In search of my maternal roots in Parakou, Benin Republic (I)

But Okuta is my hometown only because the Borgu society, like most African societies, is patrilineal. If it were matrilineal, as many societies in Ghana are, my hometown would have been Parakou, Benin Republic’s third largest city and northern Benin Republic’s largest. A little digression here is not amiss. You will notice I called Parakou […]

But Okuta is my hometown only because the Borgu society, like most African societies, is patrilineal. If it were matrilineal, as many societies in Ghana are, my hometown would have been Parakou, Benin Republic’s third largest city and northern Benin Republic’s largest.

A little digression here is not amiss. You will notice I called Parakou northern Benin Republic’s largest city. Now, if my part of Nigeria is located on our western border with Benin Republic, Parakou, which is only an hour away from my hometown, should properly be in the eastern part of the country. But in Benin Republic, the Borgou state (one of 12 states in the country) of which Parakou is the capital, is often referred to as “nord” (French for north), although it is actually geographically in the east.

Interestingly, my part of Kwara State, which used to be called Western Borgu until it was renamed Baruten after Northern Borgu was ceded to Niger State in the late 1980s, is also usually called “northern” Kwara in our state’s political lexicon, although it, too, is actually in the western belt of the state. It is so called, perhaps, because it is, along with the Nupe-speaking parts of the state, almost culturally indistinguishable from Nigeria’s far north.

 It’s probably the same logic that explains the labeling of Borgou in Benin Republic as “nord.” In many ways, Borgou is the Beninese cultural and political equivalent of Nigeria’s far northern region. In politics, it seems, cultural affiliation and filiation trump cartographic labels.

 Well, although I spent the first 18 years of my life in my hometown, I had never visited Parakou, the city of my mother’s birth. I had curiously been incurious about my maternal origins. That changed last week.

With only a little prodding from my mother, we set out for Parakou on a bumpy country road. But a few meters before the Parakou city gate, Beninese police officers, called gendarmes, stopped us. They said I was Igbo. In this country, I later found out, anyone who is dressed in a shirt and a trouser, has a lighter than average complexion, and speaks English is called Igbo. They then asked for my travel documents, which I didn’t have because I didn’t think I needed them. I politely told them I was Batonu (or Bariba, as my people are called there) and that my mother was born in the city whose gates overlooked us.

They weren’t convinced—or impressed. For starters, I don’t look anything like my mother. And I didn’t conform to what they thought to be the conventional or formulaic image of a Batonu man—whatever it is. Plus, my sartorial comportment—and that of my daughter who wore American clothes and boots—falsely gave me away as “Ibo”—or anything but Bariba. So they insisted that the conditions for my entry into Parakou was for me to either show my travel documents or pay some outrageous fee as penalty for not having the proper travel documents. My mother was spared this burden. They probably thought she was self-evidently Beninese, although her parents moved to what is today Nigeria since she was six.

 To convince them that I was who I said I was, I spoke the Batonu language, the Nigerian dialect of the language, that is, which is perfectly mutually intelligible with the Beninese dialect.  All this time the gendarmes had been communicating with me in the faltering English they could speak. But after I spoke my language, the guys switched to French and pretended they didn’t understand Batonu, the major language in central and northern Benin Republic. They also stopped speaking English altogether.

At this point, I lost my cool. I told them their pigheadedness dramatized the tragedy of arbitrary colonial boundary delineations and the attendant painful fragmentation of otherwise cohesive pre-colonial African societies. (I didn’t expect them to understand much less sympathize with this highfalutin angst; I was merely letting off steam). Much of central and northern Benin Republic used to be part of the ancient Borgu Empire, which extended to what is today western Kwara State, southern Niger State and parts of Kebbi State. To this day, the spiritual and political headquarters of the Borgu people (who comprise different ethnic groups) is the Batonu town of Nikki in Benin Republic.

 I also asked the gendarmes if they were aware of something called the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of people across the West African sub-region. That was obviously news to them. In a fit of simulated but impotent rage carefully calculated to intimidate them I insisted that I would neither produce any travel documents nor pay a dime as penalty. “This is literally my motherland and I won’t accept being treated like some illegal alien here by ignorant and clueless goons!” I said.  

Then some self-important and well-fed bureaucrat who appeared to be the boss came out, called me aside, and asked to know who I was. I told him. He asked for my ID, which I showed him. And that did the magic. We were now free to enter Parakou! Was I let off because I showed evidence that I live in America? Most probably. Tragic, isn’t it?