by In 1986, I was a student of Architecture at the Makeyevka Building and Engineering Institute, Donetsk Region, Ukraine, after leaving the University of Nigeria and the Tashkent Polytechnic, Uzbekistan (at the height of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when Tashkent was the operational HQ) in succession.
The photograph was the Nigerian Student’s Union in Donetsk annual photo shoot in 1987. 70% of the people here had been sent to obtain their degrees in Metallurgy and return to run the Ajaokuta steel complex, producing 5,000,000 tonnes of steel to build railways, industries and develop Nigeria.
Donetsk was a lovely city – home to football team, Shakhter, and Sergei Bubka who broke so many world records in pole vault that Guinness Book of records has a whole page to them. My institute in Makeyevka had the best hostel anywhere in the world. The Government had provided land, concrete, steel, cement, doors and windows, and told the students to design and build their ideal halls of residence, and we ended up with Hotel-style suites with balconies for every student.
How is the story going? Makeyevka is now completely destroyed. Donetsk, 5 minutes away, is being bombed into the ground every day, as Ukraine fights to take it back. Ajaokuta now looks like a deserted and unfortunate monument to what could have been, but now, a misadventure, frozen in time. By the way, about 5 people in this photo returned to Nigeria and went to Ajaokuta, refurbished the power station and started producing rolled steel, before some politically connected people pushed them out. Others have become big-time capitalists, like the advertising guru, Dr Ken Onyeali Ikpe, whose wife has financed over 30 aircraft and has ordered 33 more for Air Peace.
There were even more Nigerian students at the time in nearby Kharkiv, in the same Donbas. Nigerians had graduated and many remained there, started businesses and even built factories, which have now been destroyed – by the daily bombing of the city, as the Russians try to take it from the Ukrainian side. In Kharkiv, Nigerians were studying agriculture, arts and culture, aviation, construction, economics and trade, forestry, law, machine-building, medicine, metallurgy, military science, mining, pedagogy, radio electronics, and shipbuilding.
The Nigerian Students’ Union of the USSR was lively and fostered a sense of fraternity, solidarity and enjoyment. We used to travel thousands of kilometers – round the cities, moving the annual Nigerian Student’s Union national conventions from one city to the next; Kiev, St Petersburg, Minsk, Moscow, Kharkov, Chișinău, Volgograd etc etc…
At that time, the idea of Russians and Ukrainians had not been invented. There were only three tribes: Soviets, foreign students and diplomats.
Life’s strange.
Written by Jerome Okolo a graduate of Architecture from Makeyevka Building and Engineering Institute, Donetsk Region, Ukraine
