Bookshelf: ‘Ordinary Saviour’, a horrific ride across Nigeria’s northeast

Title: Ordinary Saviour Editors: Richard Ali & Abubakar Adam Ibrahim Publishers: Parresia Pages: 107 Reviewer: Nathaniel Bivan

Ordinary Saviour’, a collection of 11 short stories from Nigeria’s northeast, is a product of the North East Intellectual Entrepreneurship Fellowship (NEIEF) Program, brainchild of North East Regional Initiative (NERI), a fouryear project operating in the region, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

It’s highly commendable that NEIEF is aimed at limiting spaces where extremism strives to gain ground, such as Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, where the contributors of this anthology emerge from. It’s even more so that these NEIEF fellows represent diversity in cultures, ethnicity, tribes and religious plurality.

In ‘Ordinary Saviour’, edited by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (award-winning author of ‘Season of Crimson Blossoms’ and ‘The Whispering Trees’) and Richard Ali (co-publisher of Parresia and author of ‘City of Memories’) eleven authors (NEIEF fellows) provide readers with a window into the life of people in the northeast, particularly those scarred by the activities of the insurgent group, ‘Boko Haram’.

The titular story, ‘Ordinary Saviour’ by Suzanne Wonokuli Myada, has a humorous beginning. But don’t be fooled, when our central character gets off the bus there will be absolutely nothing to smile about. She’s from a terrorist-ravaged region and seeks her aunt in Yola, Adamawa State. However, she knows next to nothing about how to trace her. The driver becomes apprehensive and feels responsible for her. How can she not have a workable address or landmark? At the point where they decide she must return to her previous location, Madam Rosa, owner of a restaurant at the motor park saves the day.

But It wasn’t just the terrorists and their guns that drove our central character away from home. It was what they had succeeded in turning her society into. With her parents dead, her uncle, now guardian, sought to marry her off, and this business was to be swiftly dispensed with after two bags of rice and two gallons of cooking oil marked ‘Not for Sale, NEMA’ were laid at his feet. It’s war era, after all and foodstuff is everything. This is a subtle pointer to how those in ‘charge’ of aid tend to divert what is meant for the internally displaced.

The stories in this anthology reminds us that those affected by insurgency once had a life in every sense of the word. They also had dreams and aspirations that were shattered. There are those who wanted to be doctors or lawyers and many other things. In ‘The Aftermath’ by Nafisa Daniel Mshelbila, young Kamal is a painter before he is uprooted from his home and society, and bang! he’s turned into a terrorist.

There have been reports and analyses on the activities of the military in the northeast. Some good, some not so good. A reader is quickly reminded by Kamal’s plight, how many innocent people from the states of Yobe, Adamawa and Borno are abducted and forced to kill by Boko Haram. Kamal, unlike many others, is able to rebuild his life, but how many have a second chance?

Through fiction, these NEIEF fellows recreate tragic and even inspiring tales. According to media reports, Boko Haram (founded by Mohammed Yusuf) evolved from a nonviolent religious group seeking to ‘purify Islam’, into an organised terror organisation. In Mohammed Maina Modu’s ‘Being Human’, a gang led by Yassir ibn Ubay threaten the people of a community into submission. This leads to the death of the police boss’s daughter, because doctors, in conforming to the gang’s orders, were afraid of attending to the sick child.

The police boss, ASP Mohammedali vows to avenge his daughter’s death. He does, but things get out of control, drawing a battle line between the authorities and the soon-to-be official terrorist group. This story illustrates the humanness of these men in uniform and how they too can step over boundaries.

Boko Haram is known for using a particular strategy, the kidnapping of schoolgirls, in order to wield negotiating powers against the Nigerian government. What actually goes on before some of the Chibok and later, the Dapchi schoolgirls, were released is not entirely clear. But one thing is certain, many of their female victims return scarred. This is what Chabiyada Eli (‘Lost Identity’) and Ba’aba Aliyu Ibrahim (In the Wild) explore in their stories. In the former, a girl returns from captivity pregnant for an insurgent, while the central character in the latter story, Zulai, is shaped by her experience during captivity. Although now free and married, Zulai harbours a distrust for men that threatens to tear her marriage apart.

In a Daily Trust newspaper report of May 22, 2014, the Defence Headquarters denied any involvement in alleged mass murder of civilians in Borno State. This was after accusations of extra-judicial killings by the Nigerian military. H.K. Tijjani’s ‘Close Call’ makes you wonder how people in the northeast fare, particularly at the early stage of the insurgency when Boko Haram members may have still lived amongst them. A part of page 60 is a typical example, when a young man happens to be in the wrong place at a wrong time. He stays in hiding, convinced he would become a scape goat for the army’s frustrations after a Boko Haram attack:

The soldiers! They would not have listened to me. All evidence pointed to me, and perhaps, Hassan the Keke rider if they got him. Giwa Barracks was a horror that lingered in the corners of my mind. The things people said about the place made me dread the thought of seeing things for myself. Captives taken there almost never came back.

Did the army blame the residents for their lack of success? And did this frustration result to the death of innocent citizens? ‘Close Call’ shows how a young man runs in the opposite direction (an earlier experience where he was attacked and treated like a criminal by the army still fresh in his mind), instead of towards the military, after bumping into a still fresh massacre carried out by terrorists.

Each character in this book reflects a side to what North-eastern Nigerians suffer. Theirs is a fractured society, where what was once beautiful is broken and left to rot. Slowly, some parts where peace returns is put back together, piece-by-piece, but what is the guarantee it will not be torn apart again?

This collection is filled with pacy tales. If only the death of insugency in the region could also be this way.