HOW IT BEGAN….

'Get out of my house’, my fiancée’s father shouted over his voice range. 

‘People like you should be thrown in prisons to rot, die, then your bodies thrown to the dogs and vultures to dine’. He kept on shouting, standing and seating at the same time, but no one including me knew what had angered him so much that could have caused such turmoil on his daughter’s introductory ceremony, not even Iyabo, my fiancee, could figure out what had went wrong: we looked into each other’s eyes with an expression of, ‘what’s happening?’, but all fell on a great question mark. 

I was still trying to recover from that shock and embarrassment, when his voice reverberated like the roar of three angry lions together. 

‘Are you deaf, I said get out of my house!’ 

I quickly took my cap, which the tailor who sewed it had called, Abetiaja and when I asked him the meaning, in order not to be disgraced when asked by any of my fiancée’s family member, he said: ‘because it takes the shape of a dog’s ear.’ Remembering this fact, I set out to believe that the mystery behind the cap’s name (Abetiaja) had begun to done on me, for I now saw myself as a dog being beaten for defecating on its master’s bed. 

 Failing to figure out the cause of the problem, I thought it was part of the culture to welcome in-laws from other regions with such surprising words and expressions during introductions, (one of the unforgivable mistakes I made; I never really found out about their culture and tradition. I was too drunk with love that I saw it as irrelevant) but it wasn’t, my fiancée’s dad was just….   

Giving his daughter, my fiancée a disappointing look, which was more like a cat looking at the feebleness of a famished rat, he booted out his plaguing voice once more:

 ‘Have you seen what I told you about bringing a husband home from a tribe that’s stupid, selfish? I told you, but you wouldn’t listen, instead you were busy screaming round the house, ‘I love him…, he’s so caring, I love him, he’s so wonderful’ OMOAAKE!!! (Spoilt child)

‘Dad!’ she exclaimed.

Shut up and don’t dad me.

‘Baami, but I love him and he….’

 ‘I said shut up!’

What do you even know about love?  It’s not your fault; you are just like your mother; so adamant, so stubborn, so….’

‘Ehn, baba Iyabo, please, don’t bring me into this’, Iyabo’s mum warned.

‘Ah, you are already into it; in fact you are in the belly…. Your case is by the way. If not for your support, she wouldn’t have brought him into this house. And you knew people from his tribe especially lack respect for elders.’

Before he could say another thing, my dad, who had been entombing his anger, stood up in annoyance. Ever since I was brought to life, until that day, I’d never seen his eyes as wild as it was that day: so wide, and so full of, ‘oh my God an unfathomable rage!’  He looked at me, my fiancée and my mother, and then turned to my fiancée’s father.

 ‘I don’t think I can allow myself to be humiliated by a tribe full of ingrates and self-centered folks, always snuffing the sand just to greet another human being. And did I just hear you call us selfish; I don’t think you know what you are saying. You who betrayed us during the war and….’ 

‘Just shut your mouth and get out of here’, he fired back at my dad. But on the long run we left the house that day, my fiancée’s father forbade her from seeing me ever again. I was completely disturbed and dumb. When we got home, no one spoke to me or about it, we all went straight into our rooms to quench our anger, but mine was unquenchable, not when my heart was involved. I cried all night because my fiancée’s father, before we greeted the house goodbye, had sworn on his grave that he wouldn’t give me her daughter’s hand in marriage. 

I knew it was over between us, unless we ran away, but no, that would have been unwise and unreasonable. But a marriage that hadn’t started but had already fallen apart; surely, it had no root.

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When I woke up the following day, I couldn’t hold it anymore, I went straight to my dad and challenged him for fighting back, instead of settling issues with Iyabo’s father, but he kept quiet and said no word, and that prompted me to ask him for the reason he and my fiancée’s father behaved in such manner that had ruined my life. But he didn’t give a good or satisfactory reason, except to blame it on Biafran war. 

Biafran war!’ I shouted. ‘You ruined my life all because of Biafran war, dad? I was angry and frustrated. I didn’t know what to do. What strangled my heart the most was that I had called Iyabo yesterday and she told me her dad had given her the same excuse; Biafran war!’ 

I went straight to the door, opened it, took a closer look at him then slammed it and got out of the house. I never knew much about the Biafran war, so I wanted to know more; why that bitterness still burnt in their hearts, why they threw away their children’s happiness all because of this war and why they gave the same excuse.

