By: Chioma Madonna Ndukwu
Chief Nala Sold the Village Bell
In Kitala Village, the old iron bell hanging from the giant tamarind tree had a voice everyone knew. It called farmers home when darkness gathered over the fields.
It summoned women to village meetings, announced the arrival of strangers and, on the rare occasions when danger entered the valley, its deep ringing sent people running towards the square before fear had time to choose a direction.
Nobody knew who had made the bell. The oldest men only said it had belonged to the village longer than any living person.
“Some things,” Elder Mosi used to say, “are not inherited because we own them. They are inherited because we are trusted to protect them.”
That understanding changed after Chief Nala took the stool.
He was a handsome man with a loud voice and an expensive taste for imported cloth. At first, the villagers admired him because he spoke confidently and promised to make Kitala prosperous.
“We shall have a larger market,” he announced. “Better roads. A new meeting house. No family will remain behind.”
People clapped. But promises are easy to carry when they weigh nothing.
Within two years, the village treasury was almost empty. The new market remained a patch of red earth. The road was still a dusty path, and the meeting house had only three walls.
Whenever elders asked questions, Chief Nala became irritated.
“You people are always looking backwards,” he complained. “Development requires sacrifice.”
Nobody knew exactly what he had sacrificed.
Then one morning, the village bell disappeared. People searched the square, the chief’s compound and the old storehouse. Nothing.
At the next village meeting, Chief Nala arrived wearing a new robe.
An elder stood.
“Chief, where is our bell?”
Nala looked around casually.
“I sold it.”
A murmur passed through the crowd.
“You sold the village bell?”
“Yes. It was old and useless. The money was needed for government business.”
Elder Mosi stared at him.
“That bell has warned this village of fire, flood and strangers.”
Chief Nala shrugged.
“Times have changed.”
The old man leaned on his walking stick.
“Then remember this: a man who sells the ladder because he has reached the roof may discover too late that he still needs it to come down.”
Chief Nala laughed.
“Old men and their sayings.”
The villagers went home uneasy, but nobody challenged him further. A few weeks later, the rainy season came with unusual force.
Day after day, the sky remained dark. The river beyond the cassava fields rose steadily, swallowing its banks and creeping towards the lower part of Kitala.
One evening, while most families were eating supper, a crack appeared in the river embankment. Water rushed through.
A young farmer saw it first and ran towards the village square. He reached for the bell, but his hand touched only empty air.
He began shouting.
“Water! The river is breaking!”
But rain swallowed his voice.
He ran from compound to compound, knocking at doors. Some people heard him. Others did not. Several families remained asleep as the water entered the lower homes.
By dawn, huts had been damaged, farms had been washed away and many goats had disappeared into the flood.
Nobody died, but Kitala woke to a village that no longer looked quite like itself.
Chief Nala stood in the muddy square staring at the water.
Elder Mosi approached him.
“Where is the bell now?”
The chief said nothing.
“The bell you called useless would have been ringing before the water reached the first compound.”
Nala lowered his head.
“I thought I was making the village better.”
The elder looked at him sadly.
“A leader who sells the village’s voice eventually discovers that silence has a price.”
The next morning, Chief Nala gathered the people.
“I failed you,” he said.
No speech followed.
No excuse.
For the first time since taking the stool, he stood before his people without trying to sound important.
“I treated what belonged to everyone as though it belonged to me.”
The villagers remained quiet.
Then one young woman stepped forward.
“What will you do now?”
Nala looked towards the flooded fields.
“I will begin by replacing what I sold.”
He sold the expensive car he had bought during his first year as chief. He returned the money he could recover and used the rest of his personal savings to commission a new bell.
But the people insisted on something else.
“The bell must not belong to the chief,” Elder Mosi said. “It must belong to Kitala.”
And so they rebuilt the bell stand together.
When the new bell arrived, the chief was asked to ring it. He pulled the rope once.
The sound rolled across the village, deep and steady, travelling beyond the farms and into the hills.
People stopped what they were doing. Children came running. For a moment, Kitala listened to itself.
Years later, whenever a new chief took the stool, the elders would point towards the bell and tell the young people the same story.
They would say, “A village can survive a poor harvest. It can survive a bad season. What it must never surrender is the trust that holds its people together.”
And the bell continued to ring, reminding every generation that leadership is not the ownership of power; it is the responsibility to protect what belongs to everyone.
Moral:
Public trust is a sacred responsibility. A leader who treats communal property as personal wealth may gain something for a season, but the community will eventually pay the price.
Comment Hook:
What belongs to everyone must never be placed in the hands of one person simply because that person has been given authority.
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