Nigeria: Independent of Feeling

Childhood Celebrations

A time of my childhood returns as a fleeting memory of Nigeria's independence celebrations, as today marks the 66th anniversary. Back then, at primary school in Jos, we practised marching like little soldiers, ready to demonstrate some sort of military prowess to the governor, who stood on a dais saluting the troops on this significant day.

If I remember correctly, it would have been October 1974, and that was the last time I took part in any such event. It was probably the only occasion on which we were close enough to a state capital to have a governor in attendance. Rayfield was home, Bukuru was for school, and the stadium in Jos was for marching.

Another notable public holiday would have been Children's Day, on the 27th of May. We donned our school uniforms and wore white socks, and there was a preference for canvas shoes; I had none, however, considering that my feet grew faster than shoes could be acquired to last a year.

An Outsider Looking In

Yet, for all these shared rituals, I am not sure I ever truly belonged. I had returned to Nigeria with my parents from England, and I was betrayed first by my accent, then by my outlook, and finally by the dawning realisation that many thought me different and apart, even when I tried my utmost to integrate.

There were benefits to this; I was excused from many traditional requirements that bound others. Being the outsider, though, could be difficult too, and one learns early that exemption and exclusion are often the same coin.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

Percolating in the recesses of the unforgettable is the national anthem of the time, "Arise, O Compatriots", the one adopted by the military junta in 1978 and sung until 2024. The very word "compatriot" has always sat with me as "comrade" does; it speaks of a bond forged around an idea, a creed, or a cause, rather than the quieter fact of belonging to a land or a people.

That is the slant I could never warm to, worsened by the servitude of unquestioning obeisance, and worse still by the pledge, recited by the people yet ignored by the rulers. I have written before of my want of any reverence for it, and I will not rehearse that dismissal here. [The entity is Nigeria, the identity is Nigerian]

A Fading Affinity

As I sit here today, mindful that Nigeria is marking its independence, the refrain of the readopted anthem rings in me like an earworm, a tune that lingers though its meaning has long drained away.

Then again, even the colonial slant of that original anthem, now sung once more, still seems to exemplify what Nigeria remains. My affinity for what she represents is fast fading. Beyond heritage, she no longer exerts the pull of nostalgia, save for her cuisine, nor offers any real sense of identity as the years pass.

In the first stanza alone, everything militates against its reach and appeal; it has long become a historical artefact, of things told rather than lived. When I left Nigeria, I was also released from the grip it once seemed to have, until I realised that, by jus soli, I was indeed of a wholly different nation to my parents' jus sanguinis.

There is an irony I can no longer ignore. On the day a nation remembers its independence from an empire, proclaimed from a dais to a saluting crowd, I find I have quietly come into an independence of my own, won not at once but by increments. Hers was from a crown; mine is of feeling, the last tie to loosen and the hardest to mourn, settling in only when the heart finally stops answering a call it no longer recognises.

Nigeria, we hail thee,
Our own dear native land,
Though tribes and tongues may differ,
In brotherhood we stand,
Nigerians all, are proud to serve
Our sovereign Motherland.

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Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú: A time for healing

Part I: Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú: A town of pain

An appreciation of Baba Cole

Joel Adebambo Idowu popularly known as Baba Cole, that was his nickname and I never met him, he died 4 years before I was born, he was my maternal grandfather. I have only recently begun to hear much about him. There are many ways we are supposed alike, he was an anglophile and an archivist, some sort of encyclopaedia of knowledge.

From what I have learnt and there is much more I need to flesh out, he was a literal man, of considerable influence, a prince of the town and a member of the ruling council of the town. He had three daughters, my mother being the middle one, there is a rumour that there might have been a brother, but no one has confirmed that to me.

Standing true for justice

Much as he respected traditions and conventions, he was not ready to sacrifice people for those causes and for that, he paid the ultimate price. As it transpired, an emissary was sent to our town from the neighbouring town just at the time when certain fetish practices required a stranger to be sacrificed to the town’s deities.

My grandfather made the case that an emissary from the neighbouring town who was to deliver a message and return with a response could not just disappear somewhere between the towns separated by 5 miles of forest and lands, it would be incomprehensible and incredulous. He won the argument, and the stranger was spared to return home.

Sacrificed for integrity

However, some traditionalists took umbrage at his intervention and through a combination of mystical and malevolent acts, my grandfather took on a sudden fit of involuntary body reactions and died. I inferred the rational and the irrational becoming a narrative and that has become the story of my grandfather, he was sacrificed to the malevolent forces in Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú when he stood in defence of an innocent person against the system.

That is how at around the age of 19, my mother lost her father and strangely at 19 I also had this break from the concept of Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú that grew to epitomise my reticence to visiting Nigeria. If I were to create a narrative, I embody the spirit of my maternal grandfather who is owed more than an apology for the wickedness meted out to him when he rationalised against the irrationality of traditions that should have gone into abeyance.

