TRIBALISM – By Dike Chukwumerije

I do not know if I will ever get used to strangers walking up to me and saying, ‘Are you not the Poet?’ True. Ask any introvert, we love our anonymity. But in exchange for its loss, I am often offered something just as precious to me. No, not fame. In exchange of its loss, I am often offered stories. You see, I love stories. They do not fit into neat boxes. Yes. Fate does not try to comply with Federal Character or fit into ethno-centric views of the world. Those who will help you will help you. And those who will harm you will harm you. This is why I like stories. Because they are what they are.

So, when a man walked up to me at Millenium Park with a smile and an outstretched hand, I took it with a smile of my own. He told me he was from Zuru in Kebbi State and that that woman over there was his wife. She, he said, was from Onitsha in Anambra State. And when he told his family that she was the woman he wanted, they asked him if there were no other women. He said, no, they were no other women. Therefore, if they did not want him to come home with a man, they should allow him to marry THIS woman. And he told me, ‘you see, that your poem it spoke to me. It is my life.’

And at the National Assembly another man walked up to me. He said, ‘I am from Akwa Ibom State. And I cannot tell you how much that your poem spoke to me.’ He was dressed real nice, the corporate type, and he said, ‘Where I work, the only person who ever noticed me, who ever said to me you are really good at what you do, and took interest in me to ensure that I got what I deserved at work, guess what? Was a muslim from the North. This is why I do not understand this tribalism thing one bit. I don’t even know what people are talking about. It is not my reality AT ALL. And I felt so happy to hear someone else saying so too.’

And just yesterday as I was sitting in the departure lounge at Maiduguri Airport waiting into the night for my flight, a tall man in a kaftan came and sat beside me. He said, ‘I’ve been sitting over there for the last 15 minutes trying to decide if you were the one. And after taking into the consideration the hair, and the beard, and that inscription on your t-shirt ‘Simply Poetry’, I decided it had to be you.’ He said, ‘Your video is on my phone. But tell me, do you really believe those things you said?’ Then he told me his own story. Born and bred in Kaduna, his first time South was for NYSC. He told me of his amazement when he disembarked at Onitsha, and found ALL his stereotypes of Igbo people disabused. And how he spent his Youth Service touring Igbo land, one State after another. Even after 17 years, he still called the names of these towns like it was yesterday. Owerri-Nta. Akwa-Etiti. Ogidi. Gariki. Obolo-Afor. Abakiliki. Umuahia. Aba. And yet Calabar was where he served. And then he spoke of the Ibibio and the Efik with a depth that astonished me. Of the Igbo lady he almost married. Of the street in Kaduna called Lagos, and the Igbo boys, Celestine and Emmanuel, who grew up there, but would later be known to the rest of the country as Babayaro after a coach that took them under his wings.

And in Jos when my Assistant Production Manager led me up to the top of the rocks where as a young boy he used to come and play with his friends. From there he pointed to a tall building below and said, ‘Our family house used to be there. That building hides it from view now. That’s Jos North.’ There was a lot of nostalgia in his voice. It hurt me because he was not an old man. He was just in his twenties. And yet, even for him, things had already changed so much. ‘We all came here on Christmas Day. Christian and Muslim. Nobody could tell the difference. It was only after the crisis that I started being told that Chudi, even if he was a bully, was my friend and Musa, even though he was the one that always stood up for me, was in fact my enemy.’

This, I tell you, is the illogicality of Tribalism. Because it erases those parts of our stories it does not like. So, when we read our own history it reads like one massacre after another, like people never ate together, or slept together, or fell in love over border and boundaries, and joined their faiths to build strong homes over traditional fault lines. We have differences, we know this. But we have commonalities. Do we know this too? I tell you, this is the poisonous bias of Tribalism. That it erases those parts of our stories it does not like. So that in the deafening silence left behind Hate and Anger can grow strong. But me? I choose to tell my story, my whole story, just the way it is. Me? I choose to be complete.