A Weekend in Maiduguri. Seriously

So now in Nigeria it’s official. The surest way to keep away from danger, is not to go anywhere near it. As for answering the call of duty, you can only do that when you are alive, right? And, going by the audio-visuals coming out of the place, Maiduguri is currently one of the most dangerous cities in Nigeria. This was why despite the pressing need to do so, I had put off traveling to Maiduguri for nearly six months.

But even the right to be afraid, like other civil rights, does have its limits. And, anyway, there’s no such thing as untimely death; it comes at it’s own time, in it’s own way. And when it’s time, no official paraphernalia of power, nor any amount of precaution can stop it. If the dead could talk, Malam Umaru Musa Yar’adua would confirm that.

Oh yes, to take necessary risks, you need to embolden yourself, draw inspiration from wherever you can get it. In my own case, I even drew some from a Time Magazine story I read several years ago on Mother Theresa, the Albanian-born Nun of Indian nationality and Nobel laureate who passed away in 1997. According to the story, Mother Theresa, who was a nurse by training, was dressing the wound of a patient and assisted by another junior nurse. The wound was oozing so much stench that at a point the junior nurse could not stand it any longer and she asked Mother Theresa if she was not herself disturbed by the stench. Mother Theresa replied: “If you are so offended by the smell from the wound, think of what the poor fellow himself must be feeling”.

That’s it! If I could not travel to Maiduguri for a day or two, what about my brothers and sisters that are stuck there for life? And so on hazy Friday afternoon two weeks ago, I found myself in an Arik air flight along with over 100 other passengers. The graceful Boeing 737 airliner was nearly filled to capacity. So in spite of everything people still travel to Maiduguri in such great numbers daily! Plus, there is actually another daily flight operated by the IRS airline.

We arrived the Maiduguri International Airport on time and like all airports in the country, it was drab and antiquated. As we drove to my lodgings with my nephew who came to meet me at the airport, I tried to sound cheerful. But trying to be cheerful in Maiduguri, was like trying to clap with one hand.

A few meters from the airport, along the Ahmadu Bello way that leads to the city, we came across the first of a series of military checkpoints that are scattered all over the ancient city. Maiduguri has a population of just over two million people, is a home to a multitude of people from diverse cultural backgrounds and in the North, is second only to Kano in terms of the volume of it’s commercial activities. It’s diversity cuts across national boundaries, with a sizable percentage of it’s population comprising migrants from neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

My last visit to Maiduguri was approximately a year ago, just before the general elections of 2011 which now seems to be the spark that ignited the current inferno. On that visit I saw Maiduguri in all it’s socio-economic and cultural grandeur. In spite of it’s harsh climate for most of the year, Maiduguri still exuded enough charm and romance that could make the unwary visitor to forget where he was coming from. Ultra conservative and proud to the point of arrogance, the city basked in the glory of the history of it’s association with the Kanem Bornu Empire, which is possibly the oldest of the empires that predates present day Nigeria. It’s people walk, talk and act with a self confidence and an assurance that flow almost instinctively. A wealthy man is not complete unless he owns a mansion fit for a king. In some cases, you can almost tell which trader is a migrant and which one is native by the way they interact with the customers or clients.

But that was then. As we drove through checkpoints, roadblocks and diversions, it was easy to see that Maiduguri has lost it’s swagger and it’s now desperately fighting for it’s soul.

I asked my nephew to stop by a super market around a place called Monday Market so that I could buy some sweets and chocolates for his children. Most of the stores were half empty, and chocolates were not part of their priority. But we got by, somehow.

By the time we got to my nephew’s house, I had lost my appetite completely. It was already 3.00pm, which ment we had only about three hours to find me a hotel and for my nephew to return home before the long running curfew started at 7.00pm. As I drifted off into an uneasy sleep that night, intermittent gunfire rang out from around the city.

The following Saturday morning, we left the hotel as early as nine. We visited a few relations, and then went into a risky tour of the city, with emphasis on the most notorious trouble spots.

We went to violence-prone areas such as Abbaganaram, Kaleri, Hausari, Shehuri, bulunkutu, Gamboru, Meduguri ward, Awasulum. Apart from the high incidence of violence, a common feature with all those neighbourhoods is that they are all densely populated, a setting that makes law enforcement much more difficult.

There was hardly any policemen anywhere, the soldiers themselves appeared to be as scared as they were scary. Every human being expects to die at some point, but Maiduguri dwellers expect to be killed any moment. This grim expectation applies to everyone: the ordinary folks and the security agents, in equal measure. To compliment their roadblocks, the soldiers now drive around the town with a recklessness that was calculated to intimidate, antagonize and even humiliate other road users. Lately there are reports that the soldiers have started house to house search for their targets. What criteria they use to identify which is enemy house and which is not nobody knows. What is very clear though is that for the inhabitants of Maiduguri, life can hardly get worse.

The damage that the curfew is doing to the economy can only be imagined. Any breadwinner that is unable to “ win” any bread for his family by 4.00pm faces the humiliating prospects of returning home to confront a hungry household, because by mid afternoon life becomes frantic and the only thought on people’s mind is how to get home; hundreds of people have been known to be forced to spend the night wherever the curfew hour catches up with them. With electricity supply of not more than two megawatts, it is hard to find the right adjective that can capture the exact condition under which Maiduguri inhabitants live. Humiliating, dehumanizing, desperate, siege, occupation, anything the dictionary can throw up can only provide an idea of what those hitherto proud, dignified people are going through at the moment.

But they do have reason to hope. They have a governor who, though supported by the very unpopular Ali Modu Sherrif (SAS), is worlds apart from him. Mr. Kashim Shettima is a banker by profession; on the day I arrived Maiduguri I learned that he had left for Egypt and Thailand in search of suitable technology for agricultural purposes. I didn’t need to see him, because some four weeks earlier, on the day the supreme court validated his election, Governor Shettima had held an interactive session with some media practitioners among which I was privileged to be. It is perhaps too early to pass any kind of judgement on him. But if raw intelligence has anything to do with successful administration of a state, then Shettima is certainly a revelation. That he has successfully detached his regime and personality from those of his predecessor ( whom many people, rightly or wrongly, blame for the current security situation in the sate) is in itself quite a big feat. In Maiduguri there is cautious optimism that if anyone could pull Borno out of the present crisis, it is Kashim Shettima.

Meanwhile, one the last places I visited before leaving Maiduguri was the stupendous mansion of SAS. That too is something which obscenity can only be imagined. And all for nothing, because apart from the security personnel guarding the mansion, the only other occupants were spiders, rats and cockroaches.