A dance In blood

It won’t be long before we all will be saying the things we have always known we would come to say if things continued the way they have up to this point. For the first time in the history of this country there are two separatist groups, officially declared terrorists  by the state operating in the North East and South East of our beloved nation. It is quite literally a matter of things falling apart and the centre being unable to hold. The poor handling of the Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB situation has presented us with a bit of a quagmire in the now troubled south eastern region of the country. We, the vastly silent majority who just want to live peacefully, are all cried out! We are yet again at the precipice. It’s the usual pre election year dance and everyone is playing dress up. Some are in the dated costumes of reverence and some are dressed as pythons. We dance along with pythons and men in Isi Agu, singing the monkey’s song and all the while fated to bear the burnt of a fire we did not start.  

So the Indigenous people of Biafra have been declared a terrorist organization by the Nigerian Military. It is a very dangerous dance when the state potentially declares an arguably small but not insignificant portion of it’s population as terrorists and enemies of the state. It effectively sets us on a path towards a full blown insurgency like the one we have in the North east which has now evolved to a Humanitarian crisis, in a part of the country where the majority of people understandably feel neglected by the National Government and are simply in yearning for an outlet, any outlet, to voice their discontent. It is no matter that they are poorly informed as to the role of the State Government, its responsibilities and obligations to it’s people under a federal system of government.

  With due respect to our service men and women, deploying troops to stage a police action in a state or two  is not exactly the most effective approach to deflating the rising tensions in those places where poor governance is rife and the people are not necessarily crying wolf. There is a real feeling of neglect in most of these affected areas. A military presence in those places is very heavy handed in my opinion. Also, I think it makes for very blurred lines from a democratic and humanitarian point of view, if the government can just as well deploy the use of our armed forces to silence any discontent they do not deem fit to entertain within our borders? It does not make for much of a comfortable atmosphere when you have armed uniformed men on the streets, whose instructions are to distinguish between “terrorist” and civilian in a place where many of the so called terrorists are unemployed, disgruntled young and able bodied citizens. Sound familiar? The popularity of the IPOB movement among some people in the south and the sentimental undertone to it has been echoed by the deafening neglect and nonchalance of both the Federal and state governments in the affected areas so involving the military is tantamount to declaring war on a large chunk of the population of an entire region of the country, many of whom support the agitations themselves but for reasons far from separatism. And engaging them in this way only serves to buttress their cause. This is especially so since there is already very heavy tensions between the North who control the military and the government, and on the other part, the predominantly Igbo South East who mostly feel marginalized under the Northern controlled federal government. It does not take a history professor to say that with a situation like this, we are tethering on the brink of yet another civil war and it will be for the same reasons as the last time - inter ethnic hatred, fuelled by greed on the part of the promoters and an abject lack of understanding for one another by the majority of the population on both sides of the divide.

I was born in Aba and I lived there until I was about 7 or 8 years old. In that time the sharia Riots broke out in the late 90’s. There had been killings in Kaduna and a lot of Igbo families, including my uncle and his family had returned to the east to escape the violence breaking out up North. It was the first time I got a clear sense of what it meant to be Igbo and Nigerian. My family was driving back to Aba from our village in Imo state where I come from. This meant that we had to ply a federal highway. I remember the chill I felt as our vehicle slowed down behind other cars to be screened by reprisal rioters. If you were Igbo you were allowed through but if you were Northern, you were hoisted from your vehicle and beaten on the side of the road, you and your children too, if you had any. There were personal belongings of people littered on the street and as we drove into Aba city things looked uglier. There were noticeably abandoned livelihoods belonging to folks of Northern extraction being looted and the owners being assaulted and embarrassed for crimes that were committed by their so called brothers and sisters in the North. That was the first time I saw a corpse. It was lying by the roadside, swollen and charred from a hasty burn that probably did less to kill him than the severe beating he must have sustained before an excited youth lit a match. We were at yet another check point, manned by rioters and as my dad wound hi glass down, the young man with way too many accessories around his neck asked something in Igbo. He seemed satisfied with my Dad’s response accompanied of course by a few 100 Naira notes, and immediately he waved us through. That was the first time I was able to appreciate the power of language in a place as volatile as Nigeria. Of course I had never had any interactions with the north beyond buying stuff from Sani’s shop where a number of “Hausas”, mostly security guards converged in-between their shifts. At that time any house that was not guarded by an Hausa man with bow and arrow was not guarded at all because any one of them you employ would probably move in with like 3 brothers who were just as prolific with the bow and arrow. And if you did not have them guarding your home, The Neighbourhood  boys will not hesitate to invade your home at night and cart away with your property or just perpetrate evil in general and of course there were the armed robbers to worry about. But in the wake of a hate campaign, Sani’s shop had been sacked and looted by the same people who would come to his shop and collect soap, sugar or bread or eggs on credit. Sani of course would always oblige anyone who lived anywhere near his shop. Such was the level of trust he had come to have for this environment he called home while still maintaining his identity and not being in conflict with his hosts whom he traded and served with.  

It took me a while to process that experience and what it truly means because as I had never been to the north, my idea of the typical Hausa was based on Sani and his seemingly unending band of brothers. So that was it for me as far as a Hausa man was concerned. It was bow and arrow, cattle rearing and kaftans. I never did see a single Hausa woman so there was literally nothing to think. Also I did not know that there were other ethnicities sharing this so called North with the Hausa. The extent of the misconception and lack of information is so bad that the Igbo term for Northern Nigeria, “ugwu Hausa” literally translates to mean “Hausa Hill”.  Now living in Abuja, further north from Aba, I have come to think of it and Sani might not have been Hausa at all. 

We have been taught to hate ourselves for being of a particular extraction or another, all the while forgetting that it is not being Hausa or Igbo or any other tribe that is the problem because each of those people on their own without having to encounter each other are perfectly understandable in their ways. It is  about being something more first. It’s about being a human being. It is in the moment you are able to realize that you are first a human and that is the highest qualification a person could need to earn my respect and the freedom to interact with me. If you can accept this truth, you will be able to live in harmony if you and all your neighbours woke up every morning speaking  different languages.  It is simply about understanding each one’s needs, how they relate with yours, your common grounds and where you draw the line. We have all committed at least by virtue of time, to live in this contraption called Nigeria. It is the largest congregation of black people anywhere. This I think is something to hold on to. It is not just about economic potential, which if we can find even more ways than the obvious to harness, we can attain heights thought unimaginable. But besides that is cultural richness and power that we posses potentially. We ought to be the number one get away destination for anyone wishing to experience a bundle of indigenous Africa.  We ought to milk this position never-ending that we came together against our will. We are here now and like in an arranged marriage must find common ground and build our love and unity on that. To tear us apart at this stage is sure to weaken whatever is left of us in the from of smaller, war torn states. 

I think there is a critical need for those of us who want peace to make our voices heard. These war mongers in costumes will be the last set of people to suffer when the result of their actions finally materialize. We will be the ones on the frontline, and on the sideline getting killed for their ambition while they will do what they have always done, Talk.