealer in Coca-Cola. He knew all the distribution outlets, and he counted as a principal distributor for the Nigerian Bottling Company. He could dispose of 500 crates of bottles in one day.
The connection cannot be missed. Otonye’s family name is Ololo, which is the Nembe word for bottle. It was as if Otonye’s father, the old headmaster, had seen into the future of his first son, his boy standing in front of a huge pile of crated bottles in the pages of a newspaper. He had called himself “The Unbreakable Bottle”, and bottles in a newspaper cannot be broken. The old man would have laughed to his heart’s content if he were alive to witness the ironic vision come true.
Born on Tuesday 15 February 1944, at Twon-Brass to a pretty lass named Felicia Daniel Ockiya, and Francis Awotongha Ololo, the youthful Otonye enrolled at St Michael’s School, Fantuo in 1952, but could only endure two classes, Standard One and Two. He left in 1954 for St Luke’s School, Nembe.
But the boy did not quite like the idea of sitting in a classroom and watching someone standing up there before a blackboard with chalk and duster. At that time, he remembered there was a young teacher who kept persuading him to take school seriously, but Otonye felt he could use his time better. He felt his destiny was defined for him elsewhere.
In 1960, he proceeded to Oloibiri, and between 1962 and 1967, took up apprenticeship in Nembe as a bricklayer with his master, Abel Amaseimo. He soon returned to Fantuo to learn the finer points of trading with his aunt, Ekimiebi Okolo, fondly called Sisi. He proved himself to be a loyal apprentice, understudying his aunt for all of seventeen years before he left to be his own man. He was quick to recall those days with fondness and acknowledged his indebtedness to Sisi without disguise.
He said of his aunt: ‘She was a restless worker with hands in every business of the day. She was into fishing and she was an all-round trader. She sold everything from garri to gin to APC (All Progressives Congress), the tablet for headache in those days. She taught me everything I know about buying and selling’.
Otonye’s most remarkable trading adventure is worth recounting. On Saturday, 15 January 1966, he left Nembe for Port Harcourt, a tedious journey through stormy rivers and calm creeks, and arrived safely. History records that the events leading up to the Nigeria-Biafra civil war broke out that day.
Yet, Otonye Ololo boarded the next available lorry to Onitsha, lugging his commercial bags of crayfish, looking for a female customer whose name he couldn’t quite remember. She had deserted her shop in the early panic of those days, and no neighbour could tell of her whereabouts.
Otonye was stranded in Onitsha, and the rattle of gun fire was already resonant in the distance. He didn’t have the fare back to Port Harcourt because he had no cash from the crayfish he couldn’t sell, so he took a taxi to 75 Market Road, Onitsha, where his first cousin, Serilla Aye Ilagha, a young seamstress and daughter of the woman who taught him to be a trader, dwelt with her school teacher husband. The young couple gladly gave shelter to the weary traveller. Joseph Aye Ilagha, the husband, was the same man who had encouraged Otonye Ololo to hold on to his chalk and slate in younger days.
In 1970, at the end of the civil war, Otonye decided to settle at Brass, his mother’s hometown. Two years later, he was formally recognised as an elder of Shidi Wari, and twenty years later, he emerged as the substantive head of the war-canoe house, taking on the title of Chief Dimain. In 2011, Chief Otonye Ololo-Dimain was formally chalked into office as His Highness, king of Shidi Town in Twon-Brass.
But this king would not be drawn back by royal robes and heavy beads. Like David casting aside the armour of Saul, Otonye Ololo put his titles aside when he got down to business. He said: ‘I live by trading. I live by what my aunt taught me. I trade in bottled drinks. When I left bricklaying, I went into marine transportation’.
Otonye Ololo-Dimain recalled how it all started in 1982 when His Royal Majesty Alfred Papapreye Diete-Spiff, Seriyai II, Amanyanabo of Twon-Brass, donated two 75-horsepower engines to encourage the new transport venture. The grateful beneficiary of that royal gesture promptly fitted the engines onto a wooden boat that came to be known as MV Ololo, traversing the wide waters of the Brass River, from Twon through Akassa, Okpoama and Nembe, all the way to Port Harcourt and back. Guess why King Diete-Spiff made that remarkable overture? Ololo told his story tersely.
‘I was chalked on behalf of Diete-Spiff. Shidi Wari presented Spiff as king. He wasn’t around so I received the honour on his behalf. When he returned, I handed the staff of office over to him. In other words, I was regent of Twon-Brass in the intervening period. So he always gave me that regard, and that’s why he supported my boat transport venture’, he said.
The regent of Twon-Brass who dutifully handed over to King Alfred Diete-Spiff, first Military Administrator of River State, long before Bayelsa was born,, the good salesman from Fantuo, the famous brick layer with a natural whistle between his lips, the man who posed in front of his pile of crate bottles for a photograph, a smile upon his friendly face, he passed on to eternity recently. Amid a great revival of his memory and legacy, his remains will be laid to rest on Saturday 15 November 2025, at his mother’s home, Twon-Brass, the city by the Atlantic shores along the Niger Delta coastline.
