I left school (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife) to see a friend in Lagos. There was no prior notice to him that I was coming. Getting to his Mafoluku, Oshodi, ‘face-me-I-face you’ apartment, I discovered that my friend was on an afternoon shift where he worked. His neigbours, an Igbo couple, received me. After a while in their own room-and-a-palour apartment, the wife set before me a table of hot eba and ‘oha’ soup. Momentarily, I forgot the childhood admonition of not eating anything from a stranger. The hunger in me, coupled with the stress of taking “soole” (the act of standing by the road side for a vehicle instead of going to the designated motor park) would not allow me to remember the “danger” of eating a stranger’s food. As I sat down to eat, the woman who served me the food first washed her hand, took a big morsel of the eba, dipped it into the soup and swallowed it. Then she beckoned on me to eat. That was strange. I ate. Then the husband and wife thanked me. Another strange behaviour. The husband thereafter took me to the nearby beer parlour and on our way I asked why his wife had to eat what she served me and here is his explanation: “in our place, once you serve a stranger food, you must first eat from it to show that you did not poison the food”. They were from Ohafia in the present Abia State. Then why did they thank me when they were the ones who entertained me? The man explained: “we thanked you for accepting to eat our food. That shows you love us because you only eat from people you love”.
That was how this Nigeria was wired before the perfidious political tapeworms began to eat into the very fabric of our existence as a people and make communal living impossible, probably forever. That experience demonstrated that on a good day, Nigerians are nice people, who treat one another with love without any recourse to tribe and tongue.
Again, in January this year, a journalist friend introduced me to a group, which engaged in monthly contributions. He told me that he had been in the group for three consecutive years. For those three years, he merely sent his own contributions to the “coordinator” in Abuja and waited for his turn on the roll call. “Oga, the woman works in NOA (National Orientation Agency) in Abuja. I have never met her. Someone introduced me to her and I joined. I only send my contributions and when it is my turn, the woman sends my money to me. She does that the first week of the month. Oga, come and join and your money will be safe”. Those were his words. And I joined. Days later, the woman coordinator called to say that I would be number ten in the group she added me to. The “osusu” is in groups of ten. I thought about it, with the admonition that “eni ajo ba tori e daru ki daba mo maa ko kehin” – one who has suffered the misfortune of a contribution going awry when it is his turn does not apply to be the last in future contributions – playing in my head. Nevertheless, I agreed and I started sending my contributions on a monthly basis to the bank account provided by the coordinator. By the first week in November, the NOA woman called to ask for my account number. Less than one hour after I sent my account details to her, I received a credit alert of an amount of money covering nine months. Whao! That is raw trust, integrity and honesty, coming from a fellow I had never met. She is a Nigerian and a civil servant.
I have always believed that our major problem in this country is not about the masses. Our affliction is leadership. I am not likely to change this line of belief. There is no point persuading me to think otherwise. The last Sunday tragedy at the Next Cash and Carry Supermarket, Abuja and the responses of the masses, confirmed that but for bad and lethargic leadership, Nigerians have not totally lost their humanity. I also stand to be corrected: but for the re-programming of the minds of the average people on the streets by the locust gang of political profiteers, Nigerians love one another, irrespective of tribe, language, creed and other persuasions.
The two accounts above came to the fore when the Abuja supermarket went aflame. The first video of the inferno, depicting how Nigerians were “looting” the wares in the burning supermarket was very disturbing. I was worried, seeing that Nigerians had suddenly gone to a level that even in another man’s calamity, we see opportunities to make ‘profit’. Incidentally too, the narratives, commentaries and posts on social media did not help matters. The video touched my humanity because the majority of the people seen in the clip, “carting away goods”, were people, who, by the gaiety of their dresses, were obviously coming from churches and other places of worship. “Are we this inhuman”? I asked myself. I was greatly sad when I started reading comments about how hypocrisy had taken over the church such that some “saintly” commentators made it look as if the various pastors and other religious leaders were the ones who “preached” to their congregants to go and “loot” the distressed supermarket.
