Thread by @femolevsky

My aunty was a matron, I wont mention the hospital, but let's just say Ahmadu Bello, I lived with her intermittently during my military days. Many times she was caught in the regular Kaduna violence, but nothing ever happened to her. Their family was well known....

...as the go to compound for any medical emergency, also as the food bank, for the kids without homes. Some of them were my friends, I learnt most of my little hausa from them. I am an indigene of Kaduna state, born in tudun wada, though my parents are from Kwara.

I grew up playing soccer with friends from different cultures and ethnicity, we ran around chewing huge sugarcane racks, buying balango, masa, little cheese cubes (hausa name escapes me now). We played volley and basket ball, visited shagalinku, leventis and cash and carry.

There was this famous pastry parlour back then, name escapes me, in KD, awesome pastries, was a treat always. I attended St. Annes, next to that all girl's school and then NMS.

Memory fails me, but, one experince has never left me.

One fateful day, during one of the religious riots, 97/8, my "friends" were tasked to attack my fam, I was in the house that day. They came to the entrance, ready to pounce, but froze for some reason and for what seemed like an eternity, we locked eyes. My aunt, shouted in hausa,

If you kill us, where will you eat tomorrow? What if you fall ill, who will treat you?", she called them all by name, one after the other, asking them, all the while I looked straight into this boy's eyes, my closest pal, telling him, almost by telepathy, "we are friends, you are

.....better than this, dont do this." After a while, they left one after the other. I never saw my pal again, but we saw the others, they came to eat, they came for treatment and we obliged.

During easter too, they ate their fill on our veranda, at our doorstep.

Next time I was caught in a riot, I was among the soldiers sent out to quel the unrest. I never saw my friend again, but that memory has stayed with me forever - the death in his eyes, violence in his fist.

During sallah, we had the best neighbours, we always enjoyed the best of ram and 'hausa rice and stew' - didn't have as much pepper, shared Akamu with Kosei during harmathan and dug up sweet potatoes from farms. Life was fun, it was good, until everything started to wither away.

The North is a great place, but certain persons and ideologies have permeated the fabric of society and is withering away the very essence of the multi-cultural society we once shared. Violence has silenced the play grounds and people walk around with suspicion, protective..

....of their loved ones and wary of their neighbours. In fact at some point, people were asked to move to another part of town, just to quel the crises. Neighbourhoods became deserted, friends separated.

In those days, we would freely go to the markets as kids, unsupervised, angwan rimi, sabon tasha, and head back into NNPC quarters, we also had the small transistor radios and would listen in, on our way. Where this ethnic dominance and politics of decimation came from....

....is a mystery to me. Probably because we were kids, we were isolated from the realities of this ethnic division and desperation for political power.

We need to change the narrative, we need a joint vision to aspire to, one that binds us all, irrespective of what tribe leads.

...a better Nigeria for us all, should be the focus, not this charade of spitefullness and tacit hatred. The fact that I was born a christian, doesn't make you, born a muslim better or more thorough bred. We are all human. These Kaduna killings are enough, the blood spilled

....is just enough. What is the basis of this violence? Why can it not be solved once and for all? I still have friends and family in KD, many left, some are still there, Kakuri, Barnawa, kafanchan, etc, their cries are now too loud to ignore. The deaths are too many.

Please, the North needs to regain itself, violence leads no where, death and suffering bears only pain. Let's unite as young people and chart a different course than the one our parents have so far charted. Let's save lives, not take lives. Let's pull together and heal the land.

We need peace in Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, Yobe, Zamfara, Borno and everywhere else. Let us join forces and battle poor education, poverty, disease, and the likes, let's fight together, against those ills, not against one another.

We demand peace!!

#Kajuru