Up Pillars!!!!

The news didn’t come as a surprise to me, for I had expected the barbarity of man to rear its head once again, in that encounter. A week ago, as I sat watching the CAF Champions League Semi-final first leg match between Heartland of Owerri, Imo State and Kano Pillars of Kano, I literally told those around me that ‘there will be blood’ in Kano come the return leg in the Pyramid City. Heartland was of course, leading by four goals at the time, rendering the return leg a little more than mere formality. The calculation was simple: Pillars were not going to beat Heartland by up to four goals, if they managed to beat them at all.

And having witnessed many a less-important match end in wanton fan violence in Kano over the years, I needn’t necessarily be a Nostradamus to predict what would naturally follow during the match and after the final whistle in Kano. And so I was proved spot on as the Pillars fans did not only attack the Heartland fans in the stadium but also pelted the Imo State governor, Ikedi Ohakim and his Kano State counterpart, Ibrahim Shekarau with all sorts of objects. As if that were not enough, the fans also allegedly took the governors hostage for about 15 minutes after the match while more about an hour after the final whistle, some of the heartland supporters were still caged in at the Sani Abacha Stadium as irate Pillars fans bayed for their blood. And you are right to ask, all because of an ordinary football match?

It is a shame anyway that the Pillars fans reacted the way they did. Here was a team that had handed mighty Al-Ahly of Egypt a most humiliating exit from this year’s competition. Yes, Pillars it was that I glowingly wrote about after they did the seemingly impossible by holding African club football mega powers to a 2-2 draw in Egypt, a result that led to the exit of the six-time CAF Champions League champions from this year’s competition. At the hands of African club football debutants and total unknowns like Pillars, might I add.

Many followers of the African game had expected Egyptian fans to intimidate the Nigerians before, during and even after that duel, but suffice to say that even if they did, it must have been rather insignificant compared to what happened in Kano over the weekend. Shall we, therefore, say in as diplomatic terms as possible, that Pillars fans are sour losers? Of course, yes. If none of the teams they played away at and picked points from thought it appropriate to resort to riotous tendency against them during their fairytale journey to the semis of this year’s competition, the Pillars fans should have just savoured this experience and look forward to similar experiences in future, rather than giving CAF and football followers a dark label to put on their darling Pillars.

To think that this was coming at a time when I was starting to half-concede my memories of after-match scenes in Kano to the stuff of history. The history of the days when we needed to brace ourselves for doses of teargas, bruises here and there, missing personal effects, burnt cars, second degree injuries and even the occasional death, all from violence of mini ethno-religious colouration. I remember those days of the irresistible 3SC Shooting stars of Ibadan, the tenacious Bendel Insurance of Edo, the swashbuckling Iwauyanwu Nationale (now Heartland), the irrepressible Enugu Rangers, all teams whose performances against Pillars in Kano year-in-year-out sparked riotous scenes amongst supporters. Scenes to which I lost countless pairs of flip-flops, sniffed from dozens of teargas canisters, sustained numerous cuts and bruises as I was caught in the crossfire between opposing fans and the mediating team of teargas-hauling policemen. These were the sorts of riots to which I most fondly lost a part of my pair of Dan Medina (made in Medina) flip flops just three days after buying the pair for which I had saved up money for weeks. Dan Medina had been the in-thing back then. It was the most durable type of bathroom slippers known around Kano and its status as having (supposedly) been made in Medina, Saudi Arabia, added to its prestige and legend. If you didn’t own a pair back then, you hadn’t quite simply worn a pair of flip flop - it was a status symbol of sorts. And I lost a part of my pair after a riot broke out between fans of Iwanyanwu and Pillars in the aftermath of a dramatic Nationale victory in Kano.

