THE GENERATION THAT DID NOT KNOW BIAFRA.

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I never knew another March 14 will catch up with me in Maiduguri. Now that it has, let me give a preview of what happened on March 14, 2014. Then the analysis of our race to automated genocide will be clearer:
 
It was a Friday morning. At exactly 7.50am, the first grenade was launched into the campus of the University of Maiduguri. The explosion reverberated through the campus. Pandemonium broke out. Confusion everywhere. This was followed by another explosion and another and another. Armour tanks clashed and bullets rained like autumn showers. Everyone scampered for safety where there was none. Armageddon was let loose and we saw war. The falcon beckoned but it could not hear the falconets; it became a race for survival. The not-so-fortunately were caught, and bodies dropped dead after being hit by either the explosions or the bullets. Vultures perched; an ugly conglomeration of grave-side wailers.


I am very sure, double sure that none of the thousands of students who saw that day would ever pray to witness a war. From the days of John the Baptist, oops! I mean to say from the days of Idi Amin of Uganda, war has never been an experience anyone looked forward to. Sadly, Nigeria is breeding a new generation of youths that looked forward to war. The generation of, ‘arogunyo.’
We have not learnt much from history. We have only crammed historical dates and events. We have continued to make the mistakes of yesteryears. I think we are our own enemies. It seems to me that we have given up on ourselves. The will to fight is lost. We have become onlookers where we should be active participants.

Hitherto, Nigeria has come. From colonialism to independence to civil war to military rule to Niger Delta militancy to Boko Haram insurgency and now to Fulani herdsmen crisis. Only time will reveal the next phenomenal crisis that will unfold itself in our beloved nation. The big question is, ‘Why do cycles of ethnic agitations keep repeating itself?’

In ancient times, there came a generation in Israel who never knew any of the wars their fore-fathers fought before they secured Canaan. This generation got to Canaan and became wimps. They grew fat and kicked. They actually anticipated war. They anticipated exile. Perhaps, they thought being in exile means being in a little paradise. When the war came, the grief and devastation it brought surpassed their wildest imagination.

What bothers on our collective destiny requires our collective participation. Obviously, our history of silence and passiveness never did us any good. The consequences have more bombings. More abductions. More Fulani herdsmen Crisis. More killings. And many other painful realities of Northerners.

Before the Non-Northerners assume the lethal posture of, ‘It doesn't concerns us,’ we need to glean some wisdom from Rwanda: Rwanda went on its own journey of self-destruction and accurately toed the same collision course Nigeria is currently taking. Perhaps they were hoping to quench their local fires with foreign water until the day the people snapped. Their patience was tried to breaking point and it caved in.

You know what rage can achieve? What hundreds of peace conferences and dialogues will not achieve, rage will accomplish in a jiffy. That occurred in Kigali. Genocide crept in and it was perhaps one of the worst in Africa. The rest as they say is history. When the genocide started, no one was exempted. No one. It was an automated mass-destruction. Rwanda got there because it refused to quench its local fires; until it became a raging inferno that razed down the nation.

- So where do we go from here?

It's high time we begin to see ourselves as one nation. Lord Lugard might have ‘assembled’ us together, but we determine how we stay together. We must choose to stay together as one. If you look at the Richter’s scale of our political landscape, you will know that we are threading thin and ultra-sensitive fault lines. We need to retrace our steps back to sanity before our ‘omoye’ walks naked into the streets. Unity is the answer. Ethnic prejudice will only speed up our race to Rwanda. We must choose to see the good in each other. The media can amplify our binocular lens of hatred and idiosyncrasies; but that will not get us nowhere but Kigali. It is not a matter of whether we like each other or not, it is not whether Hausas like the Igbos or whether the Yoruba hates the Fulanis, it is an issue that bothers on our collective destiny.

President Samuel Doe of Rwanda understood this genocide better. He was the then Head of State when the genocide broke out. In the heat of the genocide, he was arrested, decapitated and finally burnt up. The Head of State I mean!

The only way to avert this looming genocide is Unity: Choosing to stay together in peace.
The generation that does not know Biafra can clamour for independent states. But those millions of children who starved to death during the civil war will give us a different message. The generation that does not know March 14, 2014 can clamour for war, but those of us who saw it will not even wish it for our enemies.

We can stop this genocide. 
We can avert this race to Rwanda.
We can restore our national sanity.
We can detonate this time bomb.

The decision is simple: We must choose to live together as one or perish as casualties of war.

My name is Taiwo Isola; I am a Nation Builder.

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 17, 2018 at 4:57 AM

    Wow! Articles like this gives me hope that we still young Nigerians with common sense. I hope we all learn from history to avoid making same mistakes or worst. You've said it all Bro.

    ReplyDelete

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