Column No.6: Plateau killings: What is behind our being behind?

When I first began to write my column, some 3-odd years ago, I began with a message that explained the name of the column itself (use your ‘number six’, dear reader), some deep reflection, and the declaration that it would sport a general interest piece every week. I like to think I almost kept to my word. Almost. You see, pound for pound the most focused-upon topic since I began – over 150 articles ago – is violence. Banditry, insurgency, robbery, murder, kidnapping, ‘one chance’, you name it and I have written about it. Please do not judge or blame me, I simply reflect the times. Then most recently, there’s the Plateau State massacre that could only have been perpetrated by murderous criminals. How is it that in the Nigeria of today, we can still have anomalies like that? It boggles the mind, to be honest.

For whatever reason, when things like this occur, I flash back to a time in my life when everything was positively idyllic. Let’s say 2002 in Kaduna, one unforgettable day in particular, as I was setting out to the post office in the city centre to drop off my latest art samples to Marvel’s Submissions Editor, I couldn’t get a bus. Loads of people were walking on foot, while some gathered in clusters, with worried looks on their faces. A bit weirded out, I walked back home, only to hear that riots had broken out. Many lives were lost, and families and friends were torn apart as a move by Christians to Kaduna South, and Muslims to Kaduna North from the South, began. My Kaduna – my Nigeria, really – was falling apart. A small consolation was that some Christian friends who stayed in certain areas, like my mine, felt safe and didn’t move.

So, while the violence raged in other parts, my friends and I would play soccer on the street, and exchange VHS tapes, and bootleg VCDs. The concept of hating someone because of his ethnicity or religion, frankly, seemed incredulous to us. But a fellow teen, who had moved to my neighbourhood a couple of years earlier, would provide me with my first, bare-faced encounter with bigotry. Assuming we somehow were all Muslim, playing soccer, this new guy made a clear call for us to ‘go and attack the infidels who lived down the road’. We all looked at each other most comically, with puzzled expressions, after which we burst into laughter, then sternly told him to get lost.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, my heartbreak would worsen with the appearance of labels and slurs from both ‘sides’. My perfect Kaduna was now in smoking ruins, and close-knit families and bosom friends would part ways, not because they stopped loving each other, but because it was the safest thing to do. After that end of innocence, I faced university with cautious optimism. Many old friends were there, as Zaria was a stone’s throw from Kaduna, figuratively speaking. Many new friendships were begun as well, many of them remaining till today, some even stronger. The best part of that part, is that none of those friendships, new or old, are coloured by religion or ethnicity. It seemed to some us who noticed, that the Kaduna we knew, loved, and lost, wasn’t really gone. It couldn’t be gone, for the simple reason that it actually resided in our hearts, and so was hard to kill.

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The almost two decades I spent as a journalist after all that, showed me things which many cannot even begin to experience in a whole, robust lifetime. I had front row seats to riots, violent attacks, concerts by superstars, movie premieres, and all kinds of generation-defining moments. I also got to regularly interview some of the biggest newsmakers in Nigeria, during moments when they had the most chutzpah or none at all. It was a Nigeria that, while flawed, still reminded me of my Kaduna of old, even if it wasn’t a mirror image. But a body can only take so much for such a long time. All I could wonder, is how could a nation’s peoples be so backward, so behind when the world is moving forward?

While I process my memories of Kaduna’s loss of innocence, I struggle to understand what could possibly motivate anyone or group of persons to carry out the orgy of violence on innocent citizens. If we have failed as human beings, then why should our government follow suit? Yes, I have seen the condolence messages, I have even listened to the interviews with politicians spewing hard rhetoric, and also read the heartbreaking stories of survivors in newspapers. Enough of that, please. I mean it. We need real action from political leaders, and those of our security agencies. Not only is it tragic, it is embarrassing that such carnivals of animalistic violence still occur on our shores. Why are we still lagging behind? Let’s leave all that behind. It’s going to be 2024 in a few days, for God’s sake. Let’s act like it.