KWENU: Our Culture, Our Future

Many rivers still to cross:

The challenge of another binge killing in parts of Nigeria

Ugorji O. Ugorji

Ugorji@Talldrums.com

Saturday, April 30, 2011

The more things appear to change, the more they appear to remain the same in Nigeria. The April 16, 2011 elections for the offices of President and Vice President in Africa’s most significant nation and the continent’s largest democracy yielded a historic outcome. A compatriot from the ethnic “minority” group of Ijaw in the Nigerian Delta region was returned elected to the highest office in the land. Dr. Goodluck E. Jonathan received a mandate to govern for the next four years in his own rights rather than the in an accidental robe.

Jonathan, who was the late President Umaru Musa Yaradua’s vice president, had succeeded his boss upon Yaradua’s death in 2010. Nigerians from the three “major” ethnic groups – Igbo, Hausa/Fulani, and Yoruba – along with just about every other “minority” ethnic group gave Jonathan the kind of reported support that can only be interpreted as a historic mandate. This is change.

Further, in a series that had a false start on April 2, 2011, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under Chairman Attahiru Jega, has put together a string of elections that are remarkable in their perception by the local and international communities as free and fair. Not perfect, but credible and laudable. So credible that incumbent governors from the West to the North lost their reelection bids. This is change.

Regrettably, the world witnessed again, in post-election violence, a repeat of the kind of butchery and savagery towards humans by fellow humans, which is unworthy of a nation that some of us posit to be the citadel of contemporary Black civilizations. In the crocodile city of Kaduna, Bauchi and other parts of Northern Nigeria, young men went to town, buoyed by reckless rhetoric from politicians who had never been democratic in their careers, and started slashing, beating, destroying and burning their fellow Nigerians and property. Young men and women, especially those in the National Youth Service whom INEC had deployed to do the work that has been universally acclaimed to be good, lost their lives in service to their country.  We have seen this wicked dance before and once again, the Igbo, among others, have borne the brunt of it. This is not change.

Internet sites are awash with disturbing images of man’s cruelty to man. There are slashed heads, amputated bodies, burnt cadavers, and buildings that look like the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas after the FBI went in. What is stunning is that the major leading outlets of the Igbo have generally remained silent, even as the governors of Igbo states have assured the nation that they would not allow revenge killings of Northerners in Igbo land. We should never be tired of raising our voices or too busy to do so.

Governor Babatunde Fasola of Lagos State has dedicated his reelection victory to the lives of the Youth Corpers who were killed in parts of Northern Nigeria. He has also called for their lives and service to be memorialized. This is commendable. We need to hear from the Northern Political Leaders Forum, the Arewa Consultative Forum, the Arewa People’s Congress, and other consequential groups in the North.

In the 21^st century, the Nigerian people, especially the Igbo, can no longer leave their security and safety to government agencies only. How many times shall we be slaughtered under all manner of pretenses for us to devise means and strategies of preempting this kind of madness? Our governors and organizations have got to convince everyone that the killing of innocent compatriots will have dire consequences for the cowardly killers and their even more cowardly sponsors. There is no honor or courage in passing wanton killings as political statements.

In essence, while Nigeria celebrates a series of credible elections, as well as the dawn of trans-ethnic solidarity in nationhood, we still have many rivers to cross in nation building and the desired consciousness of one, inextricably interconnected African people.

The writer, Dr. Ugorji O. Ugorji, is the publisher of the Princeton-based Sungai Books, and the Executive Director of the African Writers Endowment, Inc. An author of six books himself and a leading authority on the subject of the Nigerian Diaspora, he is also the Coordinator of www.LeanForwardNigeria.com. He is currently working on a book about the World Igbo Congress tentatively titled I dream a world: The History of and quest for a consequential World Igbo Congress.