Preamble:Until the lion learns how to write, every story will always glorify the hunter. (African Proverb)
Fraternal greetings unto you all. I appreciate the Administrators, our elders and the entire members of Okehi Re-awakening Forum (ORAF) for giving me this opportunity to speak to us briefly.
The presentation is very brief, but it is meant to provoke us into taking positive actions and not to slight anyone. I however take the blame for any noticeable flaw(s) in this endeavour.
What does Ebira mean?
Literally speaking, Ebira means character. When stretched further, it means good character. Thus, Anebira means “People of good character”. While most of the times we extend this good character to strangers, we have not been able to extend it to ourselves. Consequently, no matter how we love outsiders, if we do not love ourselves, no one will take us serious.
We have experienced various crisis in Ebira land, but the crisis in Ihima for instance, was such that shook the entire Anebira. We did not only stay on the tarred road, facing ourselves in gun battles, we went as far as burning and pulling down houses. It was as though, we wanted to prove a point to the Ebira nation that we were master-killers and master-destroyers! If Okehi had an image problem before, that crisis went a long way in reinforcing the common stereotypes that other parts of Ebira have of us.
Other tribes in Kogi, nay in Nigeria do fight too, but in our own case, like the Bible says, a city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Ebira land is set on a hill both literally (by virtue of our topography) and figuratively (by virtue of the fact that we always excel against all odds).
Concerns have been raised both publicly and privately as to the ambiguity of this topic, Okehi: Rethinking Anebira’s Battered Image, The Dangers of a Single Story. In dissecting the topic, I have decided to situate it within the context of Okehi, which remains our immediate focus since it is for the sake of Okehi that we are here. Consequently, I have decided to localize this interaction since this is ORAF and not a general platform of all Anebira.
Have circumstances ever made you to seek to question God this way; Why am I a Nigerian? Then, a Kogite, then an Ebira and then from Okehi too? If you have, it means you already understand the topic in a way.
If you have a good friend from another tribe, ask him or her what first comes to their mind when they hear “Ebira” or when they are to meet with an Ebira person. For a sizeable number of them, it is “violence” or being cantankerous, that is, troublesome. How come that a name which means “good character” now sends shivers down the spines of some people? How is it that “people of good character” are now seen as violent, troublesome and always ready to fight?
When people pass through Okene, they often caution themselves or the driver to be careful because according to them, if you kill a fowl in Okene, the Ebira people will kill you too.
I live in an Estate of 16 flats. When I was to move in, most of the tenants kicked against the decision of the Caretaker to allow an Ebira man move into the Estate because they feared that we are wicked and that I was coming to make trouble for the “peace-loving” residents of the estate!
It was not that they had had an experience with any Ebira person but it was more of what they had heard about Anebira. In other words, before meeting an Anebira, people already have a mindset, an opinion of us, most times negative and usually based on mere hearsay or sentiments. I could go on and cite several examples.
As it is often said, perception is close to reality. How do people perceive us? What do they perceive of us? Violence? Sorcery? Witchcraft? The bottom line is that we have a perception problem. An image problem.
In 2006, while at the University of Jos, I was travelling home one day when a friend who had seen me off, suddenly bumped into one of his female acquaintances, Blessing, an Igbo lady. She was travelling to Ogori-Magongo for a wedding of one of her course mates. We got to Okene after 11pm as our vehicle had developed several faults on the way. Despite the fact that her friend had attached her to me for guidance, she was so afraid of me, the moment we landed in Okene. Her mom, who lived in Minna and who had never lived in any part of Ebira land kept calling, worrying how she was going to see a car to Ogori.
There was no Ogori bound vehicle at that time, but there were cars going to Ihima, my hometown. She didn’t want to follow me home and she didn’t want to sleep in Okene either. Ogori was where her mind was. It took the intervention of a security operative who listened to us and advised her against going to Ogori that night even if there was a vehicle, for obvious security reasons.
We got to Ihima, she was well received and taken care of by my parents and siblings so much so that contrary to her earlier plan to go to Ogori as early as 6am, she stayed till 11am, and consequently got to the wedding late. She became a family friend. It was only several days later that she told me she had heard a lot of negative stories about Anebira from her mother – a woman that had never lived in any part of Ebira land! That alone showed me the grim reality of our situation before outsiders.
So, we have an already battered image and this is largely because there is just one story about Anebira, which is violence. We haven’t been able to tell our own story or provide a second story; a counter-narrative. This is what is called the dangers of a single story, (apologies to Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie).
