UNITED IN GRIEF, FEAR AND A COMMON FATE
“I wrote this few days after nearly three hundred students were kidnapped from Government Secondary School, Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria by Boko Haram insurgents. The world stood in solidarity with Nigeria as the Bring Back Our Girls campaign went viral. Sadly, the girls have not been rescued and bombings are still rampant in Northern Nigeria. The events of the past few days- the Paris attacks (and the unfortunate bickering between sympathizers and those who say Nigerians pay more attention to crises in the world more than they do locally) as well as yet another bombing in Yobe State reminds us again that as long as we live on this planet, we share a common destiny. Terrorism threatens us all, regardless of race, colour and creed.”
We’re all here for particular reason on a particular path. You don’t need a curriculum to know you’re path of the math- J. Ivy, Never Let Me Down
My maternal grandfather, Alhaji S.A. Soaga, did not survive the civil war. No he wasn’t a soldier for either side and he died twenty years after the war. But the war killed him. I’ll tell you what happened
Like many young men of his days, he left his native Abeokuta shortly after WWII to the farthest part of the North he could reach. He settled down in Nguru, present day Yobe State and started a family. His assimilation into the Hausa culture was swift and thorough. Till this day I have uncles who are only Yoruba by ethnicity; they’re practically Northerners. However, as the politics of post-independence Nigeria degenerated into a bloody three year civil war, my grandfather sent his daughters- among them my own mother- back down south. He remained there with his sons. He had a bunch of Ibo tenants in his house and all of them got along. As the war raged on, it made a stop in sleepy Nguru. For days the pogrom went on as federal forces systemically found and killed ‘Biafrans’. My grandfather was said to have hidden an Ibo couple in the well, hoping that they deadly forces would pass over his house. They didn’t. The soldiers found the unlucky family and slaughtered them as they held my grandfather and made him watch. His life was never the same afterwards and he suffered decades of nightmare and post-traumatic depression till his eventual demise.
My first inclination towards the fact that Nigeria is united only in name was in 1993 after the elections were annulled. My best friend, Nnamdi and his family were moved to their hometown in Imo State till the riots were over. His dad witnessed the civil war first hand and relocated his family for their safety. This is 2014 and mutual ethnic suspicion is still rife, sadly.
In these days where other nations are setting up structures that would last the generations coming after them, we are stuck with the hydra headed monster of ethnicity, tribalism and religion. Less than five years ago, it was a common saying that ‘Nigerians love themselves too much; they’re never going to try suicide bombing’. Devastatingly, that is not so anymore. Folks who have once lived together in relative peace and harmony now turn on one another to kill, maim and destroy.
We have waited by idly and seen our legacy as a one united, indivisible entity become a sad relic of the past. We have sat on our hands and watched the country go up in flames. Every other day brings with it valid fears of another bomb going off or a town being attacked by ‘unknown gun men’.
As the nation tethers dangerously on the brink of extinction, we have the important duty of rising above the fray without castigating fellow victims. Either we agree or not, we all are united by these horrors. We all must make concerted efforts to stop the destruction. And it starts with us all standing up for that which is right and just.
#BringBackOurGirls #HealTheWorld
