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 21st
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
xtra
