“Shege Inyamirin, arne kawai!” the
man screamed at me as I sprawled on the red earth, my 20 litre water
container, which a few moments ago was balanced on my head as I hurried across
the railway track, was not too far away. I looked from the container, which jerked as it expelled the water I had just fetched from Isa Kaita’s Dutse Close home, to the snarling man that had just pushed me, wondering why my
being Igbo merited that much callousness. I looked towards my father’s chemist
shop a few metres away, more worried about what he would do if the container
was broken than going back to the long queue of people waiting their turn at
the tap Alhaji Isa Kaita (CBE) had graciously provided for the public inside
His expansive compound. Yes, the man had pushed me, and beyond his expletives
that can only be summarised as "Igbo infidel", he offered no
explanation and people around did not ask. Surely, why he pushed me, hampered
as I was by my large container, was a question that should have been asked,
especially as I had not impeded him, or brushed against him. My crime was
having tribal marking beside my eyes that identified me to be Igbo, an ethnic group that everyone not Igbo seemed to hate—at least that was what my young mind felt
then.
The event above happened about two
decades ago in Angwa Shanu, a town in Kaduna North LGA, Kaduna state. It was
one of several instances where my siblings and me were singled out and abused
because we are Igbo. I recall it here to buttress the point that the Igbo have
not had it easy in post war Nigeria and that the hate for the Igbo runs deeper
than many care to admit. However, we do not need anyone to admit anything, that
we know this fact is what is important, to us that is.
Growing up, I can’t recall my father
telling us to be cautious, or to deny our Igboness, but we knew the ability to
survive in a society hostile to our kind is our only defence. So, we learnt
Hausa, learnt to recite the more common Islamic creeds and learnt to deny our
Igboness. To avoid the Igbo stigma, we became Southern Kaduna, Benue, Cross
River, Bendel or any other grouping, but never Igbo if we could help it.
