The Middle East Is Not Our Concern
Israel Versus PalentineImage: Lobe Log The long-standing feud between Israel and Palestine has been raising feathers in some Nigerian quarters. This fight has been going on for years and years on end; Israel takes Palestinian lands, Palestine attacks Israel, Israel carries out reprisal attacks, vice versa…and the circle of violence continues! Anyone who has been following the news knows that these two nations are bitter enemies; something that probably dates back to their shared history and possibly, ancestry. So it was no surprise that when three Israeli teenagers were killed by Palestinian forces, Israel sprang into action and retaliated (and are still retaliating). What is worrisome is not the fact that as usual, most of the Arab nations are calling out Israel for their brutal force. No… that is not it! What is surprising is that some Nigerians have joined in on the fight. My worry is, why wasn’t any alarm raised when Palestine held those boys captive? Why was there no collective demand that the boys be returned home? Were those boys less human because they were Israelis? This is a reminder of what is happening in Nigeria. When churches were burnt and Christians killed by the dreaded militant sect in the north, many Muslim clerics did not openly condemn the act. The moment Muslims started dying, there was a shift in the atmosphere in the country. Clerics couldn’t wait to get on radio, TVs, blogs, newspapers and social media to decry the death of ‘Nigerians’. Like their counterparts, many Christian leaders didn’t openly condemn the killings of Muslims. The question then is: are Nigerian lives only important when they share your faith? Or culture? Or tribe? Why am I even bothered about this? Simple! Any fight where Israel is seen as the aggressor always translates to a fight against Muslims in general, and when Israel is perceived to be the victim, Christians quickly jump to their defense. This is why a fight happening all the way in the Middle East is affecting us here in Nigeria. It is especially funny because both these nations do not give a hoot about us or our existence. Rather than getting agitated over what is happening all the way in Israel and Palestine, why don’t we get worried about our own country’s woes?! Why don’t we worry about the fact that many of our communities are riddled with conflicts that has such high cost in human lives and properties? First Respondents at the site of the Nyanya Bomb Blast in Abuja.Date: April 14, 2014.Image: The Trent Online Newspaper For what it is worth, Nigeria is at war! That cannot be overemphasized! Bombs are going off from Maiduguri to Osun, making stop overs at Adamawa, Yobe, Bauchi, Gombe (reportedly), Kaduna, Kano and Abuja. Most people wonder what will happen to them in that busy marketplace, that crowded motor park, that congested traffic or that busy shopping mall. People from Maiduguri go out ready to die! They make peace with their family members, loved ones and friends and most especially with God. They know that a bomb can rip them apart as they step out. They don’t even bother to make long term plans. Is that a way to live?! As if that is not enough, our military keeps telling us they have defeated the sect when all we see is an escalation of the insurgency. We have 219 girls1 waiting to be rescued from the hands of their abductors! What is the fate of these girls? Are they treated well? Have some of them being abused, or killed? Why aren’t we more worried about this? But here we are…waiting on a security that shouldn’t let Stockholm Syndrome set in; though it probably set in at day 21. We should be worried that our security forces are going on rampages, burning BRT buses in Lagos, attacking their General Commanding Officers and telling the nation they have locations of the kidnapped girls when they obviously don’t! And everyone who says the Boko Haram insurgency is a northern issue must have been shocked when a bomb went off in Osun or at the ones that didn’t go off in Enugu because they were caught just in time. Even if that is in no way related to Boko Haram, what about the insurgency seen via kidnappings and ritual killings? Wouldn’t that be considered insurgency too? One thing makes Edo, Port Harcourt, Warri, Cross Rivers and now Kogi similar; kidnappings. Prominent citizens as well as the everyday Joe suffer at the hand of kidnapping kingpins and ritualists. Oh! It is not secluded to these places; we have Lagos, Oyo and most recently, Kwara. You hear of human parts been found in ritualists dens all over the country. If the north has her issues, the south, east, west and south-south also does! Did I mention the cult clashes? The farmers and herders’ conflicts that seem to only get bigger by the day? The prevalence of bandits and all-round increasing crime rates? And before we forget, most polytechnics and colleges of education have been on strike for over one year. Millions of citizens of the country sitting at home because the state says they must pass through an education to have a job. The number of young people becoming redundant in the society is alarming and should worry us. They cannot go to school and they cannot get jobs. Oh! The drama! And the one that takes it home; corruption! Our elected and appointed leaders are busy milking the country dry while wringing the necks of the poor man. We have serving ministers disbursing public fund for personal use, acquiring luxury that shows how easy it is to spend money ‘earned’ illicitly. All this while the poor man grows in his resentment of the status quo and the greener grass on the other side that mocks his poverty. The cross carpeting of politicians from parties they hailed as the holy grail to parties they rained all manner of libel against is not something that can be easily forgotten! Who in the hell would have thought that Femi Fani Kayode would be singing the government’s tune? Who would have thought the new Emir of Kano would withdraw his suit against the Federal Government
