Ioryina
Ioryina was born on March 11, 2016, in Katsina-Ala in Benue State, under Nigeria’s federal government. He grew up in a Tiv-speaking compound where his parents kept to Tiv ritual ways more than church life, even though the children spoke English and Pidgin at school and in town.
His father, Aondohemba, traded on market days, moving yams, rice, and small household goods between villages and larger stalls. His mother, Mker, kept a small spread of items and still farmed, planting and weeding around the seasons. His paternal grandmother Orkuma lived in the next compound and came most days to help watch children or stir pots while Mker went to market. The household stayed full. Two older sisters, Mlumun and Doosuur, were already old enough to carry water and watch toddlers when Ioryina was born. After him came eight more: four girls and four boys, arriving almost every year until the youngest, Tyoakaa, in 2024.
Ioryina started primary school in 2022, the same year Nigeria’s naira started falling hard. Prices at the market rose every few weeks. His father came home counting smaller stacks of bills for the same goods, muttering about petrol and transport. At home, Ioryina turned mornings into a set of rules. Before dawn he swept the yard corners until the dirt lines looked straight, then packed his books the same way each day. If a younger sibling, Teryima or Shior, spilled water or tracked mud, he snapped instructions and made them wipe it again. Doosuur told him to stop being so serious. He ignored her.
At school Mr. Ikyur put him in front to collect exercise books because he counted twice and never pocketed change from errands. A boy named Sati from another compound teased him for it: Ioryina always followed the rules even when no one watched, even when the other boys cut corners. When Sati tried to bend the rules during a ball game, Ioryina argued until Sati backed down. He was not well-liked for it, but he was trusted. He copied words carefully, reading better than he wrote; spelling took him three tries, and he stayed after class to practice while others ran home.
One evening in August 2023, after Aondohemba returned from a good market day, the family discovered his phone and trading money missing from the room where he kept it. Someone who knew the household routines had slipped in during the afternoon. Mama Aker, an older trader who knew the family, warned Mker at the market the next week: stop leaving money where visitors could see it. For weeks afterward the house felt tense. Aondohemba began locking the inner room and storing cash inside a tin placed under grain sacks. Ioryina was given the job of watching the compound gate when the adults went to market.
In June 2024, Mr. Ikyur called Ioryina’s name at the end-of-term assembly. He had placed near the top of his class. He walked up to receive a certificate and a bar of soap. His mother stood at the back with Nguwase on her hip. The next term he did it again. Mr. Ikyur told the assembly that Ioryina was the steadiest boy in the school, never late, never without his books.
By late 2025 he is ten, still in Katsina-Ala, reading short passages in English, writing slowly in cramped lines. At home he watches his younger siblings with the same strictness he brings to homework. Terna tracks dirt across the floor; Ioryina makes him sweep it. Prices keep climbing, but his father still trades, his mother still farms and sells, and the compound still smells of cassava drying and kerosene smoke.