By Odi Ikpeazu
Ever before Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ became a pop hit, young as I was, I had always endeavoured by instinct and paternal example to cultivate the art of judging people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin, the tribe of their birth, the sentiment of their creed or the expediency of their politics.
This has afforded me a certain freedom of spirit, a soulful elixir, the value of which I cannot quantify. It has caused me to genuinely mourn the virtual death of so many of my countrymen, who though they breathe, are housed in the mortuary of bigotry, hatred and prejudice.
Nigeria is full of such zombies. They go through the motions of life, walking, talking, eating, defecating but displaying a ghoulish, hair-raising essential lifelessness, being the hallmark of their deplorable existence. And when I say Nigerians, I make no distinction between East, West, North or South because each of those cardinal points of our territory overflow in equal proportion with the cantankerous tribes that inhabit and infect this potentially beautiful country with the virus of their hatefulness towards one another.
At best, it baffles me when each of these tribes fail to detect within themselves the very same faults and foibles they magnify and denigrate in the others, such as intolerance, spite, malice and destructive narcicissm. At worst, it petrifies me that human beings could at once be so conscious and yet so unconscious of their ungraciousness as they labour endlessly through a literally oxymoronic existence.
These unfortunate Nigerians proudly conduct their interaction with each other with such an extreme, impulsive, compulsive, mandatory, mutual stereotyping. They act upon their delusional perception of one another so much that they are managing amazingly to defeat their own nationhood without requiring any help from external foes. The country is like a battlefield, in which an army turns upon itself in full view of the enemy legion, whose fortress overlooks the surreal scene. First, the enemy is transfixed in curious bemusement and then ultimately explode in utter amusement.
The self-destructive Nigerian mentality is probably reminiscent of the Seige of Masada, whereupon the Roman legion breached the Jewish resistance only to discover that the defenders had killed each other to the last man, leaving a field of their own carcass for the enemy to review. But on second thoughts, that analogy may however be a gross disservice to the heroic patriotism of those glorious Jewish freedom fighters, who – at least in their own minds – were taking a last-ditch stand against Roman imperialism. Perhaps the tragic absurdity of what the Nigerian people threaten to do to themselves is more closely captured by the mass suicide of Jim Jones’ schizophrenic congregation in Georgetown, Guyana.
A mark of the Nigerian beast is the capacity to live in blissful denial and with such pathological compulsion that he resorts to blaming his woes on not only the other tribe but on Frederick Lugard for daring to forge the colony into a convenient administrative territory. It is over a hundred years since the Amalgamation but that watershed is lately being revisited or even rediscovered by the emergent pseudo-intelligentsia, almost as though the wheel has just been invented.
Reincarnated bigots, posturising as neo-intellectuals, have seized upon that innocuous event as the immutable cause of our inability to as little as grow our own crops or even build public toilets. And being in that dysfunctional state of mind – or mindlessness, as the case may be – they insist that only if the nation is burnt down and many nations emerge out of its ashes will the demons of 1914 be exorcised.
Most likely however, from my own humble observation, the decimation of the Nigerian nation, which they hope for, will only precipitate a West African version of the Lernaean Hydra of Greek mythology. The monstrous serpent will regenerate and for every one of its head that is chopped off, it will regrow two heads complete with their poisonous breath, virulent blood and deadly smell.
This is because ethnic animosity in this country is an atomic phenomenon powered by an energy released in nuclear fission and the more it is broken down, the greater its propensity to multiply unto infinity.
The rancourous and belligerent sectionalism that typifies the Nigerian is programmed to reproduce itself like some creepy amoeba and will do so relentlessly until each man becomes a country. And even at that, when every man finally becomes a nation, there is still the possibility of a new tribal war breaking out between the head and the heart of the sorry man.
Therefore if the hawks and divisionists ever achieve the separate state of their dreams and nightmares, new animosities will replace the old, fresh foes will come to the fore and new political dichotomies will emerge to feed the insatiable ego of the new demagogues that are sure to sprout and feed off the fat of the new lands.
Hopefully, there exists within the immoral majority of this country, a welcome minority who have minds that are free from hate and jealousy, who are sufficiently dethnicised and have managed to disabuse themselves of religious and other niggling bigotries. And if you believe in the ultimate triumph of good over evil, you may want to comfort yourself with the knowledge that even a precious stone like diamond is found in such inelegant places as rocks and craters. So there is hope.
Once upon a time, I was poisoned by a Yoruba friend because of his lopsided love of an easy-going lady. I was once swindled out of a fortune by an Hausa mate called Bashir, who I trusted so much as to give him details of a business venture I was getting into. And my son was actually pushed over the Niger Bridge by his Igbo brother because the latter wanted to take his place in an Under-16 football team and he only managed to keep from falling into the rough river by hanging tenuously unto the bridge railing until he was rescued by other team mates. And so devilry and monstrosity have no language, no religion, no ethnicity.
Conversely, virtue has no tribe or religion either. And in that regard, I have a memory to always recall whenever anyone wants to play the ethnic card with me:
I once ran over an Hausa man with my car near a cow market by the Niger bridgehead at Onitsha. I was not speeding unduly but the man emerged in front of my Mercedes so suddenly that I either had to knock him over or veer off and flatten a row of pedestrians. The choice was quite easy though very difficult.
Unfortunately, I had to hit and run because I was afraid of a possible lynching at the hands of his tribesmen, who were swarming all over, tending their cows at the market. So I sped to the nearest police station, reported the accident and turned myself in. Late at night, while still in police detention, I learnt that the poor man had died in hosoital despite my best efforts to have him saved. I had never been so sad or felt so bad.
The next day, I was still detained, pending the official conclusion of police investigations. I took permission to step outside and smoke a cigarette to calm myself. I used to smoke at the time. Then suddenly, I saw a horde of nomadic-type men dressed in different shades of flowing danshikis cascading from a short distance up the road and down towards the police station. Needless to say, I darted back inside for the safety of police detention. I never knew police custody was so reassuring! The crowd, as many as could squeeze into the station lobby, were confronted by a very apprehensive desk sergeant even as other officers reached nervously for their weapons.
The leader of the group, a swarthy but very soft-spoken then spoke. They had been informed that the person who ran over one of their members last night was in detention here. They wanted to inform the police that the dead man was totally blind and had strayed onto the road before anyone of them could notice and restrain him. They had witnessed the incident and just wanted to inform the police that it was no fault of the driver’s. And they promptly turned around and left, much to the consternation of the policemen and I.
In that moment, I realised what a beautiful people those poor herdsmen were and what a wonderful country this could be.