Such times were reenacted at the weekend. Times when several hours after a football match, it was still considered suicidal for a lot of us to cross from Sabon Gari to Brigade Quarters. It was such times when for hours after a match you were holed up inside the main bowl of the Kano Township Stadium until policemen, at their own risk, too, managed to smuggle you out later in the night. Those were the times when even as a reasonably neutral fan you were forced to chant ‘Up Pillars!’ to save your neck. After any of the afore-mentioned teams had dished out the usual dose of agony to Pillars, and you happened to be caught in a mob of irate Pillars fans, you had one of two choices – remain steadfast, even in your neutrality and receive the beating of your life or manically shout ‘Up Pillars!’, before gloating Pillars fans. And in those circumstances, ‘Up Pillars’ was a small price to pay in exchange for a sojourn to the orthopedic centre. It was back to those Up Pillars days again last Saturday, shamefully so, for a team Nigerians had up until then been very proud of.

Four men, one barrel and two bags

Nothing prepared me for that occasion, and I guess nothing ever prepares you for it. Time was around 7.38 pm as I strutted down a street in the GRA part of Ikeja, Lagos. I had just left an eatery where I spent the previous three hours or so filing a feature article to the deputy editor of the Saturday desk of my newspaper. I had been running around, almost in circles all day, gathering material for an article I had to file same day otherwise I simply forget it. Uppermost on my mind at the time, therefore, was the thought of getting home as soon as possible, take a bath, eat dinner, watch some TV, if possible, and then hit the sack. Such was the jaded nature of my body and mind that I desperately sought to catch the most efficient, if most dangerous form of transport in Lagos – commercial motorcycle (okada).

The first few okada I tried to hail down either had a passenger already or they wouldn’t just go my way, so I decided to walk on in the hope that I would catch one eventually. There was obviously no hint of danger and although I didn’t know GRA that much, the street I was walking down at did not carry any hint of what was to hit me (if they ever carry any that is) – well-paved road, perimeter/electric fences, tightly-locked gates, bla bla. But then it happened. Around the middle of the long street (more than 400 metres), I saw an okada dropping off a passenger. There was also another one about 20 metres from the first one, also dropping of a passenger. From across the road I hailed “PWD,” the name of the bus stop where I was going to board another okada or bus, towards my home. Unlike the others, this okada beckoned on me but was also rummaging in his pocket for what I thought was change for his passenger.

Then I fell for it and crossed the road to meet him as the other okada man was asking if he (my okada man) could spare him N40 change. His own passenger came towards us and I thought he was coming for the N40, so I just turned towards my okada man. In split seconds I was starring at the barrel of a locally made pistol. The ‘passenger’ had crept from behind me and grabbed my shoulder, holding the pistol to my face. “Give me the bag,” he barked. I handed him my laptop bag which had no laptop in it but had my digital camcorder, my ID card, some money, my tape recorder, a few books etc. “Where is the money,” he barked again. “I don’t have any money I said,” as he tried to frisk the side pockets of the jeans trouser I wore. I kept shifting back tapping his hands away and then just dug my hand into one of my back pockets and brought out some money, which I threw on the ground as I stepped further away. Quickly, he bent down and picked the money. By then the other okada had turned his bike towards where I was coming from while the other ‘passenger,’ the one who had been on the okada I flagged down, crossed the road and mounted the bike as Mr. Gun jumped on ‘my’ okada and they sped off. Only then did I manage to shout “ole, ole,” prompting some of the guards in some of the houses on the street to come out. But it was too late. The deed was done. I immediately put a call across to the state police public relations officer who in turn urged me to report the incident at the Ikeja Police Station.

Funny though, at the police station, as I was writing my statement/complaint, another man came in to report that he, too, had just been robbed of his laptop (an official laptop he had just been given, having just been employed newly) right in the middle of a traffic slow-down in the same GRA. From his description of the man with the gun, I suspect it was the same gang that did the job on me. And as we walked out of the station and my partner in distress carried on complaining, I just kept thinking of the irony of it all. Here I was, a crime reporter who has often felt so much pity for some suspected robbers, especially those on okada to the extent that I have had to wonder if the police were not been too fussy with some of the arrests. To think I had so helplessly fallen victim to the people I have always felt such pity for.

Come to think of it, I have often wondered how robbery victims, especially the on-the-road-and-at-gunpoint ones felt. Well, as I walked on silently that night, I had my long sought answer – drained, befuddled, benumbed, breathless, helpless, maybe even slightly touch-and-go, edgy and tetchy, but grateful it didn’t get any worse.

