Cry, my beloved North-East

Both my parents were North-Easterners. I can comfortably lay claims to Borno and Adamawa states because those are where my deep roots come from. But by birth, upbringing and marriage, I am a thorough North-Westerner, with no regrets. However I have the fondest memories of life as a child in Kano, whenever we received our […]

Both my parents were North-Easterners. I can comfortably lay claims to Borno and Adamawa states because those are where my deep roots come from. But by birth, upbringing and marriage, I am a thorough North-Westerner, with no regrets. However I have the fondest memories of life as a child in Kano, whenever we received our Borno-based relatives during the holidays or on their way to and from Hajj- the annual pilgrimage to Makkah.

The Hajj group was always the most fascinating. Led by our grandmother (actually our great-aunt, because our grandma died early and she adequately filled her place) Ka Hajja Gumsu, they always arrived our home from Maiduguri in their flowing Kanuri-style gowns and beautifully-wrapped lappayas, nicely smelling of their inevitable incense and humra (the liquid perfume). Apart from their elegant traditional appearance another inevitable aspect of their visit was the delicious dry fish they always brought along as gift. The great wonder of the once great Lake-Chad.

Ka Hajja Gumsu was reported to have performed the Hajj 19 times both as a district head’s wife and as his widow. The trip to Kano was an annual ritual she and her team were forced to make because there was no international airport anywhere near Maiduguri in those days. But their arrival to and from the holy land was also one of the highlights of our lives in those days. When she died in September 1988 and I accompanied my mother for the condolence visit, I was struck by something which marked a departure from life in Kano.

There was a Quranic school being run by a young teacher known as Baba Goni right in front of her house. Immediately after dinner on our first night there, I heard voices raised in Quranic recitation and had to ask my mother what that was all about. She said the school was resuming for their night session. When we arrived earlier in the afternoon, it was opened for the afternoon session. In Kano we had only morning and afternoon sessions, so I actually peeped out to see them and saw the students gathered around a fire made with logs of firewood, busy reading from their slates. I went back in and managed to sleep. At dawn, after the morning prayers, I was again woken up by the same sound of Quranic recitation. I asked my mum whether another school session was on and she told me yes, that here they begin the recitation at dawn then stop around 7am to go and eat breakfast. They resume around 8.30 then continue till noon when they will break again for lunch and Zuhr prayer. After Zuhr (early afternoon prayer) they get a few hours break before they resume again at 4pm, after the Asr prayer.

I observed that the schedule seemed too hectic and she explained that that was  why parents go to a lot of trouble to send them to Maiduguri ‘the east’ to study because they believe it is this kind of rigorous study regime that makes them good reciters and memorisers of the Holy Quran. Alas, those were the good old days, when life was simple, and people paid equal attention to their physical and spiritual lives; when the news coming out of the North-East was positive.

Today the headlines from this zone go from bloody to gloomy and back to bloody. We are living witnesses to the horrors that have taken over normal life in Maiduguri, Damaturu, parts of Bauchi and Adamawa states. The tit for tat massacres regularly undertaken by the Joint Task Force operatives and the so-called members of the Boko Haram sect are having a high toll on the poor civilians in these towns. Innocent lives are daily being lost, while hordes of innocent youths are in detention over alleged links to the sect.

There is hardly a family between Borno and Yobe states that has not suffered the consequence of this protracted war. A day after the Shehu of  Borno narrowly escaped death at his Friday mosque on July 13th this year, I received a call in which my heavily sobbing sister told me the death of our nephew Muhammad Amin. He was shot dead as he stood in front of his friend’s pharmacy at Mafoni ward. There are conflicting accounts of how Muhammad met his tragic end. One account said he the JTF went on rampage as a response to the attack on the Shehu and were shooting any group of youths thought to be loitering around. So Muhammad, who along with a few friends was at the pharmacy door, was instantly shot and killed, while his friends ran for dear life.

Another version said it was the usual gunmen on motorcycles that shot at Amin and his friends. In any case Muhammad Amin was killed that Saturday July 14th.

When I received his usual Friday text on July 13th, I had no idea I was receiving it for the last time. Ever since he started sending me Friday greetings Muhammad never failed to send them early, usually by 6am or thereabouts. As if it wasn’t bad enough that a totally innocent youth had been cut in his prime, when his siblings went to collect his body for burial they met with another obstacle at the mortuary. They were asked to pay the sum of one hundred thousand naira and an undertaking that their brother was a Boko Haram member before his body will be released.

Needless to say this was too much for the grieving family to bear. They left Muhammad’s body at the hospital and reported the matter to their uncle, an influential retired soldier. It was the uncle’s intervention that ensured the release of Muhammad’s body for decent burial. Many other innocent youths killed the same way had no such luck. Parents are mostly forced to abandon their children’s bodies because they could not afford to pay these extortionists and are definitely not ready to brand their departed kids Boko Haram. The hardships encountered by especially ordinary Maiduguri residents in the last two years can best be imagined. Between the insurgents and his JTF protectors the average Maiduguri resident is sandwiched between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Though they are fond of denying it, most of the deaths and destruction visited on the innocent residents of the city are the handiwork of the JTF. This is why ordinary people and members of the Borno Elders and Leaders of Thought forum have called on the federal government to remove the soldiers from Borno streets. This is not to say that they do not appreciate the enormity of the challenge that led to the JTF being deployed there, rather it is to say that the collateral damage being incurred as a result of JTF excesses has grown to worrisome levels. And has compounded the problem they came to solve in the first place.

It is an accepted fact today that life just can’t be lived normally in Maiduguri, Damaturu and other parts of the North-east. When my younger sister’s dear husband lost his life in a car accident near Maiduguri exactly forty days ago, this fact was made very glaring to us. Late Muhammad Kolo Abubakar was travelling on a condolence visit to Maiduguri that morning of Monday 3rd September. My sister Ramatu, whom he had left in Kano at 8.30 am, just got a call that evening telling her there had been an accident. Her husband who had been driving had died instantly. He was 44 years old. Along with our older relatives, my sister tearfully set out for Maiduguri first thing the following morning. The endless checkpoints on the road ensured that they didn’t arrive at their destination until 4.30pm. Again they had to cut their normal seven-day period of mourning to three because it was no longer safe to sit in front of houses to receive condolences. As such a good and amiable man, a dearly-loved husband, brother and father couldn’t be properly mourned because the times did not permit.

It is definitely time for all influential and concerned North-Easterners to come together and put pressure on the federal government to do what is right concerning this unfortunate situation. The plight of displaced families, detained youths and indiscriminate JTF-inspired collateral damage must all be tackled before we can hope for peace. Already the North-east crisis is taking another dimension with the kind of atrocity committed at the Federal Polytechnic, Mubi. Other evil merchants are taking advantage of the extreme cases in Maiduguri and Damaturu to perpetrate more mayhem. We need a concerted effort to address the root cause of the problem. This is what we hope North-East leaders will prioritise and pursue vigorously. Until they do this, the rest of us can only pray and cry for our beloved North-East.