The Ibos, the North and all of us
Icome from a village called Gakem in northern Cross River State. If you are travelling by road to Abuja from Calabar through Calabar-Ikom- OgojaKatsina Ala Highway, Gakem is the last village of CRS on its northernmost border with Vandeikya, Benue State. And if you are driving from Abuja through KeffiLafia-Makurdi-Katsina AlaAdikpo-Vandeikya Road, Gakem is the first village of CRS you encounter before you pass through many towns and villages to eventually get to Calabar, some five and a half hours of fast driving away. I am, therefore, a sort of cross road child from a cross road town. My dream is to one day found a university located in Gakem and spilling over the neighbouring villages of Benue state that will be called Cross-Roads University or Cross Cultural University whose core curriculum will be the study of Oriental and Western knowledge and religions in a manner that will enrich us and modern Africa as a whole.
I am a southerner but more northern in location than southern. In fact, the famous Lord Lugard beacon separating Northern Nigeria from Southern Nigeria is located between Gakem and Ankar Village of Vandeikya LGA of Benue State. That is why I take delight in describing myself as a southerner geographically, a northerner sociogeographically and panNigerian dispositionally, because of the circumstances of the nature (location) and nurture (socialization) of my life. And my friends who know me closely enough agree completely with me.
In fact, my location is so unique such that if there is anything today that can only be obtained from a state capital, it will be easier for me to get it from four northern states’ capitals, two eastern and one South- South states’ capitals than it will be for me to drive from my village and get it in Calabar, the capital of my own state. For, from the North West axis, it will take me only two and half hours to drive to Makurdi and three and a half hours to Lafia. And through the North East axis, it will take me three hours to get from my village to Jalingo, Taraba state and four hours to Yola, Adamawa state. And to the South East axis, I need only one and a half hours to get to Abakaliki, Ebonyi State; three hours to Enugu, Enugu State and about four hours to Asaba, capital of Delta state, while I need to drive furiously for about five and a half hours before I get to Calabar!
When I explain to friends in Abuja where I come from and how to get there, many are confused because they think I come from somewhere near Calabar where they need to drive to for about 12 hours or you need to get to travel by air to Calabar airport before you then drive a few minutes to! Many others cannot understand why I am closer and enjoy greater affinity with the North than with my Southern states indigenes. But let us leave this and continue with our main story. It is merely meant to drive home our crossconnectedness as a people in ways geography and culture have shaped us.
Nigerians who are old enough to have studied history before it was abolished in our school system must have learnt that the Nigerian-Biafran Civil War started in this village called Gakem. For Gakem was in the former Eastern Region and when the war broke out on July 6, 1967, Biafran forces were already encamped and embedded in Gakem to defend this frontier of the Republic of Biafra with the north! Legendary figures of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria such as the late Muhammadu Shuwa, Martins Adamu, Sule Appollo and our own present President, Muhammadu Buhari, who led troops to liberate the ‘Ogoja Sector’, therefore, had to fire the first shot in Gakem.
What am I leading to, inflicting this perhaps boring story about the geography and history of my little but significant village on you, folks? You will see the theme and connection with an awful aspect of our recent past experience shortly, namely the quit notice served on the Igbos by the Arewa Youth.
Well, when Gakem and other towns and villages of the then Ogoja Division were ‘liberated’ by Shuwa and Co, an existential problem cropped up in our ‘liberated’ towns and villages. There were severe shortages of basic commodities like salt, soap, basins, medicines, etc because it was mainly the fleeing Ibos who were retailing these things. The shortages were so severe that a wag from my village who was famous for his intelligence and wit was compelled to note that ‘’One is forced to regret the departure of the Ibos from our land in whistles!’’ I do not know how to describe whistle talk so that the reader can understand the profound wisdom expressed by the wag but I will try.
Whistling is different from speaking in whispers. It is a peculiar form of verbal communication, engaged in, especially by teenage children and peers, in which you curl your tongue and manipulate your vocal cord to voice out something in coded form that many, especially ‘hostile’ adults, cannot easily decode and possibly rebuke you for. So what that wag was saying is that although everyone in the community was hurting badly from the forced departure of the Ibos, no one could afford to come out and say in plain words to the hearing of everyone that you regret the departure of the Ibos. If you did that the Federal Troops were on hand to grab you and accuse you of being a saboteur and kill you.
What the wise man from my village was saying in essence is that whatever ill feelings anyone had towards the Ibos, they were playing a very useful role in the life of the community in ways that many did not realise or acknowledge and that their absence was being sorely missed. You needed to say that in a coded form or language that gives you a window of deniability.
The essence of this long story is to say to Nigerians that no one should commend the revocation of the quit order on the Ibos by the Arewa Youth. Rather, every Nigerian, including Northerners and even the Arewa Youth themselves, should feel profoundly relieved that their threat was not carried through. I say so because in spite of our uneasy togetherness for decades now, we all have become so integrated and so connected that parting, especially in an acrimonious fashion, will hurt all of us so terribly that the initiators of the parting may even feel more pained that the persons they have forced to depart.
Trouble is not something any sane person should wish for but in a sense, I wish that the quit notice had not been vacated so that all of us will witness the ensuring chaos. That, I believe, would have proved to be a great sobering experience for everyone in Nigeria. For I just imagine how anyone in the North would have supervised the chaos unscathed. How on earth can anyone distinguish an Ibo man from an Igala, a Tiv, a Bekwarra man, an Idoma, an Edo, etc. When the calamity of Ibo departure will envelop the land, who will be in a frame of mind to recognize and spare the lives and property of only the Northerner? Surely, the only beneficiaries would have been hoodlums who are always available to take advantage of disorder.
Alibi wrote this piece from Abuja