Nightmares from Reality

 

Incubus

And his companion hosts of

Dream demons –

Ghoulish. Fiendish. Soulless.

Unrelenting; unbidden nightly visitors.

 

You lay in wait upon me

In the pathways of

The subtle dream worlds,

And invade my dream space

With bouts of psychic trauma,

To deprive me of

My deserved healing rest.

 

Why? Why do you afflict me so with

Multiple portions of past pains?

As upon me you unleash anew

The dread past of

My war-torn Childhood Kingdom.

 

Those invading thoughts have returned. Thoughts of torment. Thoughts whose different dreary voices, day and night, drill hard into my mind, flagellating me with a flurry of entwined tongues of toughened raw-hide questions. With steal anvils they hammer harder-than-nail postulates and questions into my head—questions whose answers are apparent, yet I make futile attempts to convince myself that they might turn out to be far from the reality.

The thoughts. They have surged back. This time, in multiplied strength!

“Has your Nigeria, in reality, ever been a united entity? A screaming thought hurtled at me with such frightening ferocity. Then, more thought waves—a hailstorm of thought-missiles. I am mercilessly pelted with granite-hard thoughts; giving me no respite. 

“Can unity and stability be ascribed to this your makeshift contraption of a nation?

“Is this amalgam, in reality, not only a crude, tattered, gross material patch-work of many diverse ethnic nations with neither spiritual nor psychic bonding?

“How long shall your people continue to bear the brunt of the enormous, untoward sacrifice—the wanton waste of blood of your people—the pogroms and unending genocides against you all, which the demonic forces yet holding sway over this mal-conceived country, Nigeria, always require for patching together, the odd unmatchable shreds of an ill-fitting tattered garment of phantom unity?

“For how long shall your people continue to be slaughtered in hundreds of thousands, merely to keep this malformed, misconceived, illusory, nightmarish Nigerian nationhood physically one?

“When will your people stop deceiving themselves in their unfounded hope in this dreary project tagged Nigeria?

“Can you not see the abundance of overwhelming evidence, which daily point to the reality that Nigeria, as it is presently constituted, can never emerge into a united country?

“When will your people stand up against the perpetrators of these atrocious acts aimed at exterminating you all from the face of the earth?  

“Are you not aware that your membership of the Nigerian union will remain an intractable strife—an unending existential threat—a continuing painful struggle for survival against oppressive, extremely regressive, conservative, dangerously deluded religious bigots; ethnic supremacists and chauvinists, sworn to subjugate you and your people forever?

“Look at Nigeria today. Can one say that there is even a semblance of unity among the different ethnic nationalities in Nigeria?

“Have those dyed-in-the-wool reactionary ‘born-to-rule’ Nigerians not succeeded in achieving the preservation of cancerous corruption, bred and nurtured by their greed which was indeed their motive for embarking on the pogroms and genocide against the Igbo?

“And has this deadly tango with corruption not left Nigeria protractedly writhing in a death dance?

“Is Nigeria not thrashing about in the pangs of social collapse—a giant in the throes of death, and subsequent descent into perdition? 

       “Ponder these if you still can. Genuine unity can only emerge from the shared will and mutual agreement of diverse peoples to co-habit in harmony on equal bases, and to the benefit of all. No part must be coerced into such a union or forced to remain in it.

      “Sadly, Nigeria’s unity has all along been hinged on the contrived, gang-up criminal hatred, suppression and extermination of a part of the ‘union’, the Igbo, by the rest members.

“See how the scarecrow unity of Nigeria continues to lifelessly dangle on the thousands—nay millions of graves of your Igbo kinsmen!

“Any country where the safety and security of the lives and property of all persons and groups are not guaranteed, is bound for disintegration.

“Nigeria as it is presently constituted and run, does not inspire patriotism in its ‘citizens’. Patriotism should spring from the inner being of one who not only feels, but knows that he has inalienable rights as a stakeholder in the country. This is because he can clearly see that the state policies and their implementation are all directed at giving each and every individual member of the union an equal sense of belonging.

