A Nigeria Of Our Dream. United by Suya, Nkwobi and Skelewu

A speech I delivered today the 25th of October 2019 at the D M Ukpe Memorial Lecture, part of the Annual Convention of the Federal Government Okigwe Old Students Association in Lagos. Original Title was “An Endangered Nation: Pathway to Change through Unity”

I was not privileged by birth. My father was a middle-class oil palm merchant that died during the war between Nigeria and Biafra. By my fifth birthday, I had been a Nigerian, Biafran and Nigerian again.

I have remained Nigerian since then

At the time I entered FGC Okigwe in 1978, I had hardly left my community in Imo state. Not for long anyway. I had holidayed in Enugu. Passed occasionally through Owerri.

I came into Okigwe a rural smart kid with airs about my school exploits as one of the brightest in my community school. My world view was not beyond my community. And my view of Nigeria was influenced by my experience as a toddler in the war that killed our parents and brothers and sisters. I did lose my two best friends before I was five years in the disease of the war.

So, was I expecting anything while coming to Okigwe? I was told Federal Government colleges were for the best kids in the country. I was one of the best in my community. I took the entrance exam. I passed. I looked forward to showing the rest of the other kids coming to Okigwe that this country kid had arrived.

But school was not the way I imagined it. Okigwe, then in a seminary in Orlu was different. Most of the kids that came were elite children from all round the country. And some just returned by their parents from overseas.

And there were people that did not speak my language. There were Yoruba, Hausa and lots of languages in the south of the country and the north. Even most of the Igbos I met did not speak my clearly distinct community dialect. Talk of a diversity shock.

So, this was me in September 1978. Lost among these new languages and cultures and habits and up-tightness.

I wanted to go home.

But fast forward three months later to my first term holiday in December and I did not want to go home.

What happened between this September and December and the next five years was the experience that shaped most of us. In that generation of Unity school fellows. And we are here today in honor of D M Ukpe, our first principle because we recognize the work, he and his team did to help us navigate this critical period in our lives that shaped the world view we share today. My hope is that your six years in Okigwe had the same profound effect as mine.

The Okigwe Experience.

By December 1978, I was an excited Nigerian kid, with an expanding Nigerian world view. Nigerian friends. And the smart people I came to compete with? I saw them all over the place. Some of the friends I made in these three months have been my best friends forty years later. And they were not from my village. They were not from Imo state. They were not all Igbos.

We have had varied experiences in the 40 odd years since we entered Okigwe. Most went to university and have become doctors and engineers and architects and lawyers. Some migrated out of the country and living their lives in the Nigerian diaspora journey. Some have died and still live in our memories of 1978 to 1983. Most of us have children some now our age while in Okigwe. We even have grandfathers and mother among us.

The Nigerian experience of the last 40 years has wizened us. But in all, we have mostly remained Nigerians shaped by the experience of Okigwe. A few have retreated to their communities and their tribes, unable to reconcile the promise of Okigwe and the reality of the Nigerian experience that has not been so fair to everyone.

The Unity School Experience and Nigeria

The Unity schools were an experiment in national integration. Nigeria is a diverse country and had a tumultuous period just after independence when the country barely survived a war. The idea of the unity schools was to raise a generation of Nigerians who after attending these schools would infect the rest of Nigeria with their unique understanding of the Nigerian of our dreams.

This was the Nigeria where a poor Hausa boy from Sokoto could come to Okigwe and aspire to get the best possible education in Nigeria and would feel comfortable in any part of Nigeria. And was free to dream about being successful in life based on the outcome of his education and his Hustle.

I lived this dream when I left Okigwe. After my University in 1988, I dreamed of doing my National Service in Jos. And in one clear case of God answering my prayers, I was posted to Jos. The first place I looked for job while serving as a corper was Kaduna. But the reality of my course of study forced me to come to Lagos.

When I arrived in Lagos in 1989, I felt at home. I have not left since.

I am sure most here can relate to this. It was not by accident. It was the entire purpose of the Unity School program.

The Worst of Us

It’s not been an easy road to a nation for Nigeria. We have fought a war and endured military governments. We are fighting a losing war on corruption that has skewed the place of hard work and merit in nation building. Today Nigeria battles with wars on all fronts. From the East to West and the North. Our soldiers are fully mobilized in a country that’s not in any external war, the body bags counting more than many nations at war.

We have an IDP population that is the size of some of the worst war zones in the world.

And our flight into the world of the poor has made us the poverty capital of the world.

