OMETAN S DIARY

                       

                                                      OMETAN’S  DIARY

                                                               CHAPTER 7

The best spot and the best time for  an  investigative report of a paranoiac Igbo ethnocentrism is at the newsstand,beginning early morning 8 am to 9am as soon as the vendors alighted,vociferous readers  swarmed around them like wasps and bees.When the papers arrive and vendors struggle to sell their wares to this vast hordes of information hungry and psychologically embattled customers.There’s a good chance such scrambling will lead some loquacious elements with unguarded  missteps into the nearby stinking gutters of the concrete pavement,dangling  across the roads. Crowds are gathering,fresh news are buzzling,frenzies and carthasis being torpedoed and unleashed,upon some burning cauldron and ignoble hotspots in the land.Pulses rise as feverish but impoverished readers through their glances fret though in most cases not buying but merely satisfied themselves with sighting the headlines and captive editorials,to its captive but gullible audience.This frolic invariably with great loathing tear apart the garrulous scenes with fable,farce,sentiments,rumours,hearsays,illusions and  mingled with sparsely concocted facts,that could hardly winnow the fool from the wise.Sometimes discussants exchanged assaults and battery,though it rarely happened,with the possibility that voracious but casual readers gather in batches,with different topics to be discussed,which could be erupted upon sighting an headline and based on the degree of entropy,each respective group moderator flex his carthasis.You hardly see a lady there ,but once in a while when sent to buy papers either for the office or for home or to buy celebrity or gossip magazines or novels,which only few vendors sell.The hottest  debate is the tirade of tribal consciousness,dislodged discussants’sanity,throws disquietude and commotion around but sometimes ,ends the banter with ferocious hatred.The question of who fires the first salvo is often left to the degree of the time infested catharsis and its entropy and the empyreal height of the debate is determined by the thermostactic condition of the fresh news that shaped  the  decorum of the debate.

The investigative reporter  knew how the rapport of this ignoble news hotspot,its often cantankerous and voluminous debates and the belligerent  nature of the asperity,aspersion cast and in most cases sentimental carthasis belched with its intense or vitriolic vituperative,derogatory remarks and ethical passivism expressed or how its undiscovered institutional system worked out.He’d been on this shit end of the hate speech,for over two decades after the relocating and  migrating to Lagos with his junior brother and late parent later to join the entire family.This move was begun in the mid 90s,when he started as a vendor in late 90s and moved to other menial jobs,to eke out a living and then freelance reporting and in most redundant period frolic the papers,spanning newsstand from ikotun to igando to odoeran and sometimes under bridge in ikeja.Their location could differ,but certainly the mode of the debate was certainly undissimilar. With this adventure in Lagos,unlike in Ogbomosho,where he came from,never then knew the real igbos,but,he had come to have a great dislike and detest for the igbo flock,to reciprocate their hatred for the Yorubas in general.Such gangsterism of animosity gave them the audacity to label Lagos ‘no man’s land’.Only the assemblage of some informed  Yorubas,who were able to interfere with their giddy utterrances,wave a resistant hands,shrug a shoulder against their fallacies,or go beyond merely raising a counter eyebrows and alter insane fremescent ,irascible nature of their sanguinary and frivolous debates, especially in the party of all Igbo congregation,when the converse sometimes despicably,with impunity, ranting in their local dialects.Any resistant with equal impunity from an opposition like the assymetrical investigative reporter and his fellow townman,Tunde Ogbomosho as fondly appellated,were considered mad, a dementia .The docile nature of the Yoruba nation were considered as anathema,and not ample voltage to douse the atomic bomb of askances and antipathy,been diurnally wielded against the docile,peace loving and warweary Yoruba nation.

It was an arduous task for them to see,any good thing from this so called evil nation,or yorubaland in general.This was their position before and especially after the civil war,with embarrassing proportion ,the hatred grew to stratospheric heights and now much more acrimonious than ever imagined,in the unsung stealthy,surreptitious or clandestine economic war,that blanketed Lagos,the commercial capital of the country,like a chilling fog,still waging,between two of the nation’s most  sophisticated tribes.This does not in anyway left out the Hausa Fulani repugnant attitude against the westerners.An  incontestable and incontrovertible facts,had built up his bone marrow with apoplexy against this republic of liars and land grabbers.He seemed so intemperate and looked too easily uncomfied.His sadness was accelerated by the dolorous height of uncommon proportion of libel,traduce,derogatory remarks,been hurled on the mother tribe of African civilization,whose pedigree to which they knew nothing an atom about.A sad face he was used to wearing whenever the banter was begun.In his redundant hours,like every loquacious promenade,frolic the newsstand to belch his carthasis and listen.He had dealt a brawl with three of the five vendors that ever sold at igando,in almost two decades of livelihood,in the king’s town,where three of them had dropped vending for greener pasture elsewhere.

He spoke provocatively,exhuding statistical reflexes through the precarious years of tribal banters and roots defense.They did not like what they hear and so were taken back by surprise and humbled by Yoruba’s glorious and unprecedented achievement.Some resistant and adamant and jeered at humbling facts and concrete evidence of history,reeling from his defense and mouth and refused to condescend in their  heady refrain.They too had never been able to win him either with their mendacities,especially for being knowledgeable about his people,an uncommon phenomenon in yorubaland.

Akinjide,the investigative reporter,had been more taken aback than terrified ,didn’t know his people,had achieved so much to mother modern civilization in Africa when it was reintroduced by Caucasians  until he came to Lagos.Many Yorubas too,had a hazy dint of their intense global cultural influence and their forefather pacessetter’s role on the continent.Contrary to spurious history brandished in schools and books after the civil war,he made his discovery as cub reporter and on the internet.The Igbos had believed the trash that there would be no tribe in the country, that had exceeded them by achievements or worth its salt when  checkered antecedence was reviewed.And anything contrary to their debate,would be seen as competing for the glory that belong only to igbo,when startling evidencess history were curiously unveiled.They had practically envisaged to be praised and worshiped in all genres as the most intelligent and capitalistic of all,most educated ,most widely travelled tribe in the country.And so,anyone who opposes their supposedly acclaimed,godgiven birthright prize of superiority and glory ,could risk go to jail.An average igboman,bastards,think this way.

That was exactly what had happened ,at the newsstands all these tortuous years of disharmony and still counting in that contraption of a nation.Tunde Ogbomosho had become a fabulous and quintessential yorubaman,like the reporter,whenever they saw him resurfaced at a distance,was fond of entertaining  and enjoying and overcoming  their ridiculous defenses and belittling their debates of tribal superiority,which he had invariably relished to be cherished and ridiculed .As far as motions,defenses,countermotions,went depending on the offender or defender,Tunde or reporter,if they had a fact,they sure hell of dominating them,who looked sometimes with suspense and extreme animosity,of gullible ass,who found himself living in strange planet that never existed in the first instance.And so both shouldn’t have been so stupefied that Sunday morning ,Tunde resurfaced with the reporter ,when the new round of ominous banter broke this time between them.One of the vendors wasn’t even hawking and yet the crowd was ecstatic .The street assembly like never before had gone down deep into banter in the most vitriolic encounter and name calling invectives ascending the stratospheres.

Though meetings in general impromptu and with redundancy hours and nothing to do at home,the reporter had left home in emptiness ,sometimes in hunger,when he had been stuck alone in  boredom,then decided to avoid this trap,had strolled round town and finally berthed at newsstand,like many Nigerians to belch his carthasis.

The debate engross had tarried long,he wasn’t so vigorous to withstand their conterpoises and scathing remarks being brandished at each other,at lethal hours of the nation’s foremost scurrilous streets .He departed after a little stomach pain and rumbling.They had not tired ,he was their bone of contention,that he might go off and armed himself with another round of artillery of facts to wear them out and who had barely failed in his interrogatve session to further arrest their ignorance.

In their  own heart,they were convinced the reporter did know his people’s history,but they wondered where did he get the facts from,unlike many of his kinsfolk,they’ve met .He was fed in a cafeteria and energetic  and returned. Never for once in his two decades as a newsstand people’s street parliamentarians,had he lost an argument against the ohaneze boys,over the most superior tribe in Africa,or not in a suit of the most ferocious street debates. Being versed in history had changed who he was as an extraordinary yorubaman.He ‘d gone into the debate that Sunday morning,embroiled till dusk,in between that flurry of occasional sentimental thunderstorms,brainstorming uproars and the dissipated calm,in the machismo hours of ethnocentric jingoism,had invariably abscond unscathed as a victor.Never experienced an igbo victorious against him.

The debate had never shrunk Tunde Ogbomosho either,to a pale beneath,but above the domineering rapport and the affirmative statistical evidence had clearly justified the superior history of the Yorubas over every tribe in the continent.Even in the detective artist’s absence often edged them out on the precipice, in the argumentative brawls.He had imbibed the defense culture for his people from  the investigative reporter,who had told him irrespective of aspersion,you might cast against your tribe,must not been found wanton however  in their defense.

HE had never been found so piffling to his coagulated himself,about the way he felt,when their affront was taken into consideration. Sometimes everyday of the week,had never been dull,and had gone to the  newsstands,only to find out the ravaging ferocity of the debates,had gone up or taken a new life on its own,and then stared blank at the space,and utter nothing.That was quintessential Tunde like the detective reporter,until the latter came back for another duel,with  facts,was he emboldened.

Whilst he was  versed with the intimidating knowledge,about giant strides of his root,Ogbomosho,who became so compelling with its authoritative sources to inspire the reporter for ;formidable they stood like rock of Gibraltar against the darts forth raging fire of vitriolic defense from the igbo  extraction and sometimes from gibes ,jeers and boos from their Yoruba haters of his roots.

The truth was that;he was not damned scared to face them and not hunger either.If anyone had gotten used to them to this imperial game or the politics of discussion as first come first served and as last come last served,with everyone a lecturer and a professor,and a teacher  ,he would have first paid close attention to the context of the debate,listen properly and that provided a basis for comprehension before contribution.Images of the impervious debates’ scene were becoming clearer in his brain as ferociously debated.Sometimes ,antecedence and pedigrees not heard off in the west,could hit them off like a blinding sport or vertigo,transporting them back to the unknown and the unheard of the forgotten relics of golden history.Such laurels sometimes by thesemean spirited folks ,could be perceived to stink and unmerited and not true;a patchwork of  laurels or a bouquet of flowers,perceived to be basement of the glory of the igbo stock and heritage.The rancor ,acrimony and the animosity smell deeper  than terror and a signal of another round of civil war .

The dearth of awareness among the Igbos and even the Yorubas had been terrible ,of little or zero acknowledgement of the greatest achievers ,of the early illustrious men and women,who made modern  civilization domesticated on the continent and the current life that the current generation  live or enjoy possible.And knowing that a given tribe in the country had contributed immensely and wholeheartedly to the fundamental  practice of nation building  and sustainable  capacity building in the country ,could sewer good relationship,breeds more hatred,between them as was proven in this case study.The little the sophisticated igbos could know about the Yorubas from the 30s 40s,50s down to the eve of independence informed their opinion about superiority and led to January 16,1966 coup,and marginalized everybody.The largely illiterate igbos flexed muscle in a power tussle against the largely illiterate hausa Fulani, edged out the most educated tribe from power ,in the name of a fickle western democracy and reckless deployment of ethnocentrism.This mortgaged the posterity of a virgin nation which started in utter chaos even before it was begun.

But for the very first time in recent times ,the argument on that Sunday morning cropped up.The investigative reporter had assaulted them ,in the error of their interrogative affirmation,whether  an average igbo man can be trusted.He had allowed them to get under his skin and then persuaded himself to speak last ,under the terrifying bout of irrational rantings.Was he justified himself ?When at the  helms of affairs ,the westerners assumed no good posture of helping each other ,and now being helpless by helplessness at incontrollable crescendo cannot be tolerated.These emotions themselves had not burrowed down into the realm of obscurity or into the core of his tacit gesture,that  he unleashed to crucifix that he that spareth a rod spoileth the child.

The facts had become categorical imperative,even as the trial of the investigative reporter drew near.His townsman had become much more uncomfortable than being excited at the glorious antecedence,with which the journalist was stuck with no apology.That was because ,his townsman was a member of the ruling dynasty in Ogbomosho and the dynasty by the nature of their experience were always self critical of the west in general for its docile dunderheads.He wanted freedom like the orientation of blackscorpion,or Bola or Fani kayode or by Agbekowa group from the dominance of largely illiterate and nomadic hausa Fulani,preferred to drag their thoughts out  of this slavery,for which the igbo boldly fought.

He had tired himself to get the detective reporter to respond to him in this light.He had expressed grave concern for the future welfare of the yorubas, Nigerians in the south west .He had tried to use the avenue to convince him,if he had an inkling or longing he could express,so as to basically put an end  to the apathy of this conviction.

But the reporter didn’t have any superior clue anymore or facts and figures he had closeted himself with and accustomed to ,overtime to browbeat him  at least to submission pragmatically showed the superiority of the conviction.Whilst fellow Yorubamen widely drifted away from them,still could not dispute the rationale and authenticity of their claims,when the facts were authenticated.This conviction had distinguished them and so they needed no introduction anytime they enter into the parliament with this banter.

His brother  lived abroad in London and hadn’t kept a vow like siblings ,with a lady at the altar.HE hadn’t any means or political weight whatsoever to move the motion for such independence from Nigeria,than his career  as a reporter with which he intended too to open an intellectual debate with prominent  bigwigs in the west.The callous impression that loomed over him had pressed him to quit this profession due to low pay,but did not and instead as freelance,paid more attention to its blogging,entrepreneurship for supplementary income.They  didn’t see what they saw and if he had quitted the job and followed the crowd or if he drew blank in this context ,would have suffocated his dreams and millions of his people to death.Did they like seriously realize that?

Bastards and prostitutes selling their wares in a brothel called ‘Nigeria’.He was much more mindful of the level of havoc, irreparable damage and irrecoverable loss  ,that his people had incurred since the nation’s flag was bunted and union jack lowered in the 60s.He was well convinced that the caliber of men and women,talented folks  that his people had lost or were squandered in the west might not be recovered in the next 1,000years to go.And now their fellow Yorubamen known for their sedentary lifestyle ,wanted to screw them alive for been desirous of breaking this lifelong chains.With his compliance ,then this detective then worked the idea and  named the new entity’BIBLIODESIA’to be superpower in the next decade,after its bunted buoy,adopting as national anthem,the state anthem of osun state that superceeded that of Oyo state.HE then dropped the idea of composing his national anthem and remodeled the national flag  and extended  map of Professor  Bola ‘s late father version.Shikena.With the formation of Cosmopolitan Yoruba they set to campaign for worldwide acceptance,reminiscence of nebulous Biafra.This was begun on the streets where he would be able create awareness and sensitizing commoners and average Yorubamen ,with a view to gather audience  into the fold drove his perpetual energy.

Verdict was that they would not only campaign locally but also internationally,through this organization to the over hundred million yorubas worldwide,prior to full launching .This can be quite tasky and cumbersome a threat to the lives of the promoters reminiscence of IPOB calling for Biafra,but they can be supported because they have a learned claim infact an authentic claim.Tunde would fight at home while the reporter   would brainstorm overseas.The question is why did the Biafra fail to succeed?The answer ;did they have a genuine claim and a good moral standing?

Anyway,it was obvious that they didn’t have an inkling of how and what the yorubas did for them, Nigerians and Africans in general.If they do ,Nigerians would have been much more united than what it is today.It was not just that they were ignorant folks but that they the now highly sophisticated igbo men see an average Yoruba as a fiend or satan,or bastards  or betrayal dogs that must by all means be eradicated in their generations.And so after the civil war ,inspite of their defeat from the yorubas who were the major fighters and who won the war,they had embraced social Darwinism to purposely eradicate the yorubas in their land through unsung but clandestine economic war and were by their body language unanimous in that satanic decision.

The case of such hate crime  was of course, largely driven by animosity rather than the crave for statistical thirst when the banter’s reminiscences of history  was begun. This poser was nailed,knowing fully well circumstantially that after the civil war,most of the houses built by the igbos  in portharcourt and calabar were seized from them,but it was a different ball game entirely in the yorubaland,unarguably the most hospitable part of the country especially Lagos ,where they returned all their houses  back to them and not a single pin missed according to Baba ijebu and a couple of hephtagenerians and hexagenerians respectively concurred with evidence.Oh,what a great benevolent people but it was at a great cost to their welfare.But the civil war had a left a bitterfingerprint on the nation’s psyche,particularly this general distrust between the victor and the vanquished,yet were made to believe no victor no vanquished more than forty years after.

But the unsung investigative reporter,was a destiny guy banked upon to change the tide of history ,uncover this fiendish  facts that most igbos and Yorubas had left untouched two hundred years before independence and almost fifty years after  the war.He had obviously been irritated for far too long,in his head when the goddamn furore and acrimony between them regularly cropped up.Why would an average igboman help a Yoruba poor guy ,when even they themselves barely attach importance to each other let alone helping and loving one another or lived poles apart? Why would such porridge period persist with no port whatsoever in a storm?

He stood stupefied on the street and embattled as he watched the igbos and yorubas bandied invectives and diatribes in a filibustering,taking swipes at each other ,portentous of another looming round of civil war.This tardy economic war was even much more a  pronounced movement,if indeed possible to snatch Lagos from the Yorubaland as formerly attempted by Zik of Africa and British colonial authorities,in the next  500 years,they would gladly with both hands just do it.With the escalating poverty among Yoruba youths ,some maddening dogs,in need of cash did not even hesitate to sell even their father ‘s grave to the ndigbos in lagos,in need of cash and moving down to Ogun State or back to their hometown,to start from the scratch all over again in another round  of penury consignment,pushed off from their cash cow in the centre of excellence.There is possibility that many of them would die poor  in a region where there is no market and investment destined or bound to fail woefully.It shocked him down to bone marrow,that almost all the land from lagos down to Owode had been bought by the igbos and did not exercise caution whatsoever and still did not desist from calling ijebu ode ,egba as igbo people and now beginning to claim them  as part of the east.Now the land grabbers had not only taken the land war from Ogun down Ondo state where the igwe of the ohazeze ndigbo,flexed muscle at the palace of Deji of Akure,until the brawl was settled by Mimiko,but had gone a notch higher.They are buying yorubaland with impunity,which they hardly sell to buyers in their place.Little wonder they called Lagos no man’s land and it boiled greedily down to his bone marrow,and with  himself unremarkable lone ranger in his loneliness.He stood aghast embarrassed with his own heplessness and sometimes could not defend against the ire of the ever raving easterners. Yet sullen eyes and staggering feet stared blank and held at nothing.Tunde Ogbomosho been a much defender of his root, than the rest of the Yoruba been a lord defender of his root,once again at the gathering burst into the scene,with his trademark submerged face,staring at them like a pregnant woman,whose suspense is not in doubt of their reciprocal hand of fellowship.

The investigative reporter first resisted him at first but later threw support at his broad and landslide  conviction.He was not only with commanding fury, self critical of his people,but was much fiercely antagonistic of their docile way of life and acrimonious at their lacerating madness been wielded at tolerating foreigners’unbriddled access and control of their land.His brow,as a dimunitive fellow,hardly drop a stone,with red eyes bumptiouschins,  streaming upon his moustache,succumbed to tirade.Then he moved closer and fellow man gestured at him as they moved to a separate batch for a petty banter but he was stupefied with the crowd himself ,when with askance they threw hardly a remorseful still,to the rendition of reporter ‘s pathetic glare.

‘’You see them?snobbish.And still,you would never stop supporting them,oh my god,ballyhoos of these miscreants?’’

‘’See,I didn’t support them.You don’t understand my position,do you?’’

‘’Which position?’’

‘’ Must you always attack me,any time I rose in defence of my people? Must you?’’

‘’I said our people sleeping now,and they must wake up now.Was it  not fashola that said they were living on past glory?

Oh my goodness,forget that idiot, living on past glory?What did he do as the governor of the richest state in the country by I.G.R. to assuage their pain?What he did he do?i ask you’’

‘’ A lot!uncountabble’’

‘’like what ?’’

‘’ Let me tell you the relevant part.’’

Which one relevant now?’’

‘’But he had the audacity to deport about 70 of them back to the east.’’

‘’Yes you are right.Was that the solution?’’

‘’it was the most expedient thing to do?’’

YOU have no pointyou goon’s head.Did that solve our people’s problem?See,the best

……………………………………………………………………………………………….contd

‘’Look,Mr reporter ,that wouldn’t be possible in this  21^st century.So,forget it!’’

‘’Then our people should be ready to loose Lagos 100percent.Already,about 60 percent of the land in Lagos had already been sold to them.Yorubas are bastard fools,when travel they stay abroad,forget home,yet some of them talking tough abroad never come back to build home.You see that madness and they claim to be fighting for their people.Whilst trade at home and abroad and hardly severe any link. Look,Tunde you and I can do it.Late Chief  Obafemi Awolowo was able to face the challenge,with his collleagues and men of his generation and that was why tey formed Egbe Omo Oduduwa in London in 1945