It was therefore a great relief, when the police authorities in Abuja came up with the explanation that contrary to the earlier impression created by the earlier video, the people seen carrying goods from the supermarket were not looters but “Well-meaning members of the surrounding communities (who) came out en masse and helped in evacuating goods and other valuables from the supermarket to a safe location within the area with the supervision of Police Officers of the Command who were on ground”. Hurray! Nigerians are humans after all!
Josephine Adeh, Abuja Police Command spokeswoman, who gave the clarification, disclosed that three bad elements: Ali Audu, aged 18 years; Yahaya Yunusa, aged 20 years; and Sahabi Abubakar, aged 20 years, “who made attempts to cart away goods from the store were promptly arrested”. Kudos! For every twelve disciples, there must always be a Judas Iscariot. Those three unfortunate individuals should be made to face the music.
And for the average Nigerian in the street, the hoi polloi, the very downtrodden fellows, who genuinely came to the rescue of a fellow Nigerian in distress, the Abuja supermarket inferno and the attitudes they displayed should make them to raise their heads high, widen their chests and broaden their shoulders. That is the spirit that birthed this nation before the monsters came. Those Abuja residents, who “came out en masse and helped in evacuating goods and other valuables from the supermarket to a safe location within the area”, have demonstrated to the rogue political class, the leaders who would rather savage rather than salvage, that the hope of a better Nigeria lies with the ordinary man on the street.
I make no bones about the fact that if the political leaders were the ones nature called upon to rescue some goods from the Abuja supermarket, they would have looted the place to its very foundation. This is exactly what Nigerians asked them to do in 2015, when the people trusted them with political power. The Macedonian call from an average Nigerian in 2015 to the present crop of leaders was “come to Aso Rock and rescue our economy”. The enthusiasm of the “Sai Baba” orchestra was palpable. Hopes were raised. Integrity of many was staked. Confidence was built. And expectations were high. Alas! The disappointments that have been the lot of those who put their spirits, souls and bodies into the Buhari project remained unmatched. Never have the people been this disappointed. Never have the people’s hopes and aspirations been this assailed and assaulted. Yet, in far away Paris, France, President Muhammadu Buhari beat his chest and declared that he had “revitalised the economy” Haba! How badly can a leader be detached from his people and from reality?
Even if it were to be self-deceit, the Paris declaration of Buhari is far off the mark. If indeed, President Buhari believed in his Paris paean that, with the present situation of the country, his administration had “revitalised the economy”, then Nigerians will be right to begin to interrogate the sensitivity of the president. There is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria’s economy is comatose because those in authority find it easy to lie to themselves. At a time the activities of Boko Haram were gaining international concerns, our own government in Nigeria claimed, shamelessly too, that the group had been “technically defeated”. Almost six years after the phrase, “technically defeated” Boko Haram found itself into our lexicography, a more dreaded ISWAP, on Thursday last week, launched multiple rockets on Maiduguri and environs, the very day Buhari was to visit the war-torn state. Only God knows what would have happened if a not “technically defeated” group had launched the rockets.
Alarmed at the rate the North is losing grounds to insurgents, Bishop Mathew Kukah of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, days ago gave us the neologism: “Arewanistan”, coined from Afghanistan, as a demonstration of the unabated killings going on in northern Nigeria, which has made the carnage in Afghanistan a child’s play. Yet, this government was called upon to end Boko Haram within the shortest possible time. Unfortunately for the nation, Buhari has not only failed to end the madness of Boko Haram, but he has, through sheer ineptitude, compounded the problem by adding killer herdsmen, bandits and dare-devil kidnappers to the nest of everything evil in the nation.
In all these, however, the hope rekindled in us by the humane conduct of the Abuja residents, who demonstrated the humanity of an average Nigerian by rescuing some goods from the Next Cash and Carry Supermarket, is enough consolation. That conduct has reinforced the belief that if we all collectively got rid of bad leadership, Nigeria is indeed a glorious land.
and then