To change our situation, we must “rethink” our problem. That is, we must take a second look at this challenge with a view to changing our present circumstance, hence, the topic for tonight, Okehi: Rethinking Anebira’s Battered Image, The Dangers of a Single Story.
A nation in crisis. The Ebira nation is a microcosm (that is, a representative unit) of the larger Nigerian state. Though, a nation of one tribe, Ebira has the features of most of the challenges bedevilling the country.
The Ebira nation is in crisis with itself. The various components, clans and subclans have some form of crisis or the other.
Ours is a nation at war with its past, present and future. We are at war with our past in that our history, culture and unique traditions are fast eroding; we are at war with our present as we are currently engaged in what I will call “substitution by elimination”. Anebira have a PhD in PHD. We have a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Pull Him Down (PHD) syndrome. If a starlet begins to emerge, s/he is eliminated or his/her reputation severely tarnished even before s/he has the capacity to become a star.
We have this wicked proverb, “ojavu koni onyewngu hu tea, koni ozu vaha“, meaning the leper says if he cannot drink tea, he can spill it or pour it away. This is at the core of our problems. We want everyone to be on the same level. If we are all on the same level, who will then help the other person to rise? That is a food for thought.
And, the Ebira nation is at war with its future because those who are supposed to be leaders of tomorrow are already engaged in decapitating themselves by smoking their future away.
Okehi: Smoking the future into oblivion, the drug challenge
From clogged drainages to pit latrines or soakaways; lizard droppings to banned or prescription drugs; Skunk (SK) to concentrated Shisha, many of our younger ones are today smoking their future away; into oblivion.
Gone were the days when schools used to have round-the-clock security cover. Today, and from close observation, I daresay that at least half of our schools in Okehi have become safe havens for drug addicts. It might be argued that they have also become centres for illicit sex and perhaps, rape.
I recall a public school in Ihima where the Parent Teachers’ Association PTA had managed to purchase a computer set to enhance computer education right from the primary level. I also recall that some boys who had converted the place to a smoking joint allegedly went there one night, chased the night guard away after seizing his torchlight, and then carted away the computer set!
More worrisome is the fad among our young ladies who have now added cultism to the mix.
I recall an encounter I had somewhere in Lokoja in 2016. It was a cool evening. Nothing had prepared me for the shock that I would receive that same evening. Sitting with friends and colleagues, some ladies, about four of them, and all from Okehi (as I later learned) had come with two guys to the pool side where we sat along with. As the evening progressed, one of the ladies had called my attention, saying; “bros, you no dey reason at all”?
Since I thought it was an insult, I had sought clarification, to which she replied in the same manner that she had asked before. Well, I just ignored her and focused on my phone. I was later to be schooled that the lady was simply asking why I don’t do drugs! To say that I was shocked is an understatement. In a nation where many of the young ladies have found solace in drugs and cultism, we need not wonder the kind of children to be raised for the next generation. Have we then, not smoked our future away on a platter?
Why we are where we are today
Several factors account for our current travails. They range from poor parental upbringing, peer group pressure to weak governance systems and institutions. These, I think are self-explicit.
It is difficult to put a date to when we started having image perception issues, but I think our perception problem became more pronounced after the creation of Kogi state, because in Kwara, with two local governments, we were well respected and there were a lot of people who wanted to do businesses with us. But the story gradually changed after Kogi was created!
Our republican, never say die nature which should have been an asset, currently militates against us. Like the Igbos, we are republican in nature, in that we believe in the equality of ourselves and believe that anyone can be King (Ohinoyi), that there are no ruling houses or classes. Americans have these same attitude of equality of all men, but while they have been able to harness theirs to worldwide acclaim, we have used ours to turn against ourselves, disrespecting constituted authorities. This is not to say that where such authorities go wrong that we cannot call them to order. No. Far from it.
From the above, it would appear that the situation is very bad. Yes, it is. In fact, we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder waiting for it to explode. While no one knows for sure when it will explode, what is more certain is that its explosion is very near, and it will explode except we take serious measures to avert the impending doom.
Like one of my professors, Augustine Ufua Enahoro would say; “I am therefore calling attention to the fragility of stability and the inevitability of instability”. What this means is that the stability we currently enjoy is very fragile. Instability is therefore inevitable if we do not apply the brakes and make a U-turn.
Quo Vadis Okehi? (Which way Forward, Okehi?)
In a tribute to the great Novelist, Prof. Chinua Achebe, organized by PEN in 2008, Ms Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had recalled how most of the books she read as a child were foreign. She read, “Mostly British children’s books in which all the characters were white and ate apples and played in the snow and had dogs called Socks.”