The various tribes seem to be in a perpetual war for spoils of the national cake

There are times even the most optimistic Nigerians worry that the wheels are coming off the nation that was cobbled together from disparate sub nationalities and tribes in 1914.

So, has this experiment failed? Are we part of a wasted effort by Nigeria to build a generation that saw themselves as truly Nigerians? Do we have any regrets in our teenage experience of the possibility that Nigeria could be? Does this possibility still exist?

The Challenges to our Unity

Nigeria still has a difficult path ahead in its walk towards nationhood. There will be the politician that will use our differences to get votes. This is not just a Nigerian experience. Look at the most powerful country in the world and their current experience tells you that nation building is a work in progress.

Our unique religious mix of the two large religions in the world will continue to create divisions. And religious leaders, sometimes for their pecuniary interest will preach disunity and lead us to unnecessary blood letting and tension. Again, this is the story of the world in the past several hundreds of years. But in Nigeria, we can borrow the success of the West of Nigeria. Where the two religions of Christianity and Islam have found peace.

The poverty that currently ravages the land will continue to breed insecurity and strife. The hungry man is the biggest weapon for political and religious strife. It is my view that poverty is the biggest threat to our unity as a country. If you are in doubt, look at Lagos. Lagos is evenly divided between Moslems and Christians. And, the wealthiest part of Nigeria. I do not see Lagos descending soon into any religious strife. Improve the livelihood of Nigerians across the country and some of the tensions that manifest as ethnic and religious eruptions will recede

And the Promise of Unity

Let me talk about a few things I see and the possibilities they portend in our road to unity

Nigerians are marrying themselves

Look all around you. Igbos are marrying Yoruba. Yoruba are marrying Hausas. Everyone one is marrying from Calabar. Among a generation of the young Nigerian elite, marriage among the tribes are accelerating. When it was time for my only brother to marry, he decided to marry an Mbaise girl. My mother worried. Until I told her that she should consider this as a better outcome. That my view of getting married was more radical. That when it would be my turn to get married my search for wife would extend to all corners of Nigeria.

Nigerian are eating National Food

Nigerians are eating Nigerians foods. In a recent trip to Reading in the Uk, I went with a mixed group of Nigerians. Mostly Igbo and Yoruba. We had a Nigerian restaurant experience. It was the Yoruba in the group that ordered Nkwobi, a Nigerian food with an Eastern Origin. The Calabar edikaikong is possibly the number one soup in Nigeria. The Hausa Suya carries the national flag as the steak of the nation.

We Sing, Africa Dances.

We have built a Nigerian music. And when we play, Africa and more recently, the world is dancing. Who cares if Davido is Yoruba when you are in a club in Calabar of Nairobi? A Nigerian kid born today in Sokoto will have more affinity with any of the Nigerian growing multitude of international musicians than his local chief or Governor. These are the people that influence him, and he worships.

Nollywood is telling Nigerian stories to a new generation of Nigerians and Africans . Their movies are evolving to depict not just history but the Nigerian aspiration. Just like Hollywood is selling the American dream to the world.

We are increasingly Dressing as Nigerians. Look around the workplace today. English dressing is disappearing slowly. I still don’t understand why an African country like Nigeria that is hot and humid adopted the English suit as work attire. But slowly, the Nigerian fashion is taking over the workplace. After capturing the weddings and funerals with aso ebi and the danshiki.

While politicians and leaders are telling us how different and divided, we are, Nigerians are building a national culture that tells a different story in our homes. In who we marry, the food we eat, the music we play, the movies we watch, and the way we dress.

So, what do we owe Nigeria?

The Unity school experience has been good for me. It has shaped my view of Nigeria, of Nigerians and the world. I am proudly Igbo. A Christian. But most of all I am Nigerian. It is Okigwe that has shaped my view as a Nigerian. Just as it has for the generations that have been through the Unity schools from Sokoto to Calabar in the past several decades.

We have been placed in a unique position to support the match of Nigeria to nationhood. It is a duty that we will all share to our graves. And in the decades to come, when Nigeria overcomes this difficult part of its journey, there should be a place of mention for this experiment which we are. That our experience was one of the factors that kept Nigerian one when dark forces threatened to tear the country apart.

But in that future, there will be no need for a unity school. Because when Nigeria finds unity, what will be the purpose of a Unity school?

In that future suya and Nkwobi will be the symbols of Nigerian unity. And skelewu or whatever is in vogue in our music, dress and movies will symbolize our Nigerianness at home and anywhere in the world we proudly find ourselves.