There really isn’t much hope for my father’s generation in terms of relinquishing tribal sentiments. Our only hope is our youth.
When
I was 17, a tall, handsome doctor fell in love with me. He left
Nigeria, shortly after, for his residency in America, and proceeded to
prove how much he was still in love with me by dispatching mushy
Hallmark cards every week – to my university during semester, and to my
family home during holidays. Eventually, my father could bear it no
more. He summoned me for a tête-à-tête. Along with his address, the
smitten doctor always scribbled his name on the colourful envelopes,
hence, my father could detect his tribe. “You must never get involved
with a Yoruba man,” my father warned. “They are wicked.”
I didn’t
blame my father for those sentiments. Like most Igbos, he felt bitter
and marginalised. And there was nothing much they could do except murmur
and rant because they had already fought for secession … and lost. Even
though the official verdict after the Nigeria-Biafra civil war was: no
victor; no vanquished.
Throughout our childhood, my parents had
regaled me and my siblings with a stream of “during the war” tales. Of
the endless traffic when every creature in our hometown, Umuahia, was
fleeing the imminent arrival of the Nigerian army. After hours of
inching along and swallowing his thirst, my father reached for a rusty
can lodged in the mud, scooped from a roadside puddle and drank. Of how
my mother didn’t have much to show for her years of schooling because
the soldiers who invaded Oguta ripped her books to shreds. Of when the
war ended and the then finance minister, Obafemi Awolowo, declared that
each Igbo was to receive £20, irrespective of how much was in their
accounts. Awolowo was Yoruba.
But something else happened after
the war. Aware that venomous tribal sentiments were behind most of
Nigeria’s post-independence troubles, our government hatched an idea.
Special schools in every state. These would be the best. Fees would be
subsidised. They would also have a quota system that ensured as many
tribes as possible represented in their enrollment. Therefore, children
from the hinterlands of every region would have the opportunity to mix.
Lured by the high academic standard on offer, parents rushed to register
their wards for the super-competitive exams into the federal government
colleges.
At 10, I left home to attend FGGC Owerri. Over the next
six years, I shared the same dormitories, ate at the same tables,
played pranks with classmates from various ethnic groups. I discovered
that not all Hausas concealed daggers with which to stab Igbos, in their
underwear; that not all Yorubas were cantankerous traitors. The
curriculum also forced me to learn jaw-breaking phrases in strange
Nigerian tongues. Outside language classes, speaking “vernacular” was
banned. And during morning assembly, all 1,500 students stood erect and
belted out our school anthem:
The guns of battle were all silent
The smoke of destruction blown away
The lips of war were sealed
And the scarring almost healed
When our school was born to herald a new day.
Nigeria, we all make thee a promise
To serve thee with strength of heart and brave
To build and not break down
Bury quarrels in the ground
So that those who died may not have gone in vain.
Eventually,
the brainwashing was complete. Apart from when my parents referred to
Abimbola as “your Yoruba friend”, and Rahila as “your Hausa friend”, I
hardly remembered any differences between us. With this mentality, I
applied to the University of Ibadan. Not only was UI widely acknowledged
as “the first and the best”, but it was far away enough from Umuahia to
allow me spread my wings without parental interference.
My father went ballistic. UI was in Yoruba territory.
“They
are wicked,” he insisted. Plus, the city had a history of turmoil. Even
my mother had fled UI, following the election riots of 1965, eventually
completing her degree in the Igbo-dominated Nsukka University.
His advice went in my ear and did a U-turn right out. Like most teenagers, I was sure that my father knew nothing about life.
It
turned out that he was right; Ibadan was the headquarters of
spontaneous civil unrest. And since I was in the midst of many who never
got the opportunity to attend a “Unity School” like I did, Ibadan was
also my matriculation into the intriguing world of Nigerian tribalism.
I
met Igbos convinced that everyone speaking Yoruba in the vicinity was
conspiring against them. And Yorubas provoked whenever an Igbo dared to
contest a school election. And Igbos deserting Yoruba girlfriends in
favour of Igbo brides. And Yorubas horrified when offered an Igbo meal.
It was all quite pitiful.
As Nigeria celebrates 50 years of
independence from Britain on 1 October, I’m thankful for the privilege
of attending a federal government college; of learning that we all are
basically the same. I’m also more determined to keep the promise I made
to my country all those years ago: to build and not break down.
The
smitten doctor has never been back to Nigeria. Last I heard, he was
expecting a child from the Yoruba wife he met there in America. Then, in
two lavish ceremonies in 2009, my sister got married to a – gasp! –
Yoruba man. With my father’s approval!
Had the passing of time led
him to finally forgive? Of course not. There really isn’t much hope for
his generation in terms of relinquishing tribal sentiments. Our only
hope is our youth. My father was probably just so eager for his
daughters to get married that even if either of us had dragged in an
orangutan and presented it as our groom-to-be, he would have approved.
Ms. Nwaubani,
author of the award-winning book, I Do Not Come To You By Chance,
published this piece first in the Guardian of London. She is
re-publishing it now against the background of the recent contentions on
the unending, and often fractious, disputation on the national question
in Nigeria
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