Dear Chiagoziem,
I have been on social media a lot these days. Call it my most recent bad habit, call it a constructive attempt to find a connection in silent ways to people and/or anonymous many-s that I find interesting but never meet, call it a wasted enterprise of fishing for (good) humor and escaping my own realities by living vicariously through everything perceptible on screen. Call it whatever but social media seems to be the one thing in my life that will remain a constant for a good while. I have, since last year, been following the developments leading up to Nigeria’s 2023 election and the events that have unfolded during the electoral proceedings that started actively on the 25th of February.
At first, following election news and updates on social media was merely a good excuse to sit guilt-free on my toilet seat and roam through other more interesting content while equipping myself with just about enough knowledge to keep up the pretense of being a politically engaged Nigerian youth. I am particularly a big fan of Insta stories, fashion GRWMs, comedic skits by Nigerians, sweet, sweet stand-ups or highlights of comedy specials, dance challenges, sing-alongs, clips from concerts of favorite musicians, old Tik-Tok reels of people who fine die that appear as Instagram video highlights, and Twitter sub-threads about life, love, heartbreak, failed marriages, NFT, daft yet high-sounding political statements made by people with more money than sense, literary successes, anime reviews, new movie releases, and celebrity gossips.
Oh, and there is my weekly delve into the social media fandom of Abbott Elementary
It was easy to wade in and out of the election reportage on social media until, like say, one week before the presidential election on Feb 25 when the desperation of Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) of All Progressives Congress (APC) became more palpable and his resolution to emerge winner against the contesting wild-card underdog Peter Obi (LP aka Ellu P 😂) and recycled rival Atiku Abubakar (PDP) calcified already existing structures of thuggery, grassroots oppression, and election violence (both symbolic and systemic). The change of currency which rendered all Nigerians (except the ultra-rich and those-with-connect) miserable further foreshadowed the fact that the election on the 25th will be the most crisis-filled one that I will get to experience in my thus-far-lifetime. So although I preached the gospel of Peter Obi in my little corner, I wasn’t surprised when Tinubu and his ideologically blind syndicate(s) came up with the grossest, most life-endangering strategies in the book of electoral corruption to win against other candidates.
My mind is a sieve so I can’t exactly remember the particular emotions that hit me when Tinubu was announced the winner after the backhandedness dealt to Nigerians by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). But I do clearly remember that I felt a vague sense of relief. Yes, I ranted to anyone who cared to hear, wove my disapproval into class discussions, and burst out in a car on my way to Walmart wearying the driver and another seater with vexed comments about the braggy unrepentance of the fraud Presidential-elect. But I also felt relief that the presidential election was over and done with so Nigerians could be released from the chokehold of oppressive tactics that had been used to secure a win at all costs. At least, Nigerians could breathe again, get money from the bank again, walk freely (to an extent) without the fear of being physically assaulted by thugs, and maybe even resume non-politically affiliated good comedy on social media.
My relief was coated with heavy disappointment, the sort of heavy disappointment that I was sure many Nigerians felt, especially the youths, those who have, since 2020 when the ENDSARS protests began, looked forward to enacting change on the electoral level. Lie heat from an industrial chimney, the disappointment was widespread across the country from the North to the East to the West to the South to the Midwest to everywhere.
Or so, I thought. How did it come to be that the country moved from publicly expressing utter disappointment with the sham of an election that was conducted on Feb 25 to fiercely defending propaganda of hate against Igbo people? Peter Obi was a fan favorite but there were people who discredited his candidacy because he is Igbo and should by reason of that ethnic affiliation not be trusted with Nigeria as a country. But I saw these tribalistic discreditors for the bigots that they are (side eye at Brymo, Femi ). How did it happen that I look through social media as I sit on my toilet seat, hoping to distract myself with news about the gubernatorial elections planned for two weeks after the presidential counterpart, I don’t see distractions anymore, I see people – Yorubas, folks that have passed through formal education, people from the social media age, politically conscious millennials and Gen Zs, Afrobeats enthusiasts who are well aware of its global sensibilities, political pundits, movers and shakers of our socio-cultural landscape, people with common sense, etc. – spewing real hate for Igbo people and claiming that Peter Obi gained a foothold in the political race on an Igbo-based agenda and this was a mistake that needs to be rectified.
What’s surprising is that this open display of tribalism is used as a winning argument by the ruling party of APC on all fronts to dissuade Nigerians from supporting Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour (GRV for short) who is LP’s governorship candidate in Lagos. For some Lagosians, just hearing that GRV has both Yoruba and Igbo heritage became enough reason to strike him out as a worthy candidate for the governorship post.