The North Is Not Hausa
Image: Home Town Nigeria is at a very bad place now, with hatred sown deep into the very core of society. No one can tell just how long that hatred has been going on, but one thing most are sure of is that, any attempt at forcibly removing it will further widen the gaping wound which is Nigeria today; and probably destroy the last vestiges which we are holding on to. This hatred is beyond religious: in fact, religious issues are not as deeply seated as those related to ethnicity and tribalism. The Northern part of the country seems to bear the brunt of this hatred, with the Southern, Eastern and Western parts showing their distaste of the ‘Hausa-North’. Is this too broad (and maybe too bold) a statement? Well…it gets worse.When I was in the university, just a few months before graduation, my sister came to me and asked that I hang out with her and some friends. They were both from one of the South-Southern states of Nigeria; though one of them had lived in Kaduna State until he gained admission to the university. The other was visiting the North for the very first time.We primped and went out to hang out with the guys. While talking, I noticed that the new guy was staring at my sister and I in a very unsettling manner. After enduring the Xray-like stare for a while, I shot him a glare. He became unnerved and apologized. He said he had always had the view that the North was a wild land, inhabited by uneducated cattle shepherds who had an unusual thirst for power. He said he had actually told his friend that he hoped he was not bringing Hausa ‘fura da nono’ sellers to come hang with them. Even in that assessment, you can’t help but see how wrong he was about his knowledge of the Hausa tribe. We laughed about it and in the end, he said, ‘I have changed my views about the Hausa man and the North’. When I asked if he had met any Hausa man, he snorted and said, ‘You, now!’ (For crying out loud, I’m a mix of Idoma and Ebira. But let me continue.)A little while back, a friend told me of his experience with some people when he went to serve in the Eastern part of the country. They were welcoming until they found out he was from Borno State. Easy camaraderie turned into glacier coldness. They watched him with suspicion and accused him of being among the Hausas who had killed their fellow Igbo brothers. At one point, he was scared for his life. He actually thought they were going to kill him. This only changed when they saw him in church one day. After the service, they accosted him. When they ascertained that he wasn’t a member of Boko Haram sent to bomb their church, they asked him how a Hausa man could be a Christian. He explained to them that he wasn’t Hausa. One of them quipped, ‘Are you not from Borno?’. At his affirmation, they asked again, ‘Is Borno not in the North?’ Nodding his head, they said, ‘Then you are Hausa jare!’. Despite his explanations, they still wouldn’t believe that the North wasn’t solely a Hausa region. My friend had to resign to their strongly held ideas, even accepting the nickname, ‘Hausa boy’. He just couldn’t get it into their heads that Hausa is not even an indigent tribe in Borno State. Kanuri yes, but definitely not Hausa! A friend on Facebook also told me of his brother who had gone to one of the Western States for an interview. Having scored the job, he set about looking for a house. He asked a security man to help him get a place. When the security guy was free, he took my friend around and they met many landlords. One would expect that he would easily get a house. But he was rejected by all of them! As soon as they realized he was from the North, they clammed up and refused to give him their houses for rent. One landlord went as far as saying that he didn’t want a Hausa man in his house and that he sure didn’t want a “Boko haram” in his house. This man had to resort to living with the only nice person he had met in that town; the security man. His money was not good enough to get him a place as long as he was perceived as Hausa. The worst part is that there are only five states in the North that are predominantly Hausa. They are Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina and Jigawa. That is to say that of the nineteen Northern States, there are only five States with Hausa people making up the majority indigenous population. Why then are we all regarded as Hausa people? Adamawa State has about 58 indigenous languages, Kaduna has about 57 and Benue has close to 14. I can talk about these States because I have some attachment and affiliation to them. Add that to the Hausa States and that is just eight out of nineteen. What about the other States? Are their individual tribes not recognized? Must we all be swept in the same boat? Now, I have no problems with the Hausa people. They are very nice people. I’ve lived with many of them and I understand them to a certain point. My worry is that people, especially those from other regions of the country, feel that the North is made up of just Hausa people. What is worse, they attach illiteracy and underdevelopment to the Hausa people, and in essence, the North. Clearly the North cannot claim to possess the same exposure or average level of education with Lagos, but we are not a cluster of huts or open spaces as other regions think. When I was in camp for the mandatory orientation exercise of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), we had
