I was walking across the city when I bumped into the St. Patrick’s Day parade, where men marched in kilts blowing bagpipes and high school bands performed as they walked down Fifth Avenue. The parade is an old New York tradition, but having never seen it before, it reminded me of cultural events in Nigeria, when people dress in “traditional” costumes and dance “traditional” dances to celebrate history and culture. As is typical in America, such “traditions” have become commercialized, and after the parade in New York is characterized by young people stumbling around wearing green beads and drinking green beer, but being of Irish ancestry myself, I rather enjoyed the thought that there is tradition I belong to and can claim if I want to. This week, I am hosting a guest column by Dr. Godwin Jeff Doki, a senior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Jos, who has written about peace building using theorature of the Tiv and Fulani. I hand the rest of this column over to him. -Carmen
It is lamentable that Africa, one of the poorest continents in the world, has become a theatre of wars which have wreaked devastating consequences in terms of considerable loss of human life and suffering, disruption of economic activities and the destruction of infrastructural facilities. There is no consensus about the root causes of the conflicts on the African continent but scholars of Peace Studies tend to agree that these conflicts are caused by generalized poverty, ethnic tensions, corrupt and incompetent governments, mass unemployment, social exclusion, population explosion and competition for scarce resources. And this is only a partial list. But can economic prosperity, cooperation and integration take place in such a hostile setting? This is the point where Literature plays a significant role.
I conceive of literature here in a broader way than is conventionally allowed.The term Literature includes all genres of publicly communicated written or unwritten matter of a society. In other words,literature, in its broadest sense, includes essays, biographies, addresses, orations and many others.PioZirmu and Ngugiwa Thiong’o have used the term ‘Orature’ to denote songs, poems and plays in oral form and the term Literature for same in their written forms. Take this Tiv war song as a specimen:
SINGER: Today if any tribe shall test our will
CHORUS: Surely we must die
SINGER: Today if any tribe shall test our will
CHORUS Surely we must die
Implicit in this song is a strong sense of unity and brotherhood. In these lines the point is made that a particular people are prepared to lay down their lives for the common good. Here is a statement about a collective cause; a genuine desire to die as one people. But most importantly, we find in this song a demonstration of the true values of African life. In this regard,Orature becomes the incontestable reservoir of the values, sensibilities, esthetics, and achievement of traditional African thought and imagination. The truth is that Orature is the tap root of African life and imagination. The various songs, stories and proverbs in Africa have the capacity not only to weld different tribes together but also to give them a common sense of belonging. The same thing could be said of written literature.
There are obvious lessons and experiences one derives from literature, both in the oral and written forms. The songs and stories of a particular society impart certain lessons as well as entertain. Besides, they are carriers of culture and could serve as a unifying factor. For instance, there is this myth about the Fulanis and Tivs of Nigeria. According to this myth, a long snake bared its back as a bridge across the River Congo for the ancestors of the Fulani and the Tiv to cross. After the Fulani and Tiv had crossed the river, the long green snake upturned and all the other tribes that followed the Tiv and Fulani perished in the river.
The other myth about the two tribes goes like this: the Fulani and the Tiv both have one father who was a pastoralist and cattle rearer. One day the father called his two children into his living room and told them that he was growing old and intended to share the herd of his cattle among them. Accordingly, Fulani was given his own share of his father’s cattle and his brother, Tiv, was equally given his own share.
It turned out that Tiv was a man who had a huge appetite for meat and so ate all the cows in his custody. When three years had elapsed and their father called on them to present the proceeds from their cows, Tiv shamefully confessed that he has eaten his own cows. It is from this incident that the Tiv people are referred to derogatorily as MUNCHI (meaning we have eaten) by the Fulanis. It is important to stress that this myth and joke have since united the two tribes and has established a joking relationship between them. Needless to say, the myth has become a very potent tool for the resolution of conflict among the Tiv and the Fulani. This myth, more than anything else, explains why the Tiv and Fulani have until recently lived peacefully.
Butcontemporary events have proved that theTivs and Fulanis have long forgotten their mythic common ancestry.In Benue state especially the two groups have engaged in fierce battles withdevastating consequences. In the past, the two groups had lived harmoniously recognizing their differences. For example, the Fulanis are dominantly pastoralists while the Tivs are, in the main, agrarian farmers. Contrary to common opinion, the conflict between these two groups haslittle to do with competition for grazing or farm lands. So what precisely is the problem?The truth is that while all these factors are partly responsible for the conflict, it is also important to stress that in the present century human beings tend to have a penchant for harm and violence. Remember the events of September 11, 2001. Of course everyone knows that the event of that day was the greatest international event of the new century and it also bookmarked its first phase.The event occurred two days after armed conflict had erupted in Jos central Nigeria.
The twenty first century has become a period of the novel and unexpected. But these conflicts are also exacerbated when there are growing income differentials on inter group relations in a multiethnic society like Nigeria. For the Tivs and Fulanis these divisions also tend to coincide with ethnic religious differences. In other words, when one group of poor people find itself to be making less economic progress than a similar group of a different ethnic composition, the result is likely to be increased ethnic antagonism. But the two groups can overcome all these antagonisms by turning to their Oratures for peace building tools. It is still possible to use Orature/Literature to integrate the different nationalities within the geographic state in a national whole. The migration myth of the green snake that provided a bridge for the Tiv and Fulani is a useful example.