So, when she first started writing her own stories, the people in them had similar characteristics. “I didn’t know that people like me could exist in books,” she said. “I had assumed that books, by their very nature, had to have English people in them. And then I read ‘Things Fall Apart.’ ”
Earlier in an interview in 1994 published in The Paris Review, Mr. Achebe had spoken of “the danger of not having your own stories”:
He said; “There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It’s not one man’s job. It’s not one person’s job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail — the bravery, even, of the lions”.
From our ‘preamble’, as long as the lion cannot write, the hunter keeps telling his side of the story. He could say anything about his escapades and how he fought the lion with his bare hands, ending up killing the beast with a head butt. His audience or readers would definitely believe him because they have no other way of knowing the “other” story, that of the lion. What they know is just a single story. That of the hunter.
But by the time the lion learns to write, it can provide a counter-narrative. It could puncture the claims of the hunter and tell its own story of how as the ‘King of the Jungle’, both man (the hunter) and beast lived in constant fear. The lion could described how upon its roaring, the hunter threw his arms away and fled.
When there is cultural or military invasion, the superior culture or those who win the war are the ones to tell the story. The vanquished have no means of telling their stories. This was why even though there were Africans who lived along the Rivers Niger and Benue, farming and fishing, Mungo Park could say he discovered the River Niger. Because he could write. The Blacks could not.
So, with their writings, the whites told our stories in a way to favour them and demonize us. What this tells us is that what we call history is just one side of the story: His story! When shall we begin to write our own story?
For the next generation, we need to catch them young. I am a young man, but so many youths of my own generation have failed partly because of no mentorship or guidance. We need to start a process of mentoring the younger ones.
Then like I keep on reiterating, we must begin to tell our own stories through our speeches and actions. If we continue to deploy the brawn where others are deploying their brains, it would be difficult to change the status quo.
One of the downsides of technology is reflected in the manner in which we now see a lot of underage people on social media; using their phones and tablets during school hours. I am aware that schools usually ban the use of phones, but with the level of drug abuse in the land today and the deterioration of values, most teachers are reluctant in enforcing this rule because of the fear that they could be victims of targeted attacks outside the school.
It may then be argued that today, the reading culture among students is on the decline because of the advancement in technology, but again, the question to ask is; are the books even there? Some of the books are substandard. Having said that, we need to begin to deploy other educational resources and instructional materials to teach our kids. This should be in addition to reviving the culture of tales by moonlight, that is, story telling. Some books can be boring if they do not tell short stories to catch the attention of the readers.
Creativity as a tool for societal advancement
Today we can now write. By writing, I mean all forms of communication and language arts including drama and songs. While we may have people with talents, we do not own the technology. The whites still do.
The way to go is to begin to tell our stories first, to ourselves so that this generation and future generations would know where we are coming from. Many of the stories of our elders that we heard as kids, I doubt if our kids today are being told such stories. Their own outlook to life is influenced by Disney World -Tom and Jerry et al. While we cannot discountenance the fact of the world being a global village, we do not have to throw away our own history.
With good stories, we can borrow western technology to make ourselves heard. Today, we have the social media, but rather than using it to our advantage, I am afraid, we have not comported or conducted ourselves in a manner as to earn more respect from outsiders. Recent happenings on Facebook regarding the “sexcapades” and “sexploits” (permit my grammar) of some people, are things that may also have happened under non-Ebira administrations but which we didn’t hear of. They managed their differences well.
Conclusion
It is high time we seized the narrative and wrote our own story, our history. Not many people have heard about the great nationalist, Habib Raji Abdallah. I was shocked to see that it was an Igala playwright and theatre artist that recently consulted me for a collaborative effort in producing a play in honour of the late leader of the defunct Zikist Movement.
The Igalas already have a play (dramatic text) -The Legendary Inikpi. Then, the state government recently sponsored a film on her in spite of the existence of one film on her already.
The Christian musical refrain, “Jesu makuwa avo eh, makuwa avo eh”, now sang in almost all Nigerian churches is actually an Ebira song, but it’s only Anebira that know it’s their language, majority of other Christians who sing that song think it is a Hebrew or Israeli song!
So, I ask: what would we rather export? Songs, technological advancements, breakthroughs in Sports, Academia and other human endeavours or violence? The latter should never be part of our options.
Thank you for granting me audience. May God save us from ourselves!
Being a lecture delivered by Omeiza Ajayi JP of the Vanguard Newspapers on Sunday, April 28, 2019 as part of the Okehi Re-Awakening Forum ORAF Online Lecture Series.
The author can be reached on: omezonline@gmail.com, 0803 948 6091.