“The colonial creators of the Nigerian phantom federation, who earlier held aloft to the outside world the image of a masterly painting—a perfect portrait of a Nigerian nation most stable, should hide their faces in shame. See what manner of leaders they foisted on Nigerians!”

Silence. The scary voices suddenly ceased speaking. The dreary mental forms of those ghostly creatures springing from the dread reality of Nigeria’s lingering horror-filled present moment scurried away. They faded into the secluded corners of those ungraspable dark dimensions from where they emerged.

Then I stirred, awakened to the frightful, nightmarish reality which Nigeria has become.

The nightmares…and day-mares have returned!

 

Of recent, every night and sometimes during the day, I would slip into the consciousness field where the past, the present and the future dwell together—where the experiencer could slide into the past or the future, knowingly or unknowingly—consciously or unconsciously. However, it is as if my trips into the inner worlds were just for the purposes of reliving the unceasing violence that we had to contend with every moment of our lives while the war lasted. My nights were haunted by recalls with such living clarity—very vivid replays of past horror-filled moments—happenings of those gruelling thirty bloody months of barbaric, uncivil war, which Nigeria savagely unleashed on Biafra.

Tens of thousands of Easterners died in the course of the genocidal massacres in Northern Nigeria against Easterners—those properly planned, meticulous, callous execution of massive ethnic cleansing exercises—the prelude to the war of annihilation waged against Biafra by Nigeria. I saw hundreds of dead, mutilated bodies. I beheld horrid sights—decapitated bodies, eyes gorged out; severed heads and limbs, bodies mutilated, mangled—mincemeat of human flesh.

Slaughtered pregnant women with their stomachs slit open. Formed and partially formed babies crudely, violently extracted—gored from their mothers’ wombs and wasted. Many of them hurled into coaches and brought back to the East from Northern Nigeria during the series of pogroms perpetrated against my people, the Eastern Nigerians and the Igbo in particular.

 

And on my mind’s display screen, the scene of a horrifying past unfolded. A locomotive slowly dragged along its train of several coaches overladen with human cargo—distraught, dishevelled, weary, worn-out, hungry and thirsty men, women and children, inflicted with varying degrees of wounds. Discernible yet indescribable overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety wavered through their ranks, masking their faces with horror.

   A long, harsh metallic screeching of wheels grinding against steel rail lines brought the train to a slow, abrasive, effortful halt. Weird looking men, with eyes red shot from weed smoking and quaffing stiff drinks, charged menacingly at the coaches. The men, wielding all sorts of dangerous weapons, jumped into the coaches through the coach doors and every available sizable opening.

Frightened women and children hurdled together, shivering with fear, shrieking their pleas to be spared. But the savages were heedless in their ruthlessness. They were the same human hunters—bloodhounds revelling in orgies of blood, intoxicated with the blood of the hundreds of Igbo they had gruesomely massacred in the past three days in Markurdi. Their thirst for Igbo blood was unquenchable.

  “Every ‘Nyamiri’ must die. Kill every Igbo.” They savagely yelled.

 And so they bore down on defenceless children, women, men and the elderly.  Not even the pregnant women were spared. Brutally they slashed their stomachs open. Violently, heartlessly, they ripped the babies out of their mothers’ wombs and sliced them. Cruelly they killed or maimed all they could lay their hands on. They left behind them, bodies of the massacred and grievously wounded Igbo, lying in floods of their blood.

 

Kohol’s Tale

While I was heading the Research Section in the Planning, Research and Statistics department (PRAS) at the National Headquarters of the Federal Road Safety Corps, there was a brilliant officer, a Tiv man by the name Kohol, who reported directly to me. He was a Unit Head within the research section.

One day, we were discussing some experiences we had, just before the shooting war started in 1967. At a point he seemed to have gone off tangent, and said:

“I no longer eat pork. Although it is like a delicacy among my people, I stopped eating it.”

“Personally, I don’t like it. Probably because we treated it as a no-go area, since we were taught that pork is infested with dangerous worms. But why did you stop eating pork?” Out of curiosity, I probed him.

“I had a nauseating experience which made me hate pork.” He said, with that unmistakeable look of disgust on his face. “If you do not mind, I will tell you why.” He added.