Many premises have been used to support this wilding argument.
Lagos is not No Man’s Land, a particular premise goes, it is Yoruba land and thus should be ruled by Yoruba people only (wait, what happened to Lagos is a mega city? What happened to the long history of cohabitation between people of different tribes in the small space of Lagos? What happened to the blatant evidence that the Aworis, the Epes, Badagry folks who have been attributed as the original inhabitants of Lagos have never exactly been the governors of the state since independence? And what is with the lack of knowing that, during the extensive military regime in Nigeria, Lagos has been governed by Igbo men twice in a row – Ndubuisi Godwin Kanu (from 1976 to 77) and Ebitu Nkiwe – 78 to 79).
And wait, what of this well-founded fact? 👇🏾)
Another premise: Igbo people are always castigated everywhere they are. There must be something wrong with them. Maybe it’s their pride, maybe it’s their braggy way they go about their industriousness, maybe it’s their excess pomp. Whatever. We are not the problem, it is them.
Yet another premise: Igbo people are not the only ethnic group targeted for tribalistic profiling. In fact, they have been at the forefront of profiling and pissing on other ethnic groups in Nigeria like the Fulani people. The only difference? Well, Igbo folks, these people say, like to play the victim card.
For this unfounded premise alone, many have turned their eyes and affection to Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the APC candidate who has paraded his virtues more times in the last two weeks than he has turned up for Lagosians for the last four years.
What is astounding is that the tribalistic attacks on the Igbo population in Lagos (and beyond) have filtered into every aspect of Nigerian everydayness, from the cruise we catch on social media to the realities we uphold outside the virtual world. Burning of shops, threats that bordered on people’s lives, liberties, and properties, taunts about what are the visceral terrors of Biafra, terrible, injurious statements flippantly dropped on everything every time everywhere…
Worst still, it has reached the point that the bane of the gubernatorial election especially in Lagos was not only government-aided election violence, but also people-aided tribalistic violence. People cussed out, beaten, shamed, killed, and prevented from voting at polling units for being Igbo or looking like one, it’s crazy! The profiling is bad enough but even entertaining the thought of disenfranchising any Nigerian based on their ethnic belonging in the 21st century boggles my mind.
Although the reasons why tribalism is having a field day in the brutal battleground of the gubernatorial election in Lagos are diverse and honestly not quite fathomable, it is obvious to many (even the ones engaging in tribalistic banters) that this whole incident was engineered and set into motion by the ruling party (currently APC) to distract Nigerians from the glaring malpractices they did during the presidential election and desperately keep their current stooges in power. It’s a card they have dealt electorates so many times, an old trick in the book.
The one question that has come to my mind (and those of many Nigerian youths I suppose) is why the tribalism card is gaining such huge traction among the masses (not pompous, money-grabbing tribalists and political partisans; just people, the same group of people who, two weeks ago, could not get over the unabashed criminal ways through which their mandates were stolen from them). Also, why now? Why at a crucial moment when we seem to have learned about the tricks up the sleeves of our political oppressors and have come to terms that the powers that be will do anything to keep being the powers-to-be?
There are many reasons that come to mind but these two seem to stand out in light of the current situation:
Escaping the feeling of defeatism by picking an adventure that seems winnable: “Nigeria is a movie”. This phrase is making its rounds in the humor circle of TwitterNG and Instagram. Why? Because, like in a movie, Nigerians seek catharsis for their (quite dramatic) tragedies. We reach a point of climax when we can’t take it anymore and we revert to some method of purging ourselves clean of whatever shit just went down. Something bad happens, we cry, cry, cry, we lament, we flood social media to express our miseries, we start plotting a way out, we execute some change tactics but as soon as everything is falling apart and all our strategies aren’t winning, we look around for an outlet through which we can laugh off the tragedy, forget it, make it seem smaller, make it feel manageable, own it, and make it disappear… in our minds. It’s why our political memes bang and why we can make comedy skits out of anything, even the most horrific of incidents. Our president is an absolute horror. Meme material. Money is embezzled and the best excuse the embezzlers could come up with is a snake or gorilla swallowed it up. Comedy gold (our mutual friend Noah Oladele specializes in writing on this issue).
But there is one major tragedy that we have managed to not wring ourselves out of through humor: #ENDSARS. The whole #ENDSARS thing that took place in 2020 shook us to our bones and the youths of the nation deliberately sustained the anger and hurt triggered by the series of events related to #ENDSARS just so they could save up energy to ‘overthrow’ the current election in this 2023 election. But yeah, if there is anything the nationwide elections have proven, it is that the entities currently in power are democratic dictators with no scruples and a determination to root out opposition, even if it’s from ‘vibrant youths’ so it would take much more than what we are currently doling out to hurl Big Brother out of our political coliseum.
