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Some Provinces seemed to give rise to more unusual odd jobs than
others; llorin Province was one such. I was sent to llorin from the
Kaduna Secretariat where in the NA Section I had been dealing amongst
other things with the problems of the Oke Odde area of llorin Emirate.
Agitation against llorin Emirate was being fomented by politicians from the
Western Region of Nigeria and I was on special duties studying the
possibility of some local government reform but within the existing set-up of
llorin NA. I was living in the rest house at Oke Odde and visiting llorin at
intervals to report to the District Officer, llorin Division. One morning I drove
the 50 miles to llorin to see the District Officer and found there was a state
of crisis. The DO told me that a rogue elephant was causing pandemonium
in the town and station and had already killed two people in farmland near
the town. The DO said that the Resident was 'inviting' me as the only
person who had a sporting rifle in the Province to rid llorin of the rogue
elephant. This was a flattering request but I had never hunted elephant and
my rifle was only a Jeffries .333 Magnum, not really an elephant gun, though
adequate for bushcow. Perhaps I had said something in an unguarded
moment in the Club about wanting to shoot an elephant but I could hardly
refuse under the circumstances. First I had to get my rifle which was at Oke
Odde and I did not get back to llorin until early afternoon.
I was then brought up to date on what the elephant had been doing. It
seemed to have been terrorising people on the edge of the town since the
day before and apart from the two men killed, others had escaped in a
terrified state. It sounded as if it was wounded and had come into llorin from
further west in Oyo Province. It was still somewhere in the broken farmland
bordering the town and a local African hunter had been found who was said
to know where it was and would lead me to it. This was not going to be
easy because it was towards the end of the wet season and the grass was
at its tallest while maize and guinea corn were up to 10 feet high. Another
ADO, Mike Campbell, had volunteered to join me in the hunt and back me
up though only armed with a Police .303 rifle. This was a brave but much
appreciated decision as a .303 bullet was much too light to be effective on
an elephant. Other reports said that two Agricultural Development Officers
had borrowed Police rifles the previous evening and gone after the elephant
on the Agricultural Department farm. It had been a valiant but foolhardy
attempt which nearly ended in disaster as the elephant had charged them
out of the grass, knocked one of them down, stamped on his rifle and proceeded to kick him around like a ball until he managed to scramble into
shelter. The latest report was more light-hearted and concerned the wife of
the Puisne Judge who was on circuit sitting in llorin. It was said that the
Judge's wife, sleeping late, had been woken up at the house where the
Judge was staying by the trumpeting of the elephant in the garden. It had
then tried to break into the house. She knew her husband was already
sitting in court but insisted on speaking to him on the telephone to say she
was scared stiff and what was he going to do about the elephant? The
Judge, annoyed at being disturbed in the middle of a difficult case, did not
believe his wife and thought it was a practical joke and even, the story goes,
suggested she might have drunk too much pink gin the previous evening!
Later in the morning the rogue elephant had gone on to the house of the
District Officer and tried to break into the kitchen to the consternation of his
cook.
Mike Campbell and I set off with the African hunter to search the area near
llorin town where the elephant was last reported as being seen. Eventually
we found its tracks and much trampled corn in the farmland between the
station and the town. The trail was easy to follow but it was impossible to
see anything with the height of the grass and the corn. All during a long hot
afternoon we followed the trail which seemed to meander in and out of
farmland. Suddenly we came out onto a farm path where the elephant had
surprised and crushed a local farmer or another hunter. It was impossible to
tell what had happened except that the unfortunate man was quite dead.
Our hunter was unable to say how long before the elephant had passed but
clearly it was not more than an hour or so. I did not have much confidence
in our hunter and he seemed very excitable compared with hunters I had
been out with before. We continued to follow the trail until late evening,
stopping occasionally to listen for any noise from the elephant. Suddenly
the hunter seemed to get even more excited, jabbering away that we were
now very close to the elephant though we could hear nothing and with the
grass and corn way above our heads, could see nothing. The obvious thing
was to climb one of the few trees and look over the top of the concealing
corn. I climbed slowly up a stunted tree and then suddenly just as I had a
chance to look around there began a most ominous buzzing sound and
bees appeared swarming about me. I dropped to the ground as quickly as I
could and ran and the others ran too, all sustaining some stings but
escaping the worst of the swarming bees. There was not a sign or sound of
the elephant and dusk was coming down and so somewhat discomfited we
had to abandon the hunt.
The next morning there was no news of the rogue elephant and it seemed to
have disappeared from llorin in the night. It was to be another two years
before I saw my first elephant in Africa and that was to be further north in Borgu Division. We heard later that our rogue elephant had retreated west
into Oyo Province where some days later a band of local hunters with their
Dane guns had killed it. It was confirmed that it had a large festering wound
in the shoulder which accounted for its aggressive behaviour.
The sequel to this incident came some weeks later when the Resident
appointed me to conduct a Board of Survey on a Police rifle, the barrel of
which had been badly bent. Nobody would admit it had anything to do with
the llorin elephant and I was able to establish that the rifle had fallen out of
the Police truck one day on the road when a tyre burst and a "mammy
wagon" following behind ran over it causing the damage.
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