The history of the state we were born is in dispute; it has torn our people apart, bore in them for decades hatred without boundary, push them into seeking for in-house supremacy and slowly burying the state in nothing.
Oh! Lord of Mercy, why have we been living within ourselves without mercy? Have we forgotten that we seek for centuries? Have we lost the purpose of our togetherness? Were we not outnumbered in pleasure we seek before we were brought to live together? Have we forgotten to look into the mirror of the past? Are we so driven by ambitious ambition of ownership?
Affray! We have shatter the hope of the state. This is your home, my home and our home; where [then] do we go if we burn it out of struggle, now that our ambitions are in astray? Oh! No! Where I fear. Our history should taught us lessons of reasons we were brought together again to live and bless it, but no, we have choose to rewrite the history.
Have you forgotten the depth of ocean we crossed? Or the pain of days we left behind? [Then,] If we have forgotten those days, I shall drive you back on memories of days before this day. Those were days of struggle and conquest: days we came together drew an end to the line of oppression and suppression, to rise in numbers to out power nations and nature, and claimed our freedom.
What we had then was a common tradition, we created not bricks of ethnic, tribal nor lingual barrier. [Days] where nature was afraid to interfere in our relations, chaos was nothing but a way to conflict resolution and my trouble was your trouble and everyone’s trouble.
Remember how fungi and algae we solidify our relations, how we fished and hunted from the high mountains and wide rivers to feed our nation, how rich we stole from the fertile land of nature and create walls against hostilities and adversaries. We protected our daughters, sisters, mothers and kinships from external evils that could break into their purity.
Poor nature was jealous about our unity, because we saw no diversity in the way we served with humility and created for all degrees of safety and immunity. Then, we decided to split and create for ourselves break from battles and uncertainty, not knowing it would create breakage in the way we had lived and shared our commonness and similarities.
Alas! At last we lost to nature and forgot those beautiful realities. We made new friends in the quest for new localities, and buried the brotherhood we left in a place of uncertainty; we learnt new dialects and forgot the ones we spoke in the period of ‘protectism’; we lost our purpose of leaving to live in new dynamism.
We have forgotten the spirit of oneness and protection of humanitarianism: Our daughters, sisters, mothers and kinships cannot boast of security from human and natural predators, nor be able to predict our future predicaments.
We stand afar in mockery, boasting to have with rank of great superiority, while we were nothing but inferior beings; we were filled with the satisfaction to have attained a stage of supreme ‘tech-economic’, whereas we were lost in the middle of lust ambitions; we were busy fighting over territory supremacy, while nature was developing it compelling supremacy.
Where have we land ourselves with the quest for territorial dominance? Why have we allowed our myopic philosophical ship sail us into self-destructing weapons against ourselves? What has become the fate of the struggle against hostilities and adversaries; where now, we are the subjects of adversary.
[Yet] you laugh in tragedy pointing fingers to show where and how my life has become an irony. [We] in our definitions of success failed to show how success could mean failure when we have fail to excel in our new differences.
Are you blaming me for that nature has ordained? Are we not back to our togetherness, serving an unknown term of imprisonment imposed by nature? Are we not back to that we broke free from?
Please! Save me and let me save you, let us share that boundary we have built from differences in commonness. Let us join hands together to save darkness from light and light from darkness, wildfire from flood and flood from wildfire, and gain back our freedom from nature and it wild forces full of brutality.
Have you forgotten the untimely oath we swore? Have you forgotten the pain and pleasure we shared? Have you forgotten the unbreakable love we shared? Why are we seeking for greatest lose while we are all at lost? Why do we see not how lust we are from the purpose we should save from lost? Do you think you are a winner and I am a loser? Do you think you are superior and I am inferior? Do you see me as an object with no owner?
Let us save the state and stop fighting one another, let us fight against the invisible force of nature until it is invisible no more.
If I am nothing, it is because you are; if I am inferior, it is because you are; if I am a loser, it is because you are; if I am successful, it is because you are; if I am astray, it is because you are; and if I have lost my purpose, it is because you have. I am what disgust you, what you feel, see and think I am because you are. Our survival today depend on one another and if I am alive today, it is because you are.
– Muhammad Hamza
200L Law Student, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