The wave of defeatism this realization has generated is one that cannot be easily dispersed with a good dose of humor. No amount of joking around can free us from the nudging fear that we just might never have relatively good government leaders. So, it would seem Nigerians have resorted to the other coping mechanism we employ when things are going South: in-fighting, oppressor-siding, the blame game, the impulsive tendency to push another vulnerable group into hot oil and set the pot on fire. Because if we can’t be on high water, then let’s all burn in hell.
Such a movie or video game trope, but yet such a Nigerian thing. When the going gets tough as a nation, throw as many as you can under a fucking bus that is about to explode into flames. Forget the source of the problem and just point fingers in any direction that feels like we can score easy points (just like picking a new, easy-level adventure when one has lost too many hard challenges in a video game).
The second reason is scarier and more devastating yet it’s way too plausible to be ignored. The Biafran war. Yes, it happened since the 1960s but you know like I do that we have not reckoned with that bloody history. It officially ended in 1970 but it tore at the fabric of the nation from top to bottom and we are even trying to sew shit together. The rift between Igbo people and Hausa folks as well as Fulani tribe members exploded with the Kano riot. Also, the ambivalence of relations that exist between Yoruba people and their Igbo neighbors came as a consequence of the roles Yoruba nationalists like Obafemi Awolowo played in sabotaging the war efforts of Biafran fighters. But we have, as a country, not attempted to have these conversations on a political level. The war splattered shards of irritant prejudice, longstanding grudges, and unanswered questions that we have been tiptoeing around for so fucking long. Now, conversations that are 50 years overdue are erupting into manifestations of transferred aggression that can be directly linked to pent-up electoral frustrations. The most unnerving bit of this whole thing is that this was the Kano riot started. Like play, like play, history is boldly repeating itself, and, Chiagoziem, we are sitting duck waiting for the disaster to conveniently happen.
We have chatted (sometimes casually, sometimes with boiling emotions) about everything I have written about here. During one of these conversations, you educated me on how the war affected the relationship between the Igbo people and other Easterners as well as ethnic groups in the Midwest. I came to realize with surprise that there is a whole spectrum of dialects among the Igbo people, not all Easterners are Igbo people, and some Midwestern tribes speak something of the Igboid dialect but still do not think of themselves as Igbo nationals.
In short, I realized through that conversation that there is a whole world of differences within the communities that I, as a Yoruba girl, categorize as a singular Igbo community. Like many Yoruba people, I was aware of the dialectical variations that exist within each major ethnic group in Nigeria, but it never stopped me from thinking that all Igbo people are the same. From the population in Anambra to Ebonyi to Akwa-Ibom, Imo, and Abia, I thought every Easterner, regardless of the Igboid dialect they spoke, was Igbo.
But it turns out that I am awfully wrong. This has helped me put things in perspective. More than anything, our collective ignorance of the Biafran war has prevented us from truly knowing the Igbo people. Igbo people interact with other tribes in Nigeria on so many levels; for instance, they know enough of Yoruba people to know not to essentialize them, they show interest in knowing the Yoruba language, learning about Yoruba culture, and settling in places that are mostly populated by Yoruba indigenes. But, for reasons that elude me, Yoruba people, Hausa people too, don’t seem to reciprocate that same energy. Although we are quite active in moving about the spaces that belong to those we generally refer to as Igbo people, we haven’t passed the vibe check when it comes to genuinely parsing out Igboness as an identity.
The unconscious ignorance and indeliberate indifference is a subtle, historical buildup, that much I can tell. But I wonder if you have thoughts on the specifics of the classification of Igbo people as one and the same by other tribes in Nigeria. Also, it is clear that our historically machinated apathy in learning about the ethnic differences in Nigeria down to the minutest detail has led to a brand of essentialization that creates the illusion of unity (the one NIGERIA myth) but makes it easy to exclusivize a group of people as targets of tribal bigotry and ethnic profiling. But do you think there is more to the treatment of Igbo people in the current political climate and what would you say might be the possible solution to curbing these streaks of tribalistic violence before it erupts into another historical moment that is too traumatic to heal from through humor?
I look forward to your response. Feel free to reply to me in poetic form (I have been told that I write like I talk so this has expectedly turned out to be a miserably long letter).
Your friend,
Funmi omo MOJI