Nigeria Journal 2023 10 01: Independence Day
In Nigeria, national holidays are not announced at the start of the year. Instead, an official announcement is made a day or two before. I believe it is because many of the holidays are Muslim holy days and the determination of the exact day requires the Imam to confirm it based on the sighting of a new moon. Sometimes there is genuine uncertainty because of the position of the moon and the weather.
But this shouldn’t be one of those cases. October 1st is Nigeria’s Independence Day. The only uncertainty is that October 1 is a Sunday and we are waiting on the official proclamation that Monday, the 2nd, will be the national holiday. It arrives as expected Friday afternoon.
I keep asking different staff members, when I have them alone 2 things; how does Nigeria celebrate Independence Day and will the events take place on the 1st or the 2nd. The answer to the first question is consistent. The Governor will give a speech at IBB Square and then there will a parade of university marching bands proceeding from the square to the Food Basket Roundabout. The answer to the second question is inconsistent — some are confident it will take place on Sunday the 1st, others insist it will take place on the 2ndbecause OBVIOUSLY people need to go to church on Sunday. Eventually I get confirmation that it will be Monday — the Christians hold sway, at least on this one scheduling detail.
A 3-day weekend is a welcome diversion from the routine. In the mornings I go out to sit under the palm trees with my coffee on the grounds of this little hotel that has been transformed into our expat house. Saturday morning there is a group of Nigerian colleagues playing football on the pitch of the school next door. The football game (OK, soccer if you are confused) is a carryover from a “Sports Day” that my NGO sponsored before I arrived here. They supplied games and refreshments and I understand there was a big turnout. But just as I arrived, budgets were cut, refreshments (item 7 in local reference) disappeared, and a bit of resentment set in. The football players are the diehards who just want to play and don’t need the item 7 incentive. The school next door reached out last week with 2 requests; can you ask your guys to come through the gate instead of climbing over the wall, and could you please mow the grass on the pitch when you get yours done. Our National Staff Representative took care of the first issue and the Facilities Manager on my team talked to our groundskeeper about the second.
While I slipped my coffee I was joined by our Water and Sanitation Manager. He is responsible for the latrines at the camps; having them built in the first place and then the ongoing maintenance and repairs. He is also responsible for the water supply. At Mbawa Camp that consists of a well and a solar powered pump that keeps the water flowing. The system works very well. At Ortese Camp multiple attempts to drill for water have failed. So instead, my NGO pays to have 12 truckloads of water delivered each day. It’s very expensive — unsustainably so. We are paying for one last attempt to find water, this time we are paying a contractor to drill 600m, much deeper than the previous boreholes. Our 2024 budget was just given to us, and there is no surprise. We have budget to add the solar pump and pipes if water us found — but there is no money allocated for trucking water next — the last day of our contract for water trucks is December 31st. If the borehole is dry, no one knows what will become of the ~15,000 people living in the camp. We communicated the situation to the Nigerian government, but it is not clear if they will step up on Jan 1st.
I could still hear the sounds of football being played on the other side of the wall, be the WATSAN manager was finished for the day. He asked me how NBA trades work. I had heard him listening to some NBA speculation about Giannis Antetokounmpo while we were driving around town to inspect water suppliers earlier in the week. Now a trade had happened, but the terms were completely baffling to him. European football transactions are pretty simple — you pay X dollars for the rights to a player. No draft picks, no salary cap issues. I do my best to explain it. He has short vertical scars on his cheeks below each eye. This scarification identifies him as being from the Hausa or Yoruba tribes in Northern Nigeria.
Sunday morning I am joined for my coffee under the palm trees by my mechanic. He is one of those guys who is completely committed to doing whatever it takes to get problems solved. I really love his commitment, enthusiasm, and curiosity — but sometimes he drives me a bit crazy. I recently found him making holes in angle iron with an arc welding machine we just purchased instead of using a perfectly good drill we have in the tool closet. We’re sitting on the chairs under the tees, it’s a group of 3 connected metal chairs like you would expect to see at an airport gate. The same ones are in the barber shop on the corner, and in the bank lobby. Both ubiquitous and strangely out of place at the same time. The Mechanic is complaining that mimicking my breakfast diet of a cup of coffee and a banana made him jittery and left him hungry. I am wondering why he is here on a Sunday morning when the watchman approaches us. “Sir, we are low on diesel fuel for the generator”. “OK,”, I ask, “Do we have enough to make it through to Tuesday morning?”. “We’ve got 2 or 3 hours left.” Now I understand why the mechanic is here. They called him first and he’s been waiting for me to wake up and come out with my coffee. I’ve got the keys in my pocket, but he knows where the jerry cans are hidden and how to work the fuel pump connected to the tank at the office. While we are transferring 50 liters to the Guest House generator, I mention that I plan to attend the Independence Day activities on Monday and he asks to join me.
I come out Monday morning with my coffee and have it with the driver who is still on duty from last night. After I head back inside and grab some things to take downtown with me I come back out to find the day driver on the bench. He tells be that the activities at IBB Square won’t start until 9:30, so I call The Mechanic and tell him we’ll swing by to pick him up then. The Day Driver is an outlier. He comes to work in either his Mercedes or his Jeep. Unlike the rest of the drivers I’m pretty sure he doesn’t need this job for the meager salary. I get the impression that he enjoys having the opportunity to hang out with expats. Nevertheless, he does his job well, and I have no qualms about him being on the team — but I do wonder what the other drivers think about him.
