By Stanley Nwanosike
Enugu, Nov. 18, 2019
The Center for Memories says it will produce a documentary film on the 1949 Iva Valley Enugu coal mine massacre to immortalise the victims.
A historian at the centre, Mrs Rina Okonkwo, said this on Monday during the wreath-laying ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre at the New Market Roundabout, Enugu.
Okonkwo said that the documentary would avail the younger generation the opportunity to learn about the past “in sight and sound.”
She said that the documentary would help to capture the remaining form of the environment where the coal miners’ worked as well as interviews of the aged survivors of the attack.
Okonkwo said that the centre would also strive to produce the story and pictorial of the incident in a modern history book as “the Federal Government is restoring back history to school curriculum’’.
He said: “We are pushing ahead with the documentary project, however, we have funding challenge since the centre is not a profit-making institution.
“However, we are still looking ahead and optimistic that the project will be out probably before the next anniversary of the massacre,’’ the historian said.
Okonkwo said that the documentary had become expedient because “Nigerians easily forget, while most historical events and relics are fading away from our memories and sight’’.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that on Nov. 18, 1949, no fewer than 21 coal miners were brutally massacred, while 50 others were injured by the British colonialists for daring to protest against racism as well as their poor working and living conditions.