Beyond redress to healing

I cannot say if one needs to ask for an apology from Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú for what happened to my grandfather, much as I am not asking for an apology for what I have experienced with my father. Some things we cannot change, but there is much we can work towards reconciling that we might have the courage to do the greater thing, the boldness to write better stories, and an acknowledgement that we can find some healing after all the real and perceive hurt.

Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú has been a spectre, a haunting, a looming danger, sometimes a fearsome place that suggests a mountain of the strangest beings seething with malevolence and evil, or we have just allowed our imaginations to get the better of us and our rationality. It is a process calling for progress. I think my journey has begun.

Narratives matter and they have consequential significance even if they might seem trivial to others. I have had experiences dismissed when what I heard and saw changed me into a completely different person. Much as there are perspectives to have, the more important thing is to seek the good rather than foster the bad. Beyond my introspection and the times, I have had people counsel me, I hope I am amenable to guidance and instruction. One should never be in a position where the only resort is for God to send an ass to talk to you. [Bible Gateway: Balaam, the Donkey and the Angel]

Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú: A town of pain

A cause for appreciation

Waking up this morning from a dream that left me thinking I could do better with courses and causes, and I meant the kinds of courses of choice to travel and the causes that should be supported, the focus came back to myself.

When I spoke to Brian yesterday, I found every excuse I could, not to call my father on Father’s Day, I even checked as we were speaking if it was really Father’s Day in Nigeria, and then I got two Father’s Day messages from my brothers. Meanwhile, everyone online was celebrating Father’s Day and more poignant were those who shared memories of their fathers who had passed on, either recently or a long time ago.

In my wakefulness, I realised there was a lack of appreciation for the fact that I still have both my parents and they are thankfully doing well apart from the vagaries of old age. However, there are issues that I need to address about relationships that I only began to review as I stepped out for my walking exercise.

The town of my parents

I have a consequently very useful and good relationship with my mother, I cannot say that much about my father, and I think I know where that stems from, it goes way back to one event that seems to have defined so many things. It is the confluence of the irrational and the rational in what we call our experience that becomes the narrative whether it is plausible or not, makes no difference to the existential relevance of that perspective to the person involved.

My father, our little town of Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú with its big history, my maternal grandfather, some aspects of numerology which could just be coincidental, but one cannot ignore patterns of a sort.

Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú or Òdo Àyányẹlú in Ogun State is not to be confused with Ìjẹ̀bú-Ìjẹ̀shà in Osun State exists with a history that could hair-raising as much as it is intriguing, that it leaves people from there either quite passionate about the place or seriously averse to being there. We all have been touched by an enduring aspect of that town that even my mother would pass through the town on her way to a consultation without stopping to see anyone.

It is the retirement home of my father and many of his peers, yet you can mistake the place for a stairway to heaven, but like my paternal grandmother who lived to over a hundred years old, longevity has blessed many even as tragedy has befallen some.

Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú became a project and a dream, its children, many of whom from my parents’ generation travelled abroad for studies returned with aspirations to build their village, give the upcoming generations better opportunities, and infest their children with the same enthusiasm. We all seemed to play along, as it was where we met with cousins, developed new friendships, and had amazing conversations with lively elderly people. We looked forward to visiting, but the novelty began to wear off.

The schism and falling away

In my case, it was sometime in the middle of 1985, we had gone to Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú for some event and then some of my friends invited me to party in another town. I went to ask my dad and he might have had his reasons, but he did not grant the permission for me to go, and I shamefacedly passed my regrets to my friends who from what I learnt had a very good time.

Much as I was a difficult teenager, I was not given to vices or the kind of criminality that would involve the law, I can say in many ways, I was quite restrained and more so with my religious inclinations, but between my father and I, there has always been this simmering conflict that by the end of that year, I left home and did not see my father for probably another 18 months after.

For that refusal of permission to go to that party, I swore to myself that if I ever were to return to Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú, it would be in a box. I have not returned for 37 years and in that time, I missed many significant events that would have required my presence there or thereabouts.

On reflection and possibility

Then maybe as I thought about this morning, there is an undercurrent of fear that if I do venture, that might be the case, I do not know, and I have not attempted to test out the premise. It has become a kind of handicap, and this is the first time I am sharing this information, for what it has done in terms of our relationship is my seeking to define myself so differently from my father as much as possible without totally succeeding in being that different.

However, with that recessed in my memory commanding my inclinations, great import has been that distance has helped avoidance along with other explanations that could be summoned to protect the situation I have created for myself.

After a morning of introspection, I did give my father a call, I might even see a path to visiting Nigeria after 31 years, I don’t know if I will see Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú again, but I can understand how a complete breakdown in communication and relationships can instigate lifelong consequences. Gosh, I have nieces and nephews I have only met online, I am known of, but who knows me?

Postscript: My father launched a book about the history of Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú in April this year, there is much to learn about who we are, where we are from and what defines us. I saw the draft and my copy is wending its way to me, he is a formidable and quite accomplished gentleman.

Part II: Ìjẹ̀shà-Ìjẹ̀bú: A time for healing