When I emerge at 9:30 with my water bottle and fully charged phone batteries the driver says “Boss, I’ve got bad news.” “I called a friend who works in the Governor’s office and they cancelled the Independence Day activities because of the Minister who was kidnapped.” There’s been a rash of kidnappings recently. It started in Northwest Nigeria with purely economic motives — the perpetrators would kidnap anyone with money and release them when a ransom was paid. Now it is happening locally but targeting government officials specifically. The motives are not yet clear.
We swing by to pick up The Mechanic and I explain to him that there is no celebration, but I want to go see the Square anyway. I’ve not been there and am intrigued by the descriptions. He’s game, so the 3 of us head downtown in the Land Cruiser.
I’ve just finished a novel about the Biafran Civil War which took place in Nigeria from 1967–1970. While reading it I was often consulting Google Maps and Wikipedia and realized that the northern edge of Biafra was not far south of here. The Driver and The Mechanic are both Tiv, the local ethnicity. The war is presented in the novel as a fight between the Islamic Hausa in the North and the Christian Igbo (who claimed an independent Biafra) from the South.
They tell me ”We used to have great warriors and it was us who defeated Biafra — we knew there was no future in it — no future to being a country outside of Nigeria”. “Our warriors also defeated the Hausa and stopped the spread of Islam farther south. We learned about their ways we just couldn’t accept them. We weren’t Christians then, but when we heard that the Hausa cleaned their anuses with their hand! Yes, with their left hand, and they eat with their right, but still, we couldn’t accept their ways.”
“Our leaders knew that the military commander from the north would come to meet the elders in a new area for the first time and say nice things and make promises. And then he would return a second time and when everyone showed up to greet him his warriors would come out from hiding and massacre everyone. So, our elders met him on his first visit. But when he came the second time our warriors intercepted his warriors in the countryside. When he called for them to come out and attack they were not there — and we killed him.”
“The Hausa will never forgive us for killing him and preventing their spread South. So we are forever stuck in the middle. The Igbo think we are from the North because we defeated Biafra, and the Hausa think we are from the South because we killed their leader.”
I get a call from the PC-Assist. There is sustained gunfire near Ortese, the largest IDP camp where we work. He is making sure that we don’t have anyone working there today.
IBB Square is a big cement floored area weirdly disconnected from the town itself. I was expecting a square as part of the town organically, but it is not, it is in a government compound down a road and with a gate that the guards open to let us in. On two sides of the Square are grandstands and in the middle of one there is a podium where the Governor would have made his speech. Today there are half a dozen cars parked there and a small group of middle aged “athletes” in track suits sitting together and eating snacks.
The Mechanic and I walk up the grandstand stairs. At the top he turns right to where the group is sitting together. I turn left to the other side of a large central pillar where no one is sitting and look out over the top of the grandstand to green grass fields and woods beyond. After I take it all in, I circle back around the pillar to meet up with The Mechanic and I sense he is apologizing. Then one of the athletes says “Can you come here and not greet us?”
I try to make quick amends, “Good morning, how is your day?” Greeting rituals are inescapable here. “How was your night?”, “How is your work?”, “How is you family?” It’s rude not to go through these formalized rituals every time you meet.
I have less patience than I should for all the verbal rituals. It makes it hard just to get the office running in the morning when every time a new person walks in everyone goes back through all the greetings again. The one verbal quirk I do appreciate, however, is that people use the phase “You’re welcome” quite literally. When you walk into someone’s space; their home, their office, or you sit down at their table they will look you in the eye and you “Your welcome”. My immediate reaction was puzzlement. Did I neglect to say “Thank you” for something? I felt like I was being corrected. Of course, I knew it wasn’t the case. They were graciously saying “You are welcome here in my home/office/table. How have we gotten “You’re welcome” so twisted in the US? It’s not even a literally appropriate response to “Thank You”!
Other than the prickly athletes the Square and the area around is empty. The paint is peeling and the concrete grandstands are cracked. Weeds sprout through the floor. It feels like an abandoned relic from the past. On the other side of the Square is an oversized statue of a soldier. I walk over to check is out, wondering if it is a monument for those lost in the civil war. The gate at our end of the promenade that leads to the statue is closed, but not locked. I hesitate a bit, wondering why it is closed. A bit of debate follows, “I just want to see if there some inscription about what it is for, I mean you erect statues because you want people to look at it right?”. The Mechanic shaking his head says “Joseph, if I was here by myself I would not be going through a closed gate in a government compound, but since you are, you know, um, a…, well I think it will be OK.” So we go on through.
There’s nothing written. No names, no dates, just a big soldier. For some reason I tell them about small town America where you often have town square, not like this one — grassy with park benches shaded by old trees, the post office on one side of the Square and maybe a church on another. And they’ll be a monument to those who died from the town in World War II, and another for World War I, and depending on where you are maybe even one for the American Civil War. Sure enough on the way back out we see a caretaker of some sort jogging in our direction. When he gets within ear shot he calls out “Are you…um,… safe?”. “Yes, yes, yes” we answer in unison, “We are safe!” I’m not sure which he is asking, are we safe, or is the monument safe from us. Either way, no worries, we are “safe”.
One of the reviews for the novel — by the way it is “Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Adiche — says the book is important because the Biafra Civil War never really ended. Yeah, I guess I can see that.
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