Hurray(?), we are 49

So, it's a hefty 49 years ago now since the Brits left these shores and we claimed independence? Great. I was reading a newspaper article by an editor of one of the national dailies recently in which the author wrote something quite instructive. He observed that one of the funny things about writing about developments in Nigeria is that one ends up writing about the same issues every time - no water, bad roads, poor if any attention to education, brazen corruption, and the whole gamut of which my grandparents and my parents complained about. The gamut I have found myself also complaining about since I first knew how to say 'daddy' or 'A is for apple.' Sadly, as we celebrate 49 years as an independent entity today, I have justifiable fears that my children, their own children and their children's grand children will also have same complaints to make.

So, I have in my wretched wisdom, culled back an article I did two years ago, just to weigh how much things have improved in those two years. But the reality is we still only seem to have the sordid, the bizarre and the lurid to hold on to….

The Happiest-Looking People on Earth

As the Nigerian flag fluttered in the air in celebration of the country’s 47th independence anniversary on October 1, this year, one man in particular would have been weeping. That man is Pa Taiwo Akinkumi, the old man whose idea gave birth to the Nigerian flag. He would have been weeping for having been neglected by the powers that be in this country; neglected to slowly die in acute senility and penury whereas his place in history as the architect of one of Nigeria’s national monuments deserves to fetch him a more tranquil old age and passing on. The old man would have wept for this country because the potentials which influenced his design of the Nigerian flag – a fertile land with vast amount of natural resources that should bring about unity, stability and progress – have not translated to socio-economic fortunes for the masses of the people.

And Pa Akinkumi is not alone in his despair. Millions of Nigerians share his despair about a system that has spectacularly failed its people, no matter what anyone would say. As Nigeria continues to junket around the African continent trying to export resources – political and economic freedom, stability and the rule of law - that it cannot even provide for its own people, socio-economic comparisons are invariably drawn between the country and others like India, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, even South Africa and Ghana. And boy, how vast and sharp the contrasts are! It just seems like these other countries have enlisted the use of jets to continue their part of the journey they started on about the same pedestal with Nigeria while Nigeria has stuck to the use of her rickety bicycle for the same journey. The result is that, in a lot of ways, it is safe to say that the Nigerian government at all levels continues to act in ways that makes it seem that the labour of our heroes past have indeed been in vain.

But in the midst of it all, amidst all the chaos and despair, and despite their own individual negatives, it is the resilience of the Nigerian that remains the driving force. The Spartan drive and tenacity of the common Nigerian has continued to engender - if not freedom - some form of unity and peace - which provide us with a place we can still call Nigeria today. The only thing that has kept this molue called Nigeria trudging on is the sacrifice continuously made by millions of socio-politically battered (physically and psychologically) Nigerians - the Iya alakaras, baba Mulika the welder, Ekpo the panel-beater, the petty trader in Ariaria market in Aba, hordes of perennially underpaid and unpaid public workers – with the assistance of the media, despite its own shortcomings.

In spite of their political elite, the uncanny and almost insane sense of humour of the common man in Nigeria, to smile through a plethora of man-made catastrophe engineered by their own leaders, has continued to provide the veneer by which the world has, for almost five decades, labelled Nigerians ‘the happiest people on earth’. And to many people, as the sound of the national anthem rents the air in government quarters among rented crowds on Independence Day each year, the one thing truly worth celebrating about Nigeria is the combination of iron-cast will and a Mohammed Ali endurance of the Nigerian. It is the Nigerian man’s ability to survive situations that would easily lead to socio-political combustion a hundred times over in most other nations in the world that is truly celebratable here.

But with the sound of each aeroplane taking off from any of the country’s international airports comes the thought that, that aircraft may well be another drain pipe; a pipe draining away yet another of our best and most promising brains because this entity has failed him or her. That realisation makes you wonder just how furiously our heroes past must be turning in their graves for the sorry extent to which their dream has been allowed degenerate. And with a seemingly never improving socio-political state of affairs you are tempted to ask just how many more punches this Mohammed Ali can take, just how many lives this weary old cat called Nigeria would be required to live on before it starts to get it right.