    I went into my car and drove to a nearby library. I went to her historical section, a section that was well equipped with historical books. Some minutes later, I got hold of a book which I found at the rare end of the shelf: it was very dusty and uncared for, that it even caused me to repeatedly sneeze. The condition of the book was so devastating that I almost dropped it, but for the reason I came, I couldn’t; that gave me an eye-opener of how long the war had been fought, yet the guilt still stuck its legs out of the grave after it has been buried and cemented.  

   

    One might think that so many years after the Biafran war came to an inevitable end; a great war of agitation for secession, when the military officer, Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, the then Eastern military governor who received the Easterners with a warm embrace after the Northerners began to massacre them and after when Aguyi Ironsi, the then Nigerian military head of state, who had ruled the country for just seven months was pulled into a bush and murdered by his own men. This was as a result of what I would call a retaliation from the pot of the past that emanated from the previous coup. This first coup which I would call a military coup d’power led to the killing of many top government officials including Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello. That period was a sure ‘things fall apart’ for the whole country. 

The North had had it at the back of their minds that the coup plotters were mainly Igbos except few Yorubas like major Ademoyega, the writer of ‘why we struck’, a book based on the account of the 1966 coup d’état, the remaining top plotters were Igbos. Ironsi failed to execute the coup plotters and also centralized power.  This sprouted another coup about seven months later, and this time the Northerners struck the Igbo military officials and took over, for fear of tribal domination.... as Ahmadu Bello once said during an interview that 'the Igbos are people who love to dominate others’: I perceive this must have led to the Northern alertness towards the coup. Murtala Mohammed’s intention, the officer who happened to be the master-minder of the counter-coup was to lead the Northern region out of Nigerian so as to form a new united nation, but this dream was given its own coup, as it was seriously discouraged.  

  A killing ensued and this was against the Igbos, so many Igbos had to migrate from the Northern region especially, down to their home where Ojukwu received them in open arms. The easterners were not ready to retaliate, as said by Ojukwu in the Daily times newspaper, but he wasn’t happy with the events that occured. And he made it clear that he wasn’t in for retaliation. But unfortunately, a particular turn out led to a serious bitterness, which was the appointment of Gowon, a thirty-one year old most senior military officer in the Northern region, but not the most senior in  Nigeria, as the military head of state. This was like a slap on the face of Ojukwu who thought it as unfair, and in turn plotted the plan of session to form a New England, a paradise found, called the ‘Republic of Biafra’. Even after a peace talk was held in Ghana by General Joseph A. Ankrah, but like that famous song was sung, ‘Que Sera Sera’ (whatever will be will be), the peace-talk fell dead and the war began. This showed that both the North and East were already at dagger’s end, and with hearts that had been bitterly torn, the war began.

  One would wonder where the Yoruba trauma came in, but actually this never ensued until during the early period of the civil war, when Obafemi Awolowo, the great Yoruba leader betrayed the trust of the Igbos by corroborating with Gowon to destroy that plan of secession and instead of leading the Yorubas out of Nigeria as earlier agreed by him and Ojukwu, he fell unto the temptation of power and fame and abandoned the task. This was because he had a high hope of ruling Nigeria one day and after his placement as the highest ranked civilian in the military government, his plan seemed inevitable. That really pointed me to the reason why my dad had called the Yorubas ‘the betrayals’.  

  One thing I had failed to figure out earlier was the reason the Igbos were been noted as selfish and self-centered. But as I read on, I found out that before the war, there had recently been a discovery of oil in the Eastern region and the amount of money being realized from it already at that time was very tempting, as it ran on the poster of that same song, Que sera sera, that ‘a little knowledge could be a deadly thing’, Gowon and Awolowo knew if the Igbos had seceded, they would be left with 'peanuts' to survive and the Igbos will have an Eden of their own, so they rose arms against them to bring them forcefully back into Nigeria. This act of secession after the discovery of oil made me realize the reason why Iyabo’s dad called my father and our tribe selfish men.  

