"Yamiri"

I hate to stereotype people or a tribe; I try as much as possible even when it is quite glaring not to attribute a certain character to a person just because that person is from a particular place. 

We all know that there is the good, the bad and the ugly; saints and demons can be found anywhere regardless of tribe, race or gender. The fact that a certain community is known for a particular behaviour does not mean that it is peculiar to them.

I remember when I was about to marry and people had a lot to say about my fiancé’s people, there was a whole list of how badly the men from that area behaved. 

I was told that the women were better than the men in that part of Igbo land. Then I had a meeting with my father over this particular issue, and in his good judgment, he told me that it just was the same way certain bad behaviours were attributed to the people of my own community. There are good and bad people in every tribe or race. End of story! 

He went on to say that even children born of the same parents behave differently.

His words have been a guide to me against stereotyping people. I get a little irritated when people say things like, “one Igbo boy defrauded me, you know they like money too much” or you see a man walking with a lady who has a copious behind, and one says, “that man walking with that lady must be Yoruba, you know they like big bums”. That is a pure stereotype of people. Is there any human being who does not need money to survive? And the biggest bums (I mean extremely BIG) I have ever seen belong to a beautiful South African lady who is very happily married to an Igbo man, yet Igbo men are not perceived as men who like the big stuff.

The disunity in our dear country in recent times is quite alarming, this tribe asking one tribe to leave their soil and another tribe asking same tribe to leave their own soil as well, ah ah na, is it fair to all concerned? (Thanks to Rotary) since fortunately or unfortunately I belong to the rejected tribe, I have started packing my ngwogwo(load) to come and be going to my village, lol. I shall be blogging from there with the one network that happens to be the only one that works in my village. 

I will be going to my village because I am not originally from my husband’s place and if I go there, I may still see people who will remind me that I am a stranger in my husband’s place, so I will just go straight to Lokpanta.

I recall some months back when I drove to my place, as I was trying to navigate the short cut to my father’s house, I saw a Fulani herd’s man, my heart skipped a bit, and I was all alone. That particular road which is usually lonely had become quite bad and I wasn’t sure if it was still usable, (it was a moment of madness, my siblings had even warned me to go through the expressway) it turned out that this man had been watching me from the bush and I didn’t even notice. He saw the confusion on my face, and had to come out from where he was to let me know that the road was still okay, he waved at me, smiled and with the nodding of his head and hand gestures, he assured me that the road was still in use.

If he was a bad Fulani man, he would have done something really terrible to me, that is not to say that there are no bad Fulani men, but this one was friendly and nice and he offered an unsolicited assistance.

I have tried to think about the root cause of the pending disunity and hate speeches in our country and the solutions, could it be that parents have failed in their duties? Children live by what they see their parents do or what they hear them say, then they grow up with that mindset that a particular tribe is the enemy.

It all starts from the home, you still find parents telling their sons and daughters that they cannot marry from a certain tribe, there are a lot of unmarried adults who have chosen to stay unmarried rather than marry men or women from particular tribes. 

When your child hears you refer to your neighbour as “ofe mmanu” (oily soup) to the yorubas or “omo Igbo” to the Igbos or “Aboki” to the Hausas, chances are that the child will grow up  with such words. I remember one ignorant gateman who called my brother “Yamiri”; he said it and laughed very wickedly. My brother turned off the engine of his car, stepped down and gave him the warning of his life. “Yamiri” is very badly spelt "Nyem mmiri" which means "give me water"  it would remind any Igbo man of the evils of the civil war; I am sure that this particular young gateman did not witness the civil war but he was told the story in a not so good way.

Maybe if it was made compulsory to study the three major languages in Nigeria at the primary school level, just maybe if we understood each other’s language, then there wouldn’t be so much distrust in our society today. The problem is that nobody trusts nobody, how do you trust someone whose language you do not understand?

We are all one and the same, the only reason why I sometimes think that Nigeria should be divided is just because of the lack of good governance, maybe the country is too big for those in power to handle; and not just to be divided into two but three or four countries even and in the most peaceful manner.

To attain peace and unity, we should first get stereotype out of the way, who says it is only Calabar people that love to eat dog meat? There are other people who fly at night apart from Benin people, and Benin girls are not the only ones who know the way to Europe. There are other tribes who love a lot of oil in their food, not just the Yorubas, Hausas are fast migrating from “maiguard” jobs to transportation (okada and keke). 

All I am trying to say is that nobody has the monopoly of good or evil, no one tribe reserves the right to be good or bad or to be rich or poor. God created us all equal, why do we want to make some others feel less important than the others. It’s funny how Hausas are portrayed as slow especially in our movies, yet they have been in charge of affairs at the highest level the longest.

In 1995, I went to Kaduna to visit my sister who was serving in that state, I walked the streets of Kaduna in a pair of shorts and I ate the best “mama put” rice and stew in the heart of Kaduna right in front of a Mosque, I was not in the least afraid of a mob or any form of violence. There was so much peace and love, I played with kids in that neighbourhood, everyone knew that I was a stranger and they tolerated my uniqueness.  When did things get this way? What kind of country are we handing down to the next generation? 

People are fleeing the country in droves, there is a problem when people choose to die while running away from their country or live illegally in a strange land rather than live legally in their own land.

One day we may get it right, but till then, we need God like yesterday!