Then he became hesitant. He was looking at me as if searching my face for even the faintest sign of disapproval.

“See this Tiv man. My friend go on. Tell it all. I am all ears.” I coaxed him.

And so he began his tale.

“As a boy, just before the civil war, I lived at the Abakpa military barracks in Enugu with my parents. My father was a senior non-commissioned army officer. I was a pupil of Apa-Ukwa Primary School, Upper Chime Avenue, New Haven.

“After the Nzeogwu led military coup in January 1966, and the subsequent killings of the Igbo in the North, it was agreed by the leaders that soldiers serving outside their regions of origin should be allowed free passages with their personal arms back to their regions.

“Ojukwu, abiding by that agreement, provided police security to escort us by rail out of Eastern region. My parents, my siblings and me, were among the many who were safely, without any molestation whatsoever, conveyed out of Enugu, to Markurdi, Northern Nigeria.

Then Kohol paused his narrative. He was pensive for a while as he stared steadily, first at me, then into space. Perhaps, trying to figure out how best he would couch his remaining words.

I gazed back into his eyes with a sincere smile of approval. And he continued with his tale.

“When we came back to Markurdi, we children then were restricted within our homes and compounds. We were given very strict warnings never to stray out of the compound. But I observed that there were many times, men gathered in clusters. Usually their brief meetings would end with a clamorous dispersal of the men in sub groups that headed to different agreed directions.

 “I did not quite grasp what precisely was going on, but I knew that whatsoever was going on was not very right.” He spoke in a lowered tone of voice. His countenance somehow seemed saddened as he continued speaking.

“One late afternoon, I was at home, with only my siblings. Out of curiosity, I slightly opened a particular window at the rear of the house. This very window which we children were all warned never to open, faced the street adjacent to our house. Looking through the window, the sight which confronted me was such a horror. I supressed a scream, quickly shut the widow. In a hurry, I sneaked out of the room, shivering.

“Heaps of dead human bodies, which I was made to understand later, were those of slaughtered Igbo. The top skins of those wasted bodies were peeling off, having been seared by the scorching heat of the sun, thus exposing their light under-skin. The corpses were all dripping fatty oil, as of half-done pork in the fire-place. That sore sight so nauseated me, that up till this day, whenever I see pork, the memories of that hideous sight rush back at me, and I start feeling sick in the stomach. That’s why I stopped eating pork.” His face was bland as he concluded his nauseating story.

“We have all along known that your Tiv people played a major ignoble role in the 1966 premeditated massive massacre of the Igbo in Northern Nigeria. The level of brutishness exhibited by Northern Nigerian ethnic minority soldiers and civilians, especially those of Tiv extraction against Biafrans during that uncivil war, was unparalleled.” I fired a response at him. It was a direct shot which got him temporarily dazed.

Pressing on, I asked him:

“What have we, as a people, ever done against the Tiv? When Joseph Tarka was leading the Tiv against the oppressive feudal Fulani oligarchy, we supported you. But know it, that we bear no grudges against your people. We leave you to forever contend with the consequences of your actions.

“But do your people ever ask themselves why you have, without respite, always been entangled in bloody ethnic conflicts, especially since after the Nigeria – Biafra war?”

“Why, sir? Please tell me.” He pleaded. I could feel the sincerity in his voice.

“Human blood is sacred. Shedding of human blood, especially of those who have done you no harm, attracts unpleasant consequences that would linger for even centuries and several lifetimes, if appropriate propitiations are not made to avert such… The sacred Commandment, ‘Thou shall not kill’, is the second greatest Commandment, only next in order of priority to the Law of Love. It indeed derives from the Law of Love. Anyone who breaks this law, commits a grievous sin against the Spirit of Life.” I explained at length to him. Wide-eyed, with his jaw dropped, he was staring at me.

“If I could arrange it sir, would you mind coming to explain this issue to my people the way you have just done to me.” His voice was persuasive.

“And you think they will understand? Will they not believe I have come to call them savages to their faces? Your people, great warriors I heard they were. They stopped the invading Fulani Jihadists in their tracks. But your people have been steeped in orgies of blood for as long as history could remember. It would therefore be best that you, being one of them, should enlