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| Image Credit: Bell_photos |
Loose Change and Tight Dreams
by Edwin Mamman
“By this age, I have joined most adults in the understanding that father's land is a place to aspire to leave”
“There is a shared feeling, gleaned from the very air we breathe, that something is fundamentally wrong with this place, with this land”
— Umar Turaki (Father's Land)
***
I'm sitting on a raised pavement in an open field of a government secondary school. A live football match is going on. My headphones are plugged into my ears. Yemi Alade sings over a reggae beat,
“Criminal in agbada oh,
Suffocating our agenda oh,
No be we wey put am for ladder oh,
He use our dreams to climb ladder…” the lyrics serrate the walls of my heart as I struggle to hold back tears.
Nearly a month ago, tensions were high across the country. Youths—their exact figure still a national debate—were killed while peacefully protesting police brutality and harassment perpetuated by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). Riots broke out in several states. And there we were in an open field weeks later, like nothing had happened. Young boys sweating out in the warm evening sun, their yelling, and running back and forth drowned in my thoughts, muffled by my music. The year was 2020.
Between 20 and 24 October 2020 I experienced classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Insomnia, flashbacks, emotional numbness, avoidance of thoughts and talks about the event. I learned that PTSD wasn't something only soldiers who'd just returned from war experienced. I also learned, that to drive a people out of their country,
1. Oppress them 2. Invalidate their experiences of oppression 3. Suppress their rights and freedom of speech.
***
It is 2021; I am in Jigawa state for my mandatory one-year National Youth Service. I connect to a VPN and use a third-party application to access my X (Twitter) account. I tweet, ‘New goal: join japa set of 2022'.
This, using a VPN and accessing my Twitter account—an act of defiance, a quiet protest. The president had banned the use of the social media platform in the country citing misinformation and the spread of fake news as reasons.
Online, my timeline is flooded with images of people posing beside their luggage at the airport, or holding up their passports.
Accompanying these images is always a meme of Sola Sobowale from the movie King of Boys, raising a wine glass, with the caption, “Welcome to the new dispensation”.
I enjoyed teaching students at the various government schools in my local government area every Thursday as part of my Community Development Service (CDS). I loved my evening solo walks on the paved streets, and hiking up the Rocky Mountains. But I also wanted to leave my country.
I too wanted to be part of that new dispensation, to be in the flock of Nigerians moving to Canada or the US. The reality, however, was I won't be on the japa set of 2022.
2022 is the year I conclude my NYSC and return home to Kaduna state. The year I came face to face with the horror of a Nigerian graduate with no structure in place for him to thrive and make something of himself.
In that year I threw myself into endless job searching, combing LinkedIn, Indeed, and Jobberman for jobs. I applied to so many jobs that I lost count of all my applications. Likewise, I wrote cover letters, tweaked and corrected my CVs beyond recognition.
By August 2022 I was high and dry, with no job, and my bank account balance was shrinking along with my dream of japa.
***
2024. I wake up angry. I don't understand why, but it seeps down my spirit like fluid through a funnel into a beaker.
I prepare for work. On YouTube Music Burna Boy plays on repeat over speakerphone, ‘Monsters you made'.
And then it starts: the flashback, image of me sitting up on my bed trembling, unable to sleep.
I am plagued by the burden of my memories. The details are fading like smudged ink, but I fill the blanks with notes from my old journal.
24th Oct 2020, I wrote:
Words cannot express the sadness that I feel over everything. The shattered dreams, the lives lost, and the message made loud and clear that we dare not go against our opposition in this country…
This, just a day after the president's broadcast, his speech, heavily criticized for its lack of sympathy towards the youth. In his speech, the president paid tribute to the policemen who lost their lives. Nothing was said about the protesters who lost theirs, or the families left to mourn their deaths.
***
On the way to work, my keke speeds past a giant billboard on the side of the road that reads, “Stop criticizing your country, it is the only country you have, work together with your leaders to make your country great.” I used to roll my eyes at the sign; now I just ignore it altogether.
In a past not long ago (February 2023), the country was turned on its head. Lives were disrupted over a ‘cashless policy' that shortchanged the circulation of cash and prohibited the use of old prints of the 200, 500, and 1000 naira notes. One evening I returned home to find my three cousins down with a pox allergy. At the drug store, to my horror, I couldn't complete a POS transaction to buy calamine lotion and drugs for them. My “bank network had issues”. Walking back home with my head down I came to a startling realization; my cousins could have easily died if it was a critical medical emergency, all because a POS transaction couldn't be processed.
In the same month, our house got burgled. On thorough inspection, we found that the thieves stole mostly food items and a bottle of perfume from my room. Later it was discovered that the thieves were our next-door neighbours and their friends from the neighbourhood. I felt bad for the boys. High rates of unemployment, and rising food inflation, would push hungry boys to steal from their neighbours.
