Thread by @simplypoetryng

LET US SPEAK OF STRANGE THINGS
If a nation was merely the sum of its roads and bridges, it would be easy to build and it would be easy to destroy.

#MINjos

But like roots, so too are our beginnings buried in places invisible to the eye. Like the mind. And the heart. You see, a nation begins in our imagination.
Yes.

#MINjos

Once, I was an undergraduate at the University of Abuja. And sometimes in the morning if you took the time to look for them, you would see the hills that stood like guardians round Gwagwalada, and they would be crowned in mist. Imagine?

#MINjos

Standing there in your shorts and singlet, bare footed on sand that is still wet with dew, with the harmattan haze colouring the skies, and the morning chill caressing your skin. And suddenly you feel grateful that this is your country.

#MINjos

These are not sentiments because we are affected by the physical spaces in which we exist. So to be born in a place is to be infused with its fragrance. To crawl, take your first steps, speak your first word in a place is to be stained by its color.

#MINjos

To fall in love in a place is to create a memory you will never lose. To have your heart broken there is to leave behind a piece of yourself you will never reclaim. This is how an identity evolves.

#MINjos

For the man who leaves Ilorin to make a home in Uyo, has evolved. The children born in Sabon Gari to parents who struggle to remember the way back home have evolved. The boy whose first language is the language he spoke playing football in front of his house has evolved.

#MINjos

The woman who feels uncomfortable every time she is confronted with the question ‘What is your state of origin?’ because she knows that the answer she has to give by law is not an accurate representation of who she is, has evolved.

#MINjos

But we run a system that will not allow this to happen. A system that says that it is wrong for a boy from Enugu to be fluent in Yoruba and not Igbo. That it is more logical for a man from Kano to give his son an Arabic name than for him to give that boy a Tiv one.

#MINjos

That a woman from Ogbomosho, married in Oshogbo, may call her son William without raising eyebrows but not Wingitokoni.

#MINjos

So, tell me, what are we saying? That it is okay to assimilate the cultures of those who enslaved us in former times but not of those who have been our neighbours through it?

#MINjos

That somehow to take the language of a foreigner is modernity, but to take that of the streets in which you were raised is betrayal?
It is not.

#MINjos

For indeed it is the man who was born in Ibadan, schooled in Calabar, married in Jalingo and living in Abuja yet when asked ‘Where are you from?’ says ‘Imo’

#MINjos

because it is there you find the village in which his grandfather was born, a village he visits once a year each time spending no more than two weeks, it is this man who is telling a lie.

#MINjos

He is the one who has forgotten who he is, and the people and places that have shaped him in truth. For we are not what we tell people we are. No. We are what we are.

#MINjos

And as long as the system cannot abide this truth, then there will always be a disconnect between politics and reality.

#MINjos

So, let me tell you, North and South is politics. For in reality on the drive from Otukpa to Nsukka you will not see where one ends and the other begins. So, let me tell you, christian and muslim is politics.

#MINjos

For in reality there are christians married to muslims, and muslims who murder muslims, and christians who defraud christians, and christians and muslims walking the streets, looking for the same non-existent jobs. See?

#MINjos

It is not that there is nothing that connects us. It is that we live in a system that pays us to ignore them, yes, pays us with ethno-religious quotas that guarantee allocations to us whether we deserve them or not,

#MINjos

pays us with states of origin in which we can have superior rights as indigenes and lord it over others, pays us with ready-made supporters to condemn our prosecution for corruption by carrying placards that scream ‘marginalization’,

#MINjos

pays us with a non-meritocratic system where we use our states of origin like ATM cards to access state benefits.
You see?

#MINjos

It pays us so well, this system, that two people who were born on the same street, went to the same school, served in the same local government,

#MINjos

watch Champions League football in the same decrepit bar will come to politics and start acting like one is from Mars and the other is from Venus. My brother, tell me, is this not a strange thing?

#MINjos

………………………….
Poetry&Activism
#MINJos
MADE IN NIGERIA. Live in Jos.
Saturday, 28 April 2018
5pm @ Mees Palace, Rayfield Jos
Tkts @ simplypoetry.com.ng