I became fully aware of what it
meant to be a Nigerian during my NYSC experience in Lagos in the late 90s. I
was young and foolish. My head swarm with fuzzy ideals. Nothing in particular
seemed to take any real shape. My vision lacked clarity. But I was not alone. I
was one with Nigeria. Fate had played mind games with Naija; MKO Abiola and the
dictator, Sani Abacha had just died in quick succession and Nigeria was in
transition. So were the hopes of hordes of youngsters who had finally graduated
from the universities after losing interminable years to spates of purposeless
strikes by university teachers. Everything seemed suspended, deferred; our
aspirations, our dreams, our laughter.
True; Head of State, General Abdulsami
Abubakar who took charge of government business after Abacha’s death had
promised to hand over. But there was nothing in our collective memory to nudge
us into grasping at that promise with any seriousness. In the prevailing
anxiety and growing confusion, I watched my childhood friends and school mates
flee the country. It seemed the sensible thing to do then. Anyone who had a
reliable friend or relative outside of Nigeria thought seriously about their
chances. A friend of mine, I imagined, aptly captured the mood of the country
then when he referred to Nigeria as the “world’s leading cemetery of dreams.” It
was not so much a question of the fewness of options for the youth as it was a
summation of the bleakness of the national climate of the time.
All along, I had pined for the
freedom of the open air, to test the waters, to see life in its hideous nudity
away from the boisterous laughter of the classrooms. Life at the NYSC
Orientation Camp in Iyana Ipaja, Lagos had been like a tang of fine champagne
on the tongue of a connoisseur. There in the company of dreamers, I had
imagined the world was too narrow a canvass for the immense size of the gifts
we carried. But when I began to pound the forlorn streets of Victoria Island in
the blazing sun, peeping into office windows and dropping application letters, I
also wondered if I my talent wouldn’t find a quicker expression outside Nigeria.
Jobs were a rarity then. But so were other things that made for a contented
citizenry. The wave of migrant Nigerians fleeing the country for economic and
political reasons was at its very peak. Most of them were university teachers,
medical and health workers, human rights activists, writers and other workers
in symbol; society’s very conscience. They all fled in droves.
All across the land, people sang
different dirges for the country. Nigeria seemed split dramatically across the
usual fault lines. There were talks of separation as diverse ethnic militia
carved up the country into separate fiefdoms for themselves with ease. In the
North Arewa People’s Congress spoke their usual language of entitlement and dominance
but in the South, a loud cacophony of war held sway. Egbesu Boys of Africa
brandished potent charms and amulets in the creeks of the Niger Delta. Myth-makers
went to town with stories of how the Egbesu goddess had granted the boys
invisibility before their enemies. In the South East, the rhetoric was as
expected. The marginalization of the last thirty years had got to stop or else,
the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB)
would reenact the return of the “land of the rising sun. MASSOB leader, Chief
Ralph Uwazurike’s pampered beard had begun to grow wild in a manner reminiscent
of the revolutionaries of yore.
In the South West, the Oodua People’s Congress
(OPC) spat fire! The death of Abiola and the cheeky shoving aside of Ernest
Shonekan, the Interim Government leader who had assumed power after the
annulment of June 12 elections had rubbed the Yorubas the wrong way and the
young militiamen that peopled OPC felt a need to assert their manhood. Before
long, their long suppressed angst began to keel over into malevolent
tendencies. Soon enough, Dr. Fredrick Fasehun’s strenuous effort to rein in
exuberances that were out of kilter with his vision for the group led to a
split and out sprung the dreaded Gani Adams’ faction of the OPC that pushed
Lagos dangerously close to the edge.
It wasn’t long before their muted gong of war
began to take on the guttural timber of violence. Soon enough, the vegetable
and fruits market in Mile 12 and Ketu axis where merchants from the North sell
their wares became the touch-point for a rage long deferred. The ensuing clashes
between OPC and some Hausa traders began in that axis and suddenly snow-balled to
Idi Araba, Agege and other parts of Lagos. The climate of fear that reigned
then was such that most Lagos residents soon cultivated the habit of tuning in
to radio stations to get a reading of the “temperature” of the city before
leaving their homes each morning. Violent
clashes roused most mornings and it was so easy to get caught up in the storm.
The prevailing sense of justice or lack thereof was intense. And all around
Nigeria, there was a strong feeling that the ship of state was adrift in a fast
current. Not many people reasoned in terms of nationhood or collective survival
or unity. Happily, it was only for a while. A typical Nigerian while.
Almost as everything Nigerian,
the pull-back from the razor-edge was dramatic. In a rare display of foresight,
Olusegun Obsanjo was dug up from the dungeon where he lay rotting away. For a
while it seemed almost preposterous for Nigerian leaders to seek to create our
own version of Mandela’s prison-to-presidency narrative but that was what we
got. And in a manner almost reminiscent of the biblical rebuke of the storm by
Jesus, Obasanjo’s assumption of power served as a calming balm on the searing
turbulence.
Looking back now, it also seems
like they never happened; as though my mind is playing tricks on me and I am
dredging up memories from across the river bank of my childhood. But this is
Nigeria. Children born in 2005 may never have heard of OPC or APC or Egbesu
Boys of Africa. They may only have heard of MASSOB after Emeka Ojukwu’s death
last year when Uwazurike and his men had to make some noise to re-assert their
relevance. It all seems so distant, so vague and so inconsequential now that
one would be tempted to wonder why we ever worried about them, but those were
dreadful moments in our contemporary times.
Indeed, recent Nigerian history
is replete with imageries that echo the above scenario. We have had too many
close shaves, countless dances on razor-edge and too many bewildering moments
that tug on the consciousness and make one re-evaluate one’s belief in Nigeria.
It happens all the time; from Jos to Mumbi and from Aluu to Madalla.
Increasingly though, a crucial
lesson is emerging from our social mosaic - to be a Nigerian is to master the
art of living on the edge. To weed one-self of all emotions that have to do
with all kinds of losses since we are the planet’s true inheritors of loss. It
is to develop a strange short memory and a neurotic craving to move on, to rush
through unpleasant experiences as though they have nothing to teach us and to
pick quarrels with anyone who calls our attention to the past.
You may call it
living in denial if you wish.
