The place was full to the brim and the debate was vigorous. The debate was about whether Nigeria was an African superpower and how an area that was able to produce incredible works of art like the Ife sculptures could end up the way it is today.
The panel included Father Kukah, who had interesting stories to tell about the religious conflict in Kaduna. One was about his sister who had a shop and was close to an elderly Muslim neighbour. When Christians were about to be attacked, the old man asked her to hide all her goods in his house. So when her shop got burnt down, she didn't lose much. But then the Muslim's house got burnt down in a revenge attack by "Christians" and she lost everything.
Father Matthew Hassan Kukah, and indigene of Kaduna State, was subsequently named Bishop of Sokoto in 2012. Before Jos in Plateau State took over as city most frequently mentioned in the context of "communal violence", Kaduna City, capital of Kaduna State, held that infamous position.
Father Kukah is one of many prominent Nigerian religious and sociocultural leaders who work very hard to end the scourge of communal violence. The story he told of the closeness between regular Muslims and Christians (his sister and her elderly neighbour) is one that deserved wider attention in the Federal Republic. The story he told of the senselessness of ultimately self-defeating nature of the violence should also have found a wider audience in Nigeria.
But nobody knows about it. The nature of the discourse in Nigeria is to loudly trumpet any and all news (even if unconfirmed) that contributes to sustaining the state of oft-violent distrust, division and dysfunction, and to downplay and minimize anything that would or could create a rallying point for the super-majority of Nigerians who would work to end the dysfunction if only there was an available route towards doing so.
We Nigerians (and Africans) often complain that the foreign media tends to highlight negative news about Africa, and to downplay positive news. We argue that the relentless negativity contributes to the sustenance of the the conditions that create the negative outcomes.
But we ourselves tend to highlight the negative about ourselves, and about each other.
I am not talking about criticism, constructive or otherwise. The only way anything can improve is to realize what about ourselves needs improvement ... but that implicitly acknowledges that we are able to improve. The problem with the negativity is that it is built on the notion that ... the best way to explain it is to revert, once again, to what we easily understand, non-African racism towards Black Africans. The racist theory that Black people are inferior presupposes that we cannot possibly be as good as anyone else, that we are automatically and irredeemably .... fill in the blank with negatives.
When certain Nigerians tout the division of the country as the "only solution" to our problems, or when people say that the Amalgamation was the source of all of our problems, there is an inherent belief that it is not possible to live in the same country with the other Nigerians, that it is not possible for us to live with them in the same country. Because they are just inherently and irredeemably ... fill in the blank with negatives.
I have had conversations with people where they start out agreeing with me in terms of critiquing the problems, but somewhere along the line, while I am still trying to analyze how we can all come together to solve the problem, the other person(s) branch off toward blaming another ethnic nation, geographical region, "geopolitical zone", or even senatorial zone for the problems. Even within a single town or city, the finger gets pointed at a socioculturally distinct neighbour (Ife and Modakeke, Aguleri and Umuleri, K-dere and B-dere, Zangon and Kataf), who is somehow to blame for the lack of jobs, the scarcity of land, and any other problems.
I know from experience that if you push through and continue arguing your case, those person(s) you are discussing with swing back from the knee-jerk response of blaming some other sociocultural group, and rejoin your analysis of what we could do together to fix the problem. However, the end of the conversation invariably involves both you and them concluding that it is unlikely that the problem will be solved in the real world.
As I've asserted in prior posts, this sort of negative political reaction to each other is the product of a sea of information in which we all swim.
Negativity, Violence and Shock Value sell newspapers and keep eyes attached to television sets. But while this is true of the commercial media everywhere, the overall nature of the discourse in most of the world's successful countries is to magnify and trumpet the best part of their national soul, and to sweep the less honourable parts of their national history under the carpet. Even what purports, in this age of political correctness, to be a less patriotic and hagiographic version of their history still rather underplays much of less edifying parts of their past; and much of what is presented as the "progress" of the present could be interpreted rather differently if one took a less rose-tinted view of events.
We do the opposite. We bury the best parts of our Federal Republic's shared soul, and overplay the worst parts of us. We not only treat the violent fringe as if it were the "normal" Nigeria, but go out of our way from an institutional and governmental point of view to facilitate the actions of the violent fringe as though we are not supposed to be otherwise, or rather cannot be otherwise. That is it right there. The idea that this, the violence, is who we are, and that it is not possible not to be this way.
But I didn't have to hear Father Kukah's story to know that the truth of Nigeria is quite different. In fact, while incidents of mass violence are rightly given wide coverage in the news, at any given point in time, most of Nigeria and Nigerians are not in fact subject to any violence.
Father Kukah's statement about violence and reprisal violence in the City of Kaduna, reminded me of a television report about two men who had previously been leaders of rival gangs of "youths" in Kaduna, gangs that attacked neighbourhoods of people from the sociocultural group of the rival gang (similar to what has been happening in the City of Jos since 1999). It was one of the few reports I had seen that didn't portray the violence as being one-sided.
These gangs are made up of youths who are unemployed, poor and prone to inducement by political factions. Indeed, a lot of violence in Nigeria is carried out by starving boys and youths who loot the homes and businesses of wealthier "foreigners" (i.e. non-indigenes). One of the more unfortunate aspects of our shared human history repeats itself: when poverty and economic uncertainty rise in any country (even in those so sure of their supposed "enlightenment"), the tendency is for gangs of poor, unemployed youths to see wealthy "foreigners" as having taken opportunities that should have gone to locals.
Of course, if we looked at it this way, we would have been obliged to fix the economic problems of our cities. But now that we just conclude it is ethnic or religious violence, we can throw up our hands and say there is nothing we can do about it.
What really struck me about the story is the two former gang leaders working together to end the violence in the city is how little coverage they received in the Nigerian media. They should be household names, but I only learned of them briefly and only from a foreign media source, not the Nigerian media.
It is time we gave greater prominence to stories of the good people, at least enough so that our people know there is another side to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Here are links to previous posts I have made about stories that we should tell louder:
THE STORIES WE IGNORE An excellent feature by Tadaferua Ujorha for Daily Trust.
FIGHTING FOR PEACE An excerpt from a Weekly Trust essay by Carmen McCain about an old man who died doing the right thing, but who has been forgotten while we glorify and give national honours to the men and women responsible for creating the situation that killed this good man.
WE STAND TOGETHER Three articles.
GOOD DEEDS IN CENTRAL NIGERIA Self-explanatory (I hope the embedded links are still live).
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