Fond memories of Yerwa

Although I do not hail from Yerwa (Yerwa being a Kanuri epithet for Maiduguri), my extended stay in that beautiful city would leave me with fond memories that would endure remain in my mind. It was in Yerwa I completed my secondary education and earned my university degree. It was also in Yerwa I made lifelong friends; many of whom I am free to call family. In essence, Yerwa is my home away from home. The story of my life, whenever I decide to write it, cannot be complete without Yerwa; the stunning, radiant capital of Borno State in north-eastern Nigeria. During my sojourn in Yerwa, Borno was all peaceful; it was free of war, violence, commotion and disorder. We lived our lives full of cheers and in good spirits. At no time were people intimidated or terrified as they carried out their day-to-day activities; it was cheers and merriment all the way. In Yerwa, life was full of vigour yet very pacifistic both in the days and in the nights. It is utterly agonizing that today, Yerwa is battling for peace.

My extended stay in Yerwa started when my family relocated to the city on one cold and dusty morning in January 2000. At the time, I never knew I was foreordained to live in Yerwa for almost the next decade of my life. After spending the first few years, I acclimatized and was accultured to all the good things that the city offered as a spur of its moment. I found the locals very sociable and downright neighbourly. The good-humoured and engaging wit of the people was so magnificent that local families customarily brought out and ate their foods in the open, at the good feeling of the outside of their houses, so that every passing stranger is invited and welcomed to join and eat the food. It was only in Yerwa that cooked food loses ownership.

Among the brisk, invigorating particularity of Borno is its geographic multeity (if diversity). I can vividly recollect the streaming, eye-catching geographic spheres of the once peaceful Borno as I travelled through the state on holidays. Without fear or funk, I could take a trip through Borno’s deserts making spectacular dives into Monguno or the nearby historic Kukawa, or much further into Baga where I could catch a glimpse of its famous Doro Fish Market. On other occasions I would swing by Damboa, the Biu Plateau, Hawul, or Kwaya Kusar, where I would appreciate its thrilling geologic formations. I could equally deflect into another part of Borno’s countryside, where I would more easily afford to veer past Pulka, Gwoza, and Limankara as I appreciated all its breath-taking sceneries, doing all these in a peaceful state of mind; without angst or despair.

Blessed with extreme temperatures in both seasons of scorching heat and of the dry and dusty harmattan, neither its heat nor its harmattan could rub off the promising enchantment of being in Yerwa! Whether in moments of heat or in moments of cold, Yerwa was up and doing. The magnanimous gesture of peace that the city offered was enough to cushion its otherwise displeasing climatic conditions. Against all the odds, it felt as though Yerwa was the most tranquilizing of places. It was in Yerwa we had great neighbours in both the two neighbourhoods that my family lived; first in Lagos Street, and second in Damboa Road. Because of our amicable unity with the neighbours, I could, as a teenager, go to the neighbour’s house where we ate, played and prayed together. I could spend several days sleeping in our neighbour’s house without my parents having to worry.

When I was admitted into the University of Maiduguri after completing my secondary education in the same city, I would come in contiguity with yet another wonderful experience. Unimaid, by daily grind, has got a cosmopolitan consuetude. Unimaid could only attract such a demographic because of the peace that Yerwa, its host city accorded. As undergraduate students in Unimaid, the least of our problem was security. Everyone felt much secured irrespective of the time of the day. We walked from Acada to Complex regardless of what time it was. We could return to sleep in the hostels whenever we felt we had exhausted ourselves studying; and we did this without a jot of panic or a whit of cold feet.

But as we all enjoyed the fun of living in a peaceful Yerwa, we could not foresee that even amidst a joyous tranquillity, a deadly predicament that would subsequently exalt a boundless insurgency was in the making. Soon we would hear that some folks had declared war on western education. This disastrous declaration would do nothing but to jilt on Yerwa a calamitous crisis. Like wild fire, it even went far-off, beyond the horizon, and like a climacteric catastrophe, it sparked a war that seems without bounds. Today northern Nigeria and indeed Nigeria, suffers from a fatal ideology that partly sprung up from the once peaceful Yerwa. Yerwa and, by involvement, the north is now an axis of terror. Often, we are engulfed in loathsome and horrible news. We face, without end, the news of either death, destruction of properties, or in most cases, both. Yerwa, and the north, reels in bullets and bombs.

It is harrowing that with a Yerwa turned horrible and/or a northern Nigeria turned vicious, the Nigerian government is still unable to contain the situation. An earlier administration resorted to the utility of conspiracy theories in place of their ineptitudes. The present administration says they technically defeated the enemy. But we still do not have a Yerwa that we want. Perhaps someday soon, there will be in place a prudent, necessary stratagem to help the citizens overcome these dire straits. May Yerwa reclaim its peace; and may Nigeria too, reclaim its peace.

August 10, 2019