The Leprous Arm of a 61 Year Old -By Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor

At sixty-one, is there still hope or not? A friend asked me yesterday. I looked at her and replied…of course there is. There is hope! I have a question for you though. I wonder why your people do not want to wake up and smell the coffee. There is data showing how in the immunisation of our population against polio, your people have the least uptake. Also, early girl child marriage with all the burden of female reproductive health that comes with it is the stock in trade of your people. I still wonder what you are doing here my friend, considering the fact that your people are saying no to western education and an even bigger nay to girl child empowerment.

My doctor friend looked down at her feet. Then looked up at me. Her heart was heavy, and her response was deep. “We are our biggest problem. The few elites in our society have somehow managed to keep the majority of our people behind a curtain at the expense of our collective development.”

Her next sentence was an echo of my thoughts since my days as a student in one of the Unity Schools in Nigeria where I had first-hand opportunity to travel the length and breadth of our country at the expense of our Federal Government and the well-earned behest of my excellent performances of course.  “My kind at the upper strata of our society, have capitalised on the opium that is religion, to continue perpetuating their linage in authority. The people too, have on their own, become addicted to the “soft drug” of religion enjoying the hardship of their comfort zone in unquestioned optimal docility. You see, my gateman and gardeners believe that is their lot in life and the destiny of their generations yet unborn to feed at my table. They rather come cap in hand to eat in the main house than aspire to own the main house.”

I could understand what she was saying. The lack of radioactivity across societal strata in Northern Nigeria has always fascinated me. In my side of the country, the ambition of the people is infectious – something that is both a good thing and sometimes the pitfall of those from my side. Not one to be left with questions when I found a willing source of knowledge, I asked my friend about their famed numbers that swell the National Census figures of Nigeria and their “born to rule mantra”. My first journey in the Northern part of Nigeria, was an anti-climax population expectation-wise.  As a teen, headed for the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands in the Chad Basin at the time, with the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, I was very starry eyed. I looked forward to the journey and learning from the people I was going to meet on this long road trip from Edo State to the Yobe State of today.

The trip was planned by the educators to take us from the Rainforest region, through the Guinea Savannah and the Sudan Savannah to end up in the Sahel region of our country. Apart from the capital cities in Sokoto and Kano and to some extent Kaduna, I travelled many expanses of arid Savannah seeking fellow humans. Any time I asked my teachers then where the people were, they told me they were in huts. Where are the huts? Subsequent journeys till date, I still look for this amazing population and I continue asking where the huts are. I see one here and the other miles apart. The distance between them has yet to close since 1990. What I am not looking for however, remains amazing potential. I ask myself always, why our Northern Governors do not pull resources together to get Israeli Government agencies or many other willing Nigerian experts to work the magic of artificial irrigation, solar and wind energy to make these lands the envy of the world?

I marvel at how we upturned the rules of Economics 101 and ensured that pipes have been laid for miles across the country to site a refinery in the Savannah and how much it must cost to put a Naval base in a Desert. Can these resources not be put to better use for the everyday people of Northern Nigeria?  Hearing these responses above from this Northern sister and colleague of mine gave me hope. It means the ruling class of Northern Nigeria has a new critical mass with insight, brewing. They have identified the auto-inflicted redundancy that has plagued their people for many years and are beginning to work at reversing being the leprous arm of a liberated Nigeria.

Since 1960 when the very “selfless British colonisers” after their “selfless” trips to our lands decided to unequally yoke the lands and people around River Niger Area, there has been some small matter of unresolved supremacy that somewhat suits them. I am not one to coast on victim mentality – no not at all. Rather, I seek solutions.

Speaking to my friend makes me realise that the new generation from Northern Nigeria are waking up to their responsibility. The first of which is to empower their population as a whole with not just proper didactic paper education but a proper empowerment of her populace and an illumination of their hearts devoid of religious manipulations. The few Northern elite must realise that they are blessed so that they can liberate their people. They should stop being puppeteers whose generational goal is to perpetuate the subjugation of their teaming masses, keeping them entrapped in the vicious cycle of short-term handouts.

I see them as blessed beyond measure and recommend they do away with the “born to rule” phenomenon. Once they understand how blessed they are, they will stop the hording of power at the centre which is tearing the British contraption of 1960 apart. The North of Nigeria will have nothing to lose but a lot to gain just like the rest of the country when they allow Nigeria to be truly federated.  At sixty-one years of age, a man with a leprous arm will begin to think of ways to preserve the rest of his body – radical ways that were not palatable at twenty and forty years may become a ready option beyond sixty!

It is October. Happy Reflective Independence my fellow Nigerians; depending on what interpretation the celebration of what happened on the 1^st of October 1960 holds for each of us, at this time in the history of our journey as a Country.

Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor is author of the book “My Father’s Daughter”