By Uthman Abdulrahman
If I could drag my memories out of the shadows, out of the umbra of terror cast upon it like an immovable stone and spread those memories out like tarbama (mat) of an ardent bed-wetting child, languishing out in the compound square- waiting to catch the smiling face of the sun and the tender current of the air so it becomes dry and winds off its killer scent.
If only I could spread my memories thus, I’ll remember those days when mayhem hadn’t birthed chaos and bathed with hot tears that etched indelible marks down my cheeks, marks you see now and call tribal!
Blankness. Oh finally! Remember fourteen years four months ago, back then in my hometown, Balambai-20km due East of Chibok? Remember then when even my height had not reached the altitude of the rope around the waist of Nana’s Abaya?
Those days when faces of women and children were filled with glee not gloom as they chattered and giggled down the roads even though the roads hosted much more of goats, sheep and cows’ hooves rather than bikes, cars and lorries’ wheels. Those days when men stepped down their heavily spiced Suya with fresh Fura de Nunu at twilight, with their liver oscillating peacefully on their bile-ducts at natural frequencies. Those days, you see, are long buried in sand and covered with stones. Now, mayhem had been delivered of a fierce baby boy. Chaos.
I’m sure you still can’t relate. I don’t expect you to. How could you when you’ve been going to places and planning as if you owned your body? As if a bullet can’t stray into your skull in the next split-second? As if where you are going and where you are coming from can’t get blown up before you hear the horrific screams of women and children that ‘they have come again’ ? How could you? When no one; recognized or unrecognized could possibly walk up to you and whomp your innocent head with a gun bottom so hard that you pass out immediately?
Just last night when I unwrapped the blue white black newspaper around the fried Soya beans and glanced over it, I saw a tragic reflection. I saw a piece written by some witty Adams Abubakar that entailed how bizarre things were in the mid 1990s in Columbia; that time, any knock on your gate would almost mean one thing; they have come for you, to kidnap.
A resonance with Balambai and its environs! If it were you in your ignorant town-shocked, you wouldn’t be able to dilate your eyes wide enough. But look at me, I’ve felt beyond this pain of ‘human burglary’. I lazily tossed the Soya beans into my mouth and munch.
Being in Balambai almost cost me my sanity. Home, school, road, police stations- no safe haven. The ‘human burglars’ could extract you even from the 7th layer of the soil when they came with their dreaded weapons expunged of empathy to its last iota. I had to leave. Thoughts that my life is too precious made me leave.
To a place where my life was not seen as precious at all. Where my kith I thought could help stoke my back, armed their palms with thorns, labelled me and my kind as foes. Who do I tell my tales?
North, East, West, South- nowhere is safe if you’re from Balambai or its environs. It begs the question if you’re truly in your country or you’re a decent human being at all.
Terrific tales by sombre moonlight.
***
EPILOGUE
According to an analysis carried out about this time last year by Yusuf Akinpelu, a data journalist at Premium Times Newspaper; through armed banditry over the last one decade;
(i) over 210, 000 people have been internally displaced.
(ii) 17, 283 people have been killed by armed millitants
(iii) over #7 billion has been killed to kidnappers as ransom
in the Northern states.
***
It’s a gross fallacy to say all northerners are bandits or even to say all Fulanis are terrorists. A terrorist is inhumane and would wreck havoc wherever he’s sent, regardless of what geographical zone it is or where he came from. Also, we can’t afford to let inter-ethnic friction strip off the humanity and ‘Nigerianess’ in us at this critical stage. Shasha crisis in February 11 through 12 exposed xenophobic traits that we must nip in the bud. The Hausas got awfully way more than they bargained for. Let’s up our thinking to see a common enemy and not one particular ethnic group. Let’s offer support in any way we can to fellow Nigerians. Let’s be one Nigeria. Let’s be great!