   To be more practical and frank, all the tribes in Nigeria all had a selfish attitude towards the other and the act of betrayal all ran across the country, since so many military officers betrayed one another during coups in the military era. As widely agreed that the human mind is a tabula rasa, thus the knowledge of this acts are not inborn but are being inherited as one grows older and older: as far as a human being from any tribe could betray another tribesman, it could therefore be assumed that such a human could even betray his own tribal skin, in as much as those things that can lead to betrayal, and greediness, such as wealth, power and fame are there as point of admiration and temptation, no tribal mark is to be trusted as saints or peace makers. Therefore if we hold this as a benchmark to call each other names, then each tribe should be much more afraid of its own people for fear of being betrayed due to selfishness or greediness, ‘For a known enemy is better than an enemy-friend.’

 When asked who those blown away by this dusty wind of war were, I would say the innocent. For the sky cannot be darkened in the day except there’s war in-between the moon and the sun, which is an ecllipse and this doesn’t affect the sky, the sun or the moon, it affects the earth. Juxtaposing this illustration with wars and clashes, I would say one of these innocent victims whose lives were hung on the cross of wars are the children. The children who don’t know how and why the fight had started in the first place, but yet they are the ‘collateral damages’ of the wars (as they said back then during the Biafran war). If asked again, I would say we all (as far as you are not on that round table when the war is being conclusively planned) are the innocent; both old and young, even the soldiers who were shooters, are all innocent victims of wars.

   Using Iyabo and myself as concrete examples, we were both the debris of that war, since so many years after it was buried, it still had its two legs protruding from its grave; we still suffered its full wrath, by forfeiting our marriage, and breaking the bow and arrow fired at us by cupid: our parents who took it upon themselves to destroy our love were also collateral damages, because they were only eating from the harvest of those pains which that war had, for so many death of time planted in their minds, making them glorify the spooky misconception that a tribe and all who bear its tribal mark were wicked and untrustworthy. 

   Even the wars of terrorism and killings happening presently in the country are all borne by the innocent victims who either were in their homes resting, in the church or mosque praying to their God, or even at work, trying to get how to feed their families, but are unfortunately swallowed up by the whale of deadly bombs and massacre. The innocents are truly the collateral damages of all wars and clashes. 

Another thing my fiancée’s dad said was that we Igbos lack respect for elders. I had to go into the culture and tradition section of the library to search for a book related to that, and when I found one, I explored it. To my greatest surprise, I discovered that it was not as a result of war or any other war related issue, but as a result of cultural differences. The Yorubas don’t bow or shake hands with an elderly man, but the Igbos do, likewise the Igbos do not prostrate but either bow or shake hands.  This is just a cultural barrier which one has to know when encountering someone from another tribe. As an Igbo man, you cannot meet a Yoruba elderly man and stretch forth your hands, it would be counted as a sign of disrespect, even with the fact that one is of an Igbo origin; one has to prostrate. This also applies to a Yoruba to an Igbo man; if not, you may be made a jesting tool and also with a Hausa man. An adage says, ‘if you are in Rome, you behave like the romans, same applies to this’.

If we say we are one people, one nation, we should portray and uphold it. 

There is only one fuel that makes the vehicle of wars move with time, which is hatred. This feeling creates the pathway for refreshing past happenings and creating new sores. Holding unto pain, guilt, retaliation, etc. are as a result of this deep hatred. As far as hatred is visible (a feeling which didn’t start now, but had started a long time ago) and such feelings of revenge still roams our minds, then peace and unity will always be a fruit in a lost paradise.

 The only way to end this war of hatred and tribal repugnance is by creating an atmosphere that’s free from plot and tribal-superiority: it is only when this is done that we would have a place free from war, free from terrorism and free from broken relationships. For that’s the only time we will love truly and see the good in others. Anything apart from this is just a continuation of pain, tribal oppression, war and at the end destruction. Also, one must not forget to give due respect to each other’s culture, for that would solve a lot of misgivings about one’s attitude. 

  Assembling a great place of peace begins with the family’, since the family is the smallest unit through which a community is formed. If we indoctrinate our children with what is right, true and what true sense of unity means, they will stand for what is just and even better than what is true or its equivalence. 

‘If we all pick up a broom and sweep our surroundings, then the whole world would be clean.’ Every step to make this nation a place where no one will be scared of his neighbor begins with us as individuals. In order to prevent chaotic historical events drenched in brutality and misgivings from rising up from its necropolis, we have to love one another with a complete sense of respect.

Mide Benedict