| Why We Remain Nigerians |
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| Tuesday, 23 August 2005 | |||||||||||||
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I met her at a get-together of sorts; I suppose I ought to call it a picnic - which I would, save for the dreadful weather and the intermittent rain. Under normal circumstances, the chances of conversation between both of us would have been minimal - but then I addressed a companion of mine in a foreign language she happened to understand and she overheard. We chatted for several minutes later. I suppose I am being remiss when I refer to foreign languages, for at this point in her history and the history of her people, that language to her was no more foreign than the English which she had thoroughly mastered. As it turned out, she was from an Island nation of some 1 million people that had come under the domination of a foreign power sometime in the 17th century. Though many of the inhabitants of the Islands now proudly identified themselves with the conquering hegemon, I could detect a tinge of loss in her voice as she spoke of lost languages and conflicting identity. To the rest of the world, her people had become so identified with the hegemon that the notion that they were a distinct nation - far removed from the ethno-cultural basis of Empire (even as the conquering Empire contained its own divisions within it) was ridiculous. Yet she spoke of different languages, of different cultures and of growing up in a world split between her Nation, Empire and the Liberator. "The young ones," she said, "cannot speak the language anymore. When I was young, my grandmother spoke it to me. But now, nobody speaks it anymore." Should the ancestors of this Island people have been privileged to gaze into this present - what would they have thought? Their existence in the not too distant past was composed of seafaring and trading voyages that nurtured them into true prosperity. As a nexus between disparate regions of the world’s largest continent, they achieved a blend of culture and expressive forms that not only positioned them as virtually unintelligible to the Hegemon they are now identified with, but as a supplier of arguably the world’s finest martial art. I have no doubt ancestors of theirs did not anticipate this event- an existence solidly rooted in second class citizenship and stained with the smell of sacrifice - with they as the sacrifice; an offering unto conquering powers in the Second world war with vast outposts of legions to show for it in addition to the rape of their female young by supposed liberators (almost now a permanent feature of the culture-scape) and the loss of valuable land. Had I been in a more hypocritical frame of mind, I would have uttered the usual sympathetic grunts and hums while commenting on the inevitability of History and the essential necessity of stiff upper lips when confronted with disaster. But I was feeling singularly realistic that evening, thus, instead of my thoughts turning to the invaded living spaces of nameless foreigners in the East China Sea - my mind directed me to the occupied environs of supposed brethren somewhere on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea. Yet, the parallels of Human experience necessitated that I ruminate upon how my ostensible Yoruba brethren and the fate of these Islanders. Were the woes not the same? They told stories of how, during the 2nd world war, scores of their babies were killed by poisoning, skulls crushed by rocks - and of "shudan jiketsu" - collective suicides forced upon them by the necessity of having to appear loyal to the Japanese sense of nationalism and thus the view that surrender was a fate worse than death. Was this a strange story to me, An African? How could it be? Had scores of Africans not been marched off to die in Europe's wars and to die exorcising Europe's demons? Their stories spoke of mothers killing their own children - torn between the desire to escape American invaders come to claim their sacrifice (as gods no less) and the desire to escape the Japanese soldiers present upon their Island spaces seeking to make full use of their pawns in an entirely needless war. They spoke of the aftermath of shame - of expulsions from school because they spoke in the local dialect, they spoke of segregated schooling - of Americans instructed not to mix with the natives; they spoke of dignified subservience: a necessary commodity in all industries of whoredom - of missing beaches: They spoke, the tales tinged with regret because they could not tell that their lives would have been of any more worth to the Japanese nation which they had sworn fealty than it had been to the Americans. Yes, they could complain about missing beachfront property - but would the Japanese have administered the region any better than the Americans? Torn between two choices which were essentially repackaged forms of contempt, they spoke. And I listened - for I too, had heard of children disciplined in school in Yoruba land because they spoke Yoruba. And I knew of the Yoruba subservience to Nigeria and of their pawnship in a needless war fought to keep Nigeria one for the narrow purposes of a nameless elite. I knew also that the lives of the Yoruba or the Efik, or the Ijaw would not have been and now are not worth more to the Nigerian State than they were to British Imperialists. And as the tales spoke of a lost identity and an incomplete Japaneseness, my mind resonated - for I could see before me the chimera - the not quite Yoruba, not quite Nigerian, not quite British offspring of Imperial rape; defeated in their schizophrenia and their cultural confusion. I could see them clearly in my minds eye and all around me - In the Policemen who spoke in halted English to elderly grandmothers who couldn’t understand a word; a necessity you see, because in the wonder State called Nigeria, it makes perfect policy sense to transfer State forces to regions where they are culturally, linguistically and ethnically foreign - primarily to forestall rebellion, secondarily to reinforce occupation and promote integration and thirdly to confuse the locals and promote the mysteriousness of power. I saw these Chimeras in the young school lads who responded to market women in English - aged market women who were around when Satan whispered in Lugard's ears and who spoke now what language they spoke then. I saw these young ones recoil, just as the children of Okinawa recoil - from the native; that badge of primitiveness, of unsophistication, of unprogress - that badge of subjugation - from that, I saw them recoil. I saw these Chimeras in the schools, in the administration of the Nigerian occupation forces - who chatted amongst themselves in English, only too true to colonial tradition and then went out and spoke to the natives in Yoruba, or Efik or Ijaw or whatever the darned language the locals spoke. As the Okinawans resisted the forms of Imperial domination - refusing to endorse Empire by singing Kimi Ga Yo and refusing to bow before the Rising Sun, so I saw in the first Federal Government Secondary School in Nigeria, students yelling at Assembly: "To Serve Nigeria Is Not By Force". But the Okinawans remain Japanese and the Yoruba are Nigerians - as the Igbo and for that matter, any number of lesser peoples around the world. I did not exercise myself anymore with regards to the plight of foreigners - instead I sought answers about the Yoruba and for every other African Nation on whose behalf I could ask the question. I did this for entirely personal and selfish reasons. Why do we remain Nigerians? We cannot claim a great and grand history in the name of Nigeria, neither a great and grand present. We cannot claim language, religion or mythology in this name. We cannot claim ancestrality - sadly for us, we begin our Nigerian tale with rape and conquest. We cannot claim volitional union - certainly not with Biafra, Sharia and an array of Military despots. We cannot claim present benefits - indeed, being "Nigerians" is more of a deficit to us now, than if we were identified by our Nationalities. Yet, we remain. We remain; thus it is essential for us to deny history and to deny the obvious. We remain, and thus we must pretend that the whisper of Lucifer to F. Lugard was indeed a divine boon; a veritable plan by the almighty to erect a nation destined to trigger off a Christian revival in the last days. Yes, we must pretend that Nigeria is the trigger in the Gun of God - religious delusions that leave us none the better off. We remain, and thus we deny that we ever existed at all. If Nigeria is to increase, we must decrease. If Nigeria embodies our ancestrality, we must deny that there were any Nations, or cultures or civilizations prior to Nigeria upon which we can now make claims and which possess a claim preeminent to that of the Nigerian State (a claim founded entirely on the use of force). We remain, and thus we pretend that Government is the problem. We deceive ourselves that if we only had an accountable government, everything will be fine. We pretend that the primary reason that we DONT have an accountable government is because of the very State system we are trying to uphold. We remain and therefore we must pretend that it is okay to deemphasize National loyalties while permitting others to install archaic religious laws, in the name of a religious identity that is just as cultural as any other - we pretend that it is okay for some to oppose a Child Rights act in the name of religious barbarism. Then, we turn around and condemn "tribalists" as though they had no right, nor claim, or eminence to demand that their living spaces be similarly based upon their cultural patrimony. We remain and we deceive ourselves that we are a MultiNational State - rather than a MultiNational Prison - the bodies of our young fodder for crazed State officers and our land fodder for foreign companies. We deceive ourselves; we say: "Our diversity is something to be celebrated" - and then we turn around and deny the pursuit of diversity to its logical conclusion: The right to have our living spaces entirely under our control. We say we are irreducible, indivisible, and an eternal constant. We yell Hallelujah and smirk because we think that other countries that have gone through half of what we have gone through have not survived. We fail to see that even we aren’t surviving - Poverty, Mortality, Public corruption and decadence being on the rise. Some even speak of a divine mission - apparently oblivious to the story of the Jews who an "eternal Nation" were but yet spent 450 years in captivity. Why do we remain? We remain because we tell ourselves that our Nationalities are antithetical to progress. That being Igbo is being primitive. We then engage in remarkable mental gyrations as we affirm in the next breadth the sublime ness of, say, Germany - of course, being German and speaking German is not primitive - but being Igbo is! We remain because we believe that our National loyalties are the products of Imperial incursion into an otherwise harmonious past - failing to realize that our different Nations and cultures with all their imperfections predate even those of the Imperialists by centuries. And thus we remain, and thus must we act - to kill ourselves in the name of eradicating Tribalism, to ignore the barbarism of Sharia, to keep quiet at the death of language, to be moot at the depredations of the State - to emphasize that the apogee of sophistication is the ultimate degree of self abnegation: A standard not demanded of any other people, anywhere else in the world. Thus we raise up standards, fig leaves to hide our shame - An OAU, an AU, a Pan African conference here, a Diasporic conference there: All of them built on "Africans" who proceed into the conference grounds thoroughly rooted and grounded in European identities. We remain because we hope. We hope that we will die and so we remain. We hope that the Yoruba will vanish. That the Igbo will vanish. That the Efik will vanish. That the Ijaw will vanish. We hope that all those artefacts of our now thoroughly determined to be barbaric past will disappear and we will all be Nigerians, harmoniously commenting on the boons of our union to Empire. We hope for our own death and so we remain. We hope that ethnic divisions will cease. We hope for Homogenous Nigeriana, one in which a fellow is "Nigerian First" (Ha!) We hope that (as Bola Ige so succintly put it) all will be "untribalized" - in a disgusting rendition of caricature cosmopolitanism. And so we remain. We remain because we are too tired to examine the past; we are tired of the past - with its slavery and colonialism which demands that we reassess the claims of the Occident which now promises us so much utility. We remain because we just want to "get on with our lives" - yeah, if the road lead nowhere, then there shall we go! We remain because we hope against hope - If Nigeria works, will we not have all the material munificence we crave? We remain, because like pilgrims in the desert, we spy Oases over yonder hill - Only our mirage is permanent - Our delusions intractable. We remain because departure does not matter - we remain because we are all migrating to the West anyway, and what, by any chance is the difference between Lagos and L.A.? And so we remain. Buffeted by Pride and ego, stifled by unreason, deadened by Statism, drowning in our decadence: we remain and hope. We hope for great leaders, hope for good government and hope for a better future. Hope they say, does not make ashamed. We know that there is no need for us to remain. By now, all can see through the lie that remaining Nigerians is somehow beneficial to all. But we remain, not out of necessity - but out of a kind of fear: Fear that we cannot make it on our own, fear that we will need crutches, fear that we cannot countenance the wrath of the State. But don’t cowards die many times before their death? Certainly they do - and so we remain, and thus, we die.
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Posted by Robot| 24.04.2008 19:06