A personal essay on hope, and the unbreakable Nigerian spirit.
Some men and women died this week. I had never met them and they did not know me by name, but armed with an anthem and raised voices they took a stand on my behalf. The battle ground was a tollgate, and the enemy, men who should be brothers, dressed in a uniform that should signal hope, instead brought with their arrival anguish and despair. My champions believed they would find protection under a flag and a song we all share, that those symbols surely would show the men in camouflage they were on the same side. But the thing about camouflage is that by its very design it conceals the true nature of those who wear it. The government told us there were no deaths. The media told us there were some deaths. And now I tell you, some men and women died, but this is an incomplete sentence missing two essential words that make it personal. Some men and women died, for me.
At the age of eleven on a hot Lagos afternoon, I made a decision to change a country. It was a quiet and personal decision made at a filling station, while waiting for our family driver Mr Yinka to fill up the tank of my father’s moss green Mercedes Benz. The gold and navy tie of my school uniform was loose, less to do with the heat but instead in a show of pre-teen rebellion, and the top button of my white shirt was undone. In the owners corner of the car I fidgeted impatiently with the zipper of my backpack, as this filling station pit stop was delaying my grand plans of play later that evening.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a small figure looming on the other side of my window. It was a dusty haired Lebanese boy about the same age as me, draped in a dirty old kaftan. Our eyes met, we stared at each other for a few seconds, before he stretched his palm toward me and then gestured to his mouth. I had witnessed this gesture many times before on the roads of Lagos, at my parents, at Mr Yinka, but never at me. This boy was hungry, and had an adult been in the car they would know how to help him, but my little self had no clue. However, refusing him was not an option, it was not what any of the adults in my life would have done so neither could I. Pulling apart the zippers of my backpack I searched frantically for some leftover biscuits, or a lollipop I had perhaps decided to save for my playdate later, but I came up short. The only thing in that bag I did not need was a rolled up bundle of fresh tissues. He couldn’t eat this I knew that much, but I couldn’t let him go empty handed. Taking out the roll of tissue, I wound my window all the way down and gently placed the tissue in his palm. I was certain he would throw it on the ground in disappointment, and I was ashamed that it was all I had to share. He examined the content of his palm for a moment, and then folded up the tissue and blew his nose. With a big smile and red nose he thanked me and ran off. I stared at the spot where he stood just a moment ago with a look of cartoonish confusion on my face. What had just happened? If I could make that boy my age smile with just a bit of tissue imagine what I could do if I became president. And in that moment my mind was made up, I would become the president of Nigeria, and no little boy (or girl) would ever be without tissue or food again.
It was many years later when I came to understand that Nigerian presidents don’t fix the problems of hungry little boys. From behind the tinted windows of luxury SUVs, Nigerian presidents cannot see the problems of disenfranchised little boys. And so at the age of thirteen and in the 9th grade, at the end of my one year term as student council president, I retired early from my career in politics. Because I had come to the realization that politicians do not design change. Their work is merely to facilitate it, organize it, deliver it, and unfortunately in the case of Nigeria to pocket it. A politician is merely a conduit for change, and never actually the brain behind it. I wanted instead to dream and design the future, or at the very least to inspire it. And up until a bloody battle at a tollgate, I was still dreaming about the future as though I were still a child. On Tuesday, October 20th 2020, some men and women pierced by military grade ammunition closed their eyes for the last time, and drifted into an eternal sleep. And simultaneously on the other side of the world, in that very moment, I was awakened.
Like every other Nigerian with humanity and a conscience, over the last few days I have been drowning in an ocean of emotion. I have been tossed violently between waves of grief, rage, and despair. Occasionally, I have found myself laughing hysterically in amusement at the lack of originality in the strategy employed by a former dictator to quell the voice of his people. I have tried to disguise myself in a pot belly and rid myself of empathy, in an attempt to imagine how I would have handled the protests had I been in government. What could I get away with in the year 2020 that would support the false narrative of progress, while tightening my chokehold on power. I certainly would not send the military to face unarmed peaceful protesters who are campaigning against brutality, in the age of social media and live streaming. I wouldn’t announce a curfew, disable security cameras, and cut off power to make the arrival of military forces look premeditated. And I most certainly would not deny the death toll hours later, during a photo op at a hospital filled with casualties riddled with bullet holes. And if as a Nigerian leader I’d somehow managed to find myself in this conundrum, I would be ready with a fall guy. I would pick some poor fool, tag him as the rogue leader of an unsanctioned military rebellion, and deal with him loudly and publicly. What I would not do, is broadcast a pre-recorded national address, threatening the use of force against people protesting the use of force, and telling the international community they did not witness what they’d just watched.