Today as I pay double the price on my transportation to work and back, I reminisce on the days when a litre of fuel was sold for 65 naira, when I sat in the back seat of my uncle's car on a queue at the filling station singing “money slow to enter, money quick to go” along with M.I on the radio.
It is for these and many reasons that M.I. sang “Make Naija just give me divorce”, that people are leaving the country, and that my father land has become a place I aspire to leave someday. Because albeit we are told repeatedly that we are invaluable to our country, that our contributions to it matter, that we should work with our leaders to make our country greater, their actions and policies are a walking contradiction.
***
Once, in Jigawa, I texted my friend on WhatsApp, in the middle of the month, two weeks before my next government monthly allowance. I had run out of cooking gas, and I was texting him to loan me money to refill my cylinder. He replied me with a picture of some loose change spread on the floor and the caption, “this is my last card”. We laughed and moved on to frivolous banters taking our minds off the reality that we were both ‘broke' and “serving our Father Land”.
Humour has long been our coping mechanism. The writer Abubakar Adam Ibrahim wrote, “Humour is one of the biggest industries in this country. We make fun of our misery and laugh at ourselves. Gently, with the greatest care in the world, we bury the bitter pills of our reality into the lush art we make so they are easier to swallow.” This is why I accord grace to the thousands of Nigerians who took to Twitter on the night of the president's broadcast to make jokes about snagging foreign spouses for an international passport. Skillfully, we fashion humour into one of our shields against oppression.
Laced in the veils of our humour is a prophecy and dogged determination, that we will survive and make it.
Years later, thousands of youths have left the country and are still leaving. Many are pursuing MScs, MFAs, and Fellowships abroad.
***
Historically, mass migration has been a form of protest. From the great migration of southern blacks in America in the Jim Crow era to the Igbos fleeing Nigeria during and after the Nigerian Civil War, to the most recent wave of migration by Nigerian youths. For many years people have migrated as a form of agitation against systemic oppression.
Those who can afford to leave have done so without looking back, and I do not fault them. I would do the same if I could afford to. For now, I take the fire and smoke, and I hope. After all, I have nothing but loose change and a tight dream.
Along with that dream is also a sense of responsibility to contribute a voice in a sea of voices, and to speak about our oppressions. The writer, Chinua Achebe, wrote: “I believe that it is impossible to write anything in Africa without some kind of commitment, some kind of message, some kind of protest.” He also wrote: “I believe that the African writer who steps aside can only write footnotes or a glossary when the event is over.” It is my little contribution to write about the issues besetting the country I live in, even if it comes across as harsh criticism. Hopefully, I've found ways to lace my rebuttals with humour. Like the satires I've written and published.
The second stanza of our old national anthem, the one that is now reintroduced as our current national anthem, reads:
Our flag shall be a symbol
That truth and justice reign,
In peace or battle honour'd,
And this we count as gain,
To hand on to our children
A banner without stain
It is deeply unsettling that we are now mandated to sing this anthem when in the three years since the end SARS protests that claimed the lives of many youths in the country, no government-led memorial has been organized in remembrance of the lives lost. An image search on Google with the query ‘end SARS' will display a green-white-green flag stained with blood. The same flag youths took cover with and sang the old national anthem on the evening that they were shot at with live bullets. Our banner is indeed with an indelible stain that a rebranding of the national anthem cannot wipe off.
Say their names:
Oke Jimoh Isiaq, Sleek Ifeanyi Ozor, Ayomide Taiwo, Chika Ibeku, Peter Ofurum, Chinedu Ani, Chibuike Anams, Tony Zitta, Ifeoma Abugu, Tony Oruama, Christian Onuigbo, Miracle Emmanuel Egbo, Sunday Victor Maduamago, Chidi Odinauwa, Tina Ezekwe, Stephen Agbanyim, Femi Bello, Tiyamiu Kazeem, Harry Ataria, Mus'ab Sammani, Emeka Ojinze, Kolade Johnson, Onovo Matthew, Precious Odua, Richard Gora, Chijioke Iloanya, Linda Igwetu, Daniel Tella, Chima Ikwunado, Chukwuemeka Matthew, Rinji Bala Uzziel, and many others.
The nation may choose to forget, but I choose to remember and honour the fallen heroes of my time.
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| Edwin Mamman |
Edwin Mamman is a sonographer and writer. He has works published on The Revue, African Writers Space, Magpies Magazine, Punocracy, CON-SCIO and elsewhere. He blogs on WordPress under the pseudonym LareWrites, and sometimes contributes to Life’s Essentials blogspot on WordPress. Edwin writes from Kaduna, Nigeria. When he’s not working, reading and writing; he enjoys movies, music, and a walk in nature. He tweets @edwinmamman; his email address is edvinmamman@gmail.com.
Say their names!
ReplyDeleteI feel the sadness off this piece. We will never forget. Thank you for writing.