The other war we are not talking about

Photo from punchng.com

Back in the university, I was a politician; and like all politicians I had to form alliances—another way of saying I manoeuvred to be on the good side of other student politicians or popular students—to improve my chances at the polls.

I never had enough money to go beyond contesting—and winning (thank you very much) my Departmental Presidency—but after contesting for this and that, I knew most of the movers and shakers in my school—Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka. One guy I knew was Obiadada—a nickname, coined from his first name, Obi, and adada, Igbo for ‘one who does not fall’. Obi was the Director of transport when we were in third year.

Anybody who knows what’s up about Nigerian universities will tell you that Director of Transport is a very important position, one that is second only to the Student Union President as per influence in some schools. In Unizik, without student hostels in the then still underdeveloped permanent site on the outskirts of Awka, transporting students to and from lectures in the permanent site was huge business—a business that the Student Union Government (SUG) Director of Transport oversaw.

As Director of transport, Obi oversaw the required ferrying of students and acquired the influence that came with the position. In Nigeria, and elsewhere, influence means money. Obi made it big, they said.

I can’t truthfully say that money got into Obi’s head. For those of us who were on friendly terms with him before he made it big, we still saw the same soft spoken boy that was known for his kindly disposition. Aside from the rumour that he had a fleet of buses running the school route, and another of him dating the then Miss Unizik, Obi didn’t appear to be overly expressive with the trappings of office.

A year after his tenure ended, Obi was killed. Someone or some people took a gun to him, and Obi that would not fall, fell.

What followed Obi’s killing was a carnage that sent many of us running home to mama. It was a bloody cult war and boys died and mothers cried in vain for sons sent to become men but who won’t be coming home, ever.

I knew Obi, as much as you will know a fellow student that knows your department and your first name, but perhaps little else. I knew him because the draw of politics ensured our paths crossed several times, but I knew him more because his roommate was a first year hostel mate of mine—a guy that later swore that he had no inclination that Obi was a cultist.

While some may ponder how that is possible, those of us who passed through school and had an above average profile knew that this happens, a lot too. There are people who join cults but stay well below the ‘flag flying’ radar. Then there are those who at first sighting your mind screams ‘cultist’ but who turn out to be Jew Men with no facilitations.

Well, this story is not about ‘flags’ or who wore what, but about dreams destroyed and supposed scholars who are killers and a government that refuses to be bothered.

Obi died, and some boys died or were maimed in the revenge killings that followed. We were in final year then, and if not for an extension caused by a riot over tuition fees some months before, would have graduated by then. It wasn’t the first time it would happen in our school—I am not sure it was the last even—or in higher institutions in Middle-Belt and Southern Nigeria, where cult wars and the resultant fatalities are an accepted rite of passage for university students.

A few months ago, students in higher institutions in Lagos were the targets, with daylight shootings turning the schools there into what the unwary would presume to be action movie sets. Only, the uninitiated would realise, the guns are real and the gore and blood made up of living, or about to die, matter.

A few weeks ago, students of the University of Benin were in the news, blocking streets and gearing up for a showdown with police after it emerged that a student was shot and killed by the police. That case is still fresh and further revelations being awaited.

A few days ago, the same university entered the news again, with reports of more students’ deaths sending mothers to again call their wards to find out if all is well. Not all phones rang, and of those that rang, there were some where it was not the owners’ voices that carried the news that every parent dread—the death of a child that should care for them in old age and ensure they meet the earth on humane terms.

Unlike before, when police was marked as the perpetrator, the student body did not take to the streets to protest the deaths. They can’t/couldn’t, won’t/wouldn’t, because people from within their academic community are the perpetrators—people who probably added strength to the numbers that protested the police linked killing.

While we turn a blind eye to it, hoping these types of killing will go away, it only seems to get worse and more dreams are cut short, interred and forgotten; with their killers left to return to the crime scene, either to carry more killings or prove to acolytes that ‘nothing dey hapun’. And the boldness  that comes off this ‘nothing dey hapun’ mentality is why cult group graduated from fighting with fists to fighting with guns, from beating up a love rival to shooting him/her dead at point blank range—sometimes in front of parents and siblings.

Would this ever stop? I doubt that very much, unless the government and police live up to their responsibilities; unless parents train their children better and with a sense of right and wrong.

As I write this, names float across my mind’s eye. I recall my friend Emeka Ikeh’s teary eyes as he talked about his kid brother, Uche, an aspiring musician, who was shot as he slept in Enugu. Uche was still a teenager, with a possible future that was shining through even then.

I recall Ngozi Awa’s son, Obinna, who was killed and buried in a shallow grave. Ngozi is a poet and a friend on Facebook; she keeps writing poems to her dead son. Her poems are heart wrenching. Obinna was also a teenager.

I recall all the boys I have read about or heard about, who were killed by bullets fired by their fellow students during the ego driven killing sprees that inundate Nigerian’s university campuses.

I recall Eghosa Imasuen’s book ‘Fine Boys’, an autobiography dressed as fiction, a book that captures the world that the cult groups thrive in, and the senselessness of the carnage they wrought (why that book is not yet recommended read for all university students beats me).

All these deaths are really for nothing really, just the result of bruised egos that needed massaging, with blood.

There is too much to say about this issue, I can’t say them all here or say them alone, but let’s begin to talk about this and bring the circle to an end.