To be Nigerian is to exist in an amusement park with only two attractions, a house of horrors, and a rollercoaster. It is to constantly confront a unique kind of evil, one that continually surveys the boundaries of a desperate person’s morality in order to identify the line they will not cross, and marks that line as the starting point of their oppression. A naive kind of evil that forgets that all things must, and indeed will end. And so to be Nigerian is to be born with an abundance of hope, and a lifetime of patience, understanding that all things must end. It is that hope that acted as my lifeboat this week, and delivered me to the island of 200 million. An island filled with people whose hope is as persistent as mine. A secret destination reserved for those who have the courage to persevere in the face of the seemingly impossible, a safe haven that our enemies cannot reach. What evil believes is that it cannot be defeated, because to defeat it we must become it, and if we become it we ultimately betray ourselves. But evil can be defeated, with planning, with patience, and with hope.
I found this truth recently in conversation with a former classmate, who complained bitterly about the current state of the country. However instead of calling for justice she called for peace, like the two things were mutually exclusive. She said if the protesters had quit while they were ahead, the government might have met some of their demands, but now there was no chance of that and she wanted things to return to normal. Have you ever lived on less than $2 a day? I asked her. In February of 2018, the African Development Bank released a statement saying that 152 million Nigerians live on less that $2 a day, are you amongst that vast majority living in abject poverty? Because if you were, I explained, you would understand that normal for most people in Nigeria is a constant state of hunger and destitution. In fact, you could almost forgive the SARS officials and the army when you realize that most of these men and women are products of hunger and destitution, with a sprinkle of rage. Understanding that there are only two outcomes of suffering on a human being, the building of character, or the complete dismantling of it. Nigeria finds itself in the its current state because 152 million have nothing, and therefore have nothing to lose.
I have wondered, in the last week what my role is in this push for change. Selfishly on some level I too would like things to go back to normal. As a Nigerian in diaspora my version of normal is very different. It’s hectic weekdays working from home, and quiet weekends at the dog park. It’s podcasts while doing laundry, dinner at nice restaurants with friends, and quiet evenings with a glass of wine and Netflix. It also is the constant battle with survivors guilt, knowing that I find myself in these fortunate circumstances by virtue of pure luck. I won a lottery I never signed up to play, and ended up in the one-fifth of Nigerians with problems a little less dire than the rest. It’s the nagging sound of a promise made on a hot Lagos afternoon to a little boy, that I would have more than a roll of tissue to give the next little boy. It is the shame of a promise unfulfilled.
When I was younger, I would recoil at the familiarity of a stranger at church calling me ‘sister’ when they ushered me to my seat. I don’t know you, I would think, and I am not your sister. I did not know then, that the word was a subconscious effort by those strangers to bridge a divide that caused 200 million people to walk alone in the same direction. 200 million of us, and we have been kept apart for decades, by religion, by class, by tribe, so we never realize our power. I have stopped myself from speaking so many times this week, letting doubt creep in and silence me. My doubt says, there are voices louder than yours, more eloquent than yours, more intellectual than your. Why would yours make any difference? I say to my doubt, it will not, not on its own. But joining in the chorus of 200 millions voices, it will make the earth tremble. How loud our voices could be if we raised them together, how the earth will quake when we rise, how our enemies will run when we advance.
I don’t have the answer to what comes next but I do know this, some men and women at a tollgate in Lekki, on Oct 20th 2020, bought me some time. I know that I will only find these answers if you, my brothers and my sisters, work with me to figure it out. I anticipate in the coming days an effort to silence us on social media, to instill fear, to break our spirits. But where one of us falls, a million more awaken. All things must end, and at those ends there are new beginnings. And if you find yourself drowning in these coming days and losing sight of the light at the end of the tunnel, climb into my lifeboat. These words will be here to remind you that somewhere in that ocean, if you make it past the strongest waves, there is an island of 200 million people waiting to renew your spirit. And I will be one of them.
