ktravula – a travelogue!

reflections on the world

Ethnicity as a Plus Factor

On reflection on the coming milestone in Nigeria in the coming days, I came to the conclusion that one of the biggest drawbacks in the national progress till date is the poor handling of the country’s diverse ethnicity condition. For many years, I’ve wondered what it would have been like to live in the times of Tafawa Balewa, and Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Obafemi Awolowo, and the many other earlier nationalists that struggled for the nation’s independent many times from ethnic,  but for the most part from nationalistic, standpoints. Eventually, I get to wondering how things could have gone wrong.

Tafawa Balewa remains one of my most admired men of those times not because I knew him, but because I didn’t, and because he was killed for no reason I could easily understand. And because he was one of the brilliant educated northerners who managed to get into the position of authority. And he was a simple man. Yet he was killed. Azikiwe was another one who became the opposition leader in a Western House of assembly in 1952 as a Nigerian and not as an Igbo man. When I think back to how things could have been different if the first coup hasn’t happened, or how things could have been if the coup had been bloodless, or if it had not had an ethnic slant, I sigh and get back to doing something else. Because I wonder if something beautiful and great could have evolved.

On invitation, I have written a post on my reflections on Independent Nigeria at 50 for the Nigerianstalk.org website. There are a few new posts there also by other Nigerian bloggers and I cherish the opportunity to join those distinguished folks in sharing my thoughts with the new generation of Nigerians to whom the future belong. I am not feeling as giddy as the government wants me to feel about these celebrations just yet, not surprisingly. I guess it’s because the country wasn’t born in 1960 anyway, and neither were those who had evolved their different ways of living together even long before any foreign forces stepped foot on the land area we now call our own. If 50 years of independence from the British could still be counted as an achievement, I guess it is a memorable milestone. In any case, check out the Nigeria@50 post series on Nigerianstalk and leave comments when you can.

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Ethnicity as a Plus Factor was published on September 29th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Observations category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Night, St. Louis.

Here is a nice view of the downtown St. Louis taken yesterday after an event in the Jesuit Hall in the St. Louis University.

The American presiding reverend father who had spent eighteen years as a presiding priest in a Catholic church in Lagos Nigeria had graciously given us a tour of the Jesuit Hall where the priests lived, and of the view from the top of the fifteen-storied building into the church across the road and the city at large. A great experience.

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Night, St. Louis. was published on September 19th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Art category. There are currently 3 comments on this article so far.

Summer People (III)

In response to a memory of faces and places, here is the (I hope) last installment of my summer people posts. Or not.

There’s Ayo, Prof. Banjo, Benson, Aunt Grace, Nikola, Niyi, Dr. Oha, Rahman, Sola, Yemi, and Yomi .

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Summer People (III) was published on August 31st, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Uncategorized category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Summer People (II)

More.

Here we have, in alphabetical order,  Adunni, Ayo,  Bimbo, Bukkie, Damilola, Nikita, Olga, Olo, Peter, Rayo, Shaban, and Zainab.

Best of luck matching the names to the photos :) .

And what is it with the hands under the chin? There must be something on my face that elicits this kind of “wondering” reaction. Hmm.

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Summer People (II) was published on August 30th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , under the Fun, Observations category. There are currently 3 comments on this article so far.

Summer People (I)

Random images of people I met and interacted with during the summer.

Includes Bola, Rotji, Yun Hsin, Nneoma, Laitan, Ron, Jolaade, Papa Rudy, Chiedu, and Elizabeth in no particular order. One of those light-skinned beautiful women is my sister. Go figure.

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Summer People (I) was published on August 29th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Art, Fun category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Re-reading History

For the past few days, I have been reading Nigeria’s history (again), especially as regards military politics and the slow and significant steps that brought us to where we are today. The curious search began with a visit to Ilorin and Kaduna where I first heard of Ibrahim Taiwo road. Now Ilorin and Kaduna are both very distant places from each other and the Yoruba military man must have been significant to have had a major road named after him in two (perhaps more) states in Nigeria. I came online, and I was led from one relevant link to another until I satisfied my curiosity.

At the end of two full days of reading through a verifiable history that has also been written about in many other publications, I came to very many realizations. One of them of course was that the civil population never stood much of a chance from the beginning, especially since military tasted power. Ego, politics, greed and corruption took over and we have not remained the same ever since, nor has the players since independence really stepped aside for others or dialogued with alternative viewpoints, for the most part. We could say that much of Nigeria’s military history shares the stage with much of its political history.

There were very many complex stories many of which lent itself to interesting engagement. The first coup and its ethnic sentiments, the counter coups and military politics, the civil war heroes and villains, the players and the losers, and the very many incidental occurrences that read like stuff for movies or great literatures. General Gowon stands out with his far-reaching reforms, his engaging personality, and his position at a crucial time in history. In comparison, he is the only one of Nigeria’s leaders that could stand in Mandela’s image. At the end though, placed beside the reality on the ground where at fifty years we have not been able to supply electricity uninterrupted to all parts of the country, all the gallantry and “gentlemanliness” or the Nigerian military officers (who have interestingly all remained in the political and diplomatic limelight since then) all fade away into the murk of irrelevance. A waste.

Much of those stories can be found online at Dawodu.com. People interested should check here, here and here for detailed analysis of the first coups and how it changed the course of the nation’s history.

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Re-reading History was published on August 4th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Observations, Opinion category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

My City Has Gone Mad

Today was a strange day of many proportions. I missed a robbery shootout between robbers and the police at three different parts of the city, many times during the day. It’s not pretty. Earlier in the morning, I came across a crowd of people gathered around a young man recently hit by a stray bullet by fleeing robbers. He died on the spot. Had I left home just three minutes earlier, I would definitely have been in the vicinity of the attack. Returning home a few moments ago, I had missed another robbery on a fuel station on my way home by about five minutes. I’m shaken.

The spate of robbery attacks on banks and other financial centres in the city has been on the rise for a while now. This was just one of my closest encounters. The good news was that one of the robbers was shot dead while one other was captured. The bad news is that the situation that makes robbery viable to unemployed youths still remain in the country while the government plans over a feast of millions of dollars to celebrate the nation’s 50th anniversary of official existence. Shame!

We all deserve a national award for survival.

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My City Has Gone Mad was published on July 27th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 5 comments on this article so far.

A Vote of Thanks

My visit around (some parts of) the country could not have been possible if not for support, solicited and unsolicited by many people along the way. Half of the trip was motivated by impulse so I really appreciate the help of friends and colleagues who welcomed me with open arms without reservation, and were willing to be at my beck and call for the past three weeks.

There was Dr. Shaban in Ife, Anja and Yun Hsin at Ikare, Prof and Mrs. Oyebade at Akungba, Peter, Chiedu and Bode at Ilorin, Laolu and Mr. Olaniyan at Abuja, Zainab, Samson and Comfort in Kaduna, Alben at Nassarawa; Rotji, Yilrot and Joshua in Jos, and everyone who sent me helpful tips on Facebook, some of which I used, and some that I didn’t. Thanks should also go to Yemi, Chris, Laitan and Godwin who bailed me out when I needed their help.

So now, I’m back in Lagos for the weekend, and what did I see? A bus from the Island carrying me and a host of other passengers ran out of fuel right in the middle of the supposed longest bridge in Africa: The Third Mainland Bridge. For thirty minutes, we were there waiting for him to go to the mainland and find fuel. I spent much of the time taking pictures of the bridge and the water which was something I’d always loved to do anyway. It wasn’t such a waste of time after all, and I didn’t succeed in falling into the lagoon. That would have been a poetic end to a journey around the country.

In any case, I’m back, more refreshed. How have you all been?

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A Vote of Thanks was published on July 23rd, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the adventures, Soliloquy category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

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