quote: The journey to Enugu was no less devoid of its trade of stereotypes. It is a place of hostile people, one sympathizer offered, squeezing his face like a crumpled typing sheet; they all are, with the exception of none, very evil people, the other volunteered. They all agreed, however, that if the writer was so stiff-necked as to attempt a repudiation of the various pieces of advice on offer free of charge, he should leave his family behind in the west, buy a handy bag that would contain virtually everything he may spontaneously need, including tooth-brush and others, watch his back every time and be ready to do a Ben Johnson when the “human-eater Ibo people” launch their attack on him which, they concluded, with the finality of a judge handing down a death sentence, was a matter of when.
The Testimony of Enugu
By Festus Adedayo Tuesday, December 09, 2003
The dread of becoming conscripted into the colony of writers of that unenviable literary style called hagiography, for about four months now, had thrown spanners into the works of this piece, ensuring that it stayed unusually long in the smithy. But, fascinated by the didactic sense inherent in the modes of operation of our kindred in the ‘born again’ theology school, for whom it is a sin almost unpardonable in the presence of the creator to be singled out of a crowd by the man philosophers call the Uncaused Causer for a bestowal of favour and then stand aloof at testimony time at the Sunday worship, this writer decided to damn the devil of procrastination, risk the unenviable scorn that goes with hagiography and, prefacing the testimony with ‘Praise the lord!’, elect to trumpet that which Nigerian leaders do seldom, for which he is a recipient. It also holds a didactic lesson for us all as a people soldiered into one, for whom the word ‘unity’ is almost a weather-beaten phraseology, but which we debar from fruitifying in practical terms.
Each time this writer stumbles into a crowd and the necessity of having to append his affiliation to an introduction of himself crops up, a stir always follows. In the Nigerian experience of diversity of everyone to himself and God for us all, a few things appear very alien to the Nigerian topography, especially in the political lexicon. Though at political podiums when the need arises to pour, as usual, libations on the incipient god of unity, the phrase ‘we are all one’ is always in constant reference, even with creativity and constant innovation, Shridath Ramphal, former Commonwealth Secretary-General said of the Nigerian ‘unity’: the practical necessities of a miscellany of national circumstances place the ‘unity’ call on the anvil of political reality where it belongs.
I get extremely bothered when Nigerian leaders make cursory references to the issue of unity, on the superficial level and when it comes to practice, not only bulk but retreat into their ethnic cocoons. I am also bothered that this agelong exhibition of practical apathy to demonstrable unity, in virtually all nooks and crannies of Nigeria by Nigerian leaders, has infected the led too who believe, almost totally now, that the political space is not only hostile to inter-ethnic cross pollination, but that the polity has limited incentives for its realization and germination.
There exists a deeply flagellating tribal mistrust which is carried over to religious intolerance and all allied mistrusts in the Nigerian federation. And I suspect that it is an off-shoot of a covert sense of ethnic supremacy which virtually every tribe and subsequently peoples of the Nigerian federation, nurse. It is so bad that accommodating people of other ethnic stocks in the reality of our ethnic milieu is perceived almost as heretic. A foreigner, in our typecast, isn’t a national of another country but our kindred whose bifurcating tread is the different rhythm of his tongue construct.
To be sincere, until my practical witness of the inherent evil and good of all tribes, with equal dosage, once on a sojourn to the north, in Yelwa-Yauri, and now in Enugu, I was not a very strong fan of the Nigerian unity in diversity cliché. I was pregnant with the avalanche of tribal stereotypes that you could pick of other ethnic stocks aside yours that fill the stratosphere. It reminds this writer of the dread and sorrow which filled his family, about eleven years ago, when news came that Kebbi state, a chip off the Caliphate enclave, was where he would perform the one-year ritual of a national youth service. Family members had said, crestfallen, that the family must have ran foul seriously of the laws of God, so much that, as a recompense, He catapulted their son to the enclave of “kolanut-chewing, dagger-wielding and intolerant men and women”. The stereotype on display was that every northerner goes about with a dagger and would not think twice before dissecting his assailants. Contrarily, however, the one year national service ended up the best of my life. The writer met northerners of sparklingly stern qualities; met, as room mate, a friend who eventually became the ADC to ex-Governor Mallah Kachallah, and whom he taught how to eat amala for the first time - DSP Muhammed Baba-Kura and several others at Yelwa-Yauri. We forged a consanguinity of immense proportion.
The journey to Enugu was no less devoid of its trade of stereotypes. It is a place of hostile people, one sympathizer offered, squeezing his face like a crumpled typing sheet; they all are, with the exception of none, very evil people, the other volunteered. They all agreed, however, that if the writer was so stiff-necked as to attempt a repudiation of the various pieces of advice on offer free of charge, he should leave his family behind in the west, buy a handy bag that would contain virtually everything he may spontaneously need, including tooth-brush and others, watch his back every time and be ready to do a Ben Johnson when the “human-eater Ibo people” launch their attack on him which, they concluded, with the finality of a judge handing down a death sentence, was a matter of when.
Tribal animosities in Nigeria have done an incalculable damage on any sense of togetherness we may nurse. Contrary to all those alarm bell thuds, the Ibo man, with his sense of enterprise and community, his republicanism, has not stopped to hold some fascination for this writer. He, indeed, venerates the ‘stranger’ in his midst and is always eager to lend a helping hand. This much was encapsulated in Nnamani, whom, on the first day of this writer’s arrival, upon meeting him, stripping himself of all those imperial trappings of power, had mouthed non-stop his pleasure at having a Yoruba man, again, in his government, promising to do everything possible to ensure his comfort. The challenges of having to work with the physician-politician have been enormous ever since. You could not afford to attend a meeting with him with the John Lockean tabula rasa brain. You could not say ‘I agree with the last speaker’. You must critique every policy he enunciates; you must differ from the pack and offer fresh ideas. The task indeed has since been tagging along with his hyper-restless and constantly demanding brain.
This writer was soon to discover that the extra space for the other tribe man in the heart of the governor was not fortuitous or pyrrhic. The cook who superintends over his food is Hausa, a fellow Yoruba man is his trainer and there are sprinkles of non-Ibo people among his personal staff. Aside this, this writer soon discovered that his appointment was the norm in the present administration. Rather than being subsumed under the rubric of nepotism or selfish considerations, most of Nnamani’s appointees are men and women who otherwise would never have had the opportunity of being in government because of their bereftness of a godfather to nominate them. He learns of their élan from afar, invites them on a size-up of their brain content and if satisfied he had tapped into a virgin land, hands over to them the baton of office. But himself comparable to Ben Ray Redman’s description of the French Voltaire as one of the most agile brains ever housed in a human skull, you must be extremely impressionable to hold a sparkle in his estimation.
One example would suffice. This writer was soon to learn that the governor met his Chief of Staff, Mr. Peter Mbah, less than six months ago. The young man, a bachelor, with a string of degrees from highbrow universities abroad, had returned home to contest the local government chairmanship under a party that was not even the governor’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The governor had been told of this ‘unusual politician’ and of his exploits in his locality. This was after Nnamani had won the second term elections. He had called Mbah and demanded his CV. After perusing through it, he had asked the young man, “would you want to be my Chief of Staff?” Mbah was numbed into speechlessness. Today, the man, “this stranger”, is the topmost official in the government house. Couldn’t the governor appoint his blood brother, the leader of his campaign team or any other fellow, even if a dunderhead, into this strategic office, which is the past-time of his fellow governors?
After the seeming Copernican revolution of this writer’s appointment, a few other governors have tried to ape the Enugu example, with one of the appointments hitting the cross-bar. One governor in the north, Kano I presume, appointed an Ibo man his special adviser, so also did the youthful Ekiti governor who appointed an Hausa man as his special adviser. But our people almost put me to shame when I learnt that Ekiti people staunchly resisted the appointment. Since then, I have been asking myself how many people, even our Yoruba people, with our so-called sophistication and civilization, would beat the Enugu example, a people who, rather than exhibiting hostility, have demonstrated their tranquil disposition towards my appointment and residence among them?
Perhaps, because the governor read abroad and is not imbued with the characteristics of his Ibo people? But the Ibo man has been fascinating to this writer since he made Enugu his home. Aside the need for an adjustment to the culture of my host, which, to be candid, has been tasking, Enugu is a splendid place. The first day of the writer’s family’s arrival at the Coal City, his three and half year old kid had prostrated to salute a band of his colleagues. They all burst into a thunderous laugh which embarrassed the little kid so much that he had to cry real good. Extend your hand henceforth for a hand shake to anyone you want to greet, I had to counsel, and every morning, ever since, this ‘alien’ trait of extending his hand for a hand-shake is what is left of my son’s hitherto flat prostration at salutation time while we were in Ibadan. But I make up for that cultural conflict when, each time he returns home from school, he tells us of his friends, Chiagozie, Chinedu and Sochima Arueke and the smattering odinma he mutters when we ask, bawo ni?
___________________ Feel me? Ofu onye ana asi unu abia go. - Ednut Igbo-American . www.airamericaradio.com visit her. Posts: 2447 | From: Mother Earth | Registered: Mar 2001
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tundE Igbo-American, as I have just noted, what is important is what the Igbo can do for themselves rather than what anybody can do for us. Of course another copied text. Could you look for something elsewhere?
___________________ 1) Everything you can imagine is real->Picasso
2) They taught you the praises of their God, and these hosannas, when tuned into your sorrows, gave you the hope of a better world to come-->Patrice Lumumba Posts: 379 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Quote: --------------------------------------- "One governor in the north, Kano I presume, appointed an Ibo (Igbo) man his special adviser, so also did the youthful Ekiti governor who appointed an Hausa man as his special adviser. But our people almost put me to shame when I learnt that Ekiti people staunchly resisted the appointment. Since then, I have been asking myself how many people, even our Yoruba people, with our so-called sophistication and civilization, would beat the Enugu example,..." -------------------------------------------
The writer above couldn't have summerized the Yoruba clanishnees and tribal disposition which I have often talked about on this forum in a better way.
While the Yorubas are often the first to deride others of being 'backward' and 'tribal,' in reality and in practice, the Yorubas are the most backward and tribalised people in Nigeria.
The evidence is overwhelming: from their often tribal voting patten, to their never-live-elswhere, never-taste-food-from-elswhere, never dress-like-others, to never-learn/speak-the-language-of-others attitude, the Yorubas are by and large the greatest threat to the elusive Nigerian 'unity' they often mouth (including on this board) around.
Be it Enugu State or elswhere in Igbo land, its high time the Igbos start giving the Yorubas and their likes from without Igbo land the dose of their medicine by rejecting EVERYTHING non-Igbo. Because it doesn't make sense that while other Nigerians, especially the Igbos, are extending hands of friendship to the Yorubas, the latter are busy loving themselves and themselves only. For nature demands that you never give an olive branch to someone who will take it and turn around to poke nose at you or even spite it as the Yorubas have often done, vis-a-vis their political relationship with us Igbos.
Be it in business, politics or other spheres of life, for us Igbos to move forward as a group, we must first love the things that makes us what we and empower OUR OWN and disregard the SWEET NONSENSE rap of the like the writer above splatter on Nnamani and co.
Posts: 997 | From: Germany | Registered: Mar 2001
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Festus Adedayo should drop the pretense. What is the use of working for the Yoruba and Hausa groomers of Igbo efulefu if you cannot even admit that you have been appointed to play hagiographer? Adebayo is not the only Yoruba hagiographer selected to prepare Nnamani for the job of vice president. The chief Yoruba hagiographer for Chimaroke Nnamani is Segun Dawodu of dawodu.com. The Yoruba recruited those men to polish Nanmani's image and to crush Jim Nwobodo. Now that Nwobodo is neutralized, their mission is to credential Nnamani for his ultimate role as a second fiddle in the politics of BiafraNigeria, the role of sell out vp.
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Personally, I would never have brought that article on this board or any other board. It is pure manipulation.
But if Ndigbo can speak with one voice through the election of their leaders, then our problems will be almost solved.
___________________ 1) Everything you can imagine is real->Picasso
2) They taught you the praises of their God, and these hosannas, when tuned into your sorrows, gave you the hope of a better world to come-->Patrice Lumumba Posts: 379 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: Be it in business, politics or other spheres of life, for us Igbos to move forward as a group, we must first love the things that makes us what we and empower OUR OWN and disregard the SWEET NONSENSE rap of the like the writer above splatter on Nnamani and co.
Point blank!
NwaAro thanks.
The writer above is no doubt in his patronizing blindness, celebrating the fruits of his phyrric victory.
___________________ YA CAIN'T KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN :) Posts: 1182 | From: TEXAS | Registered: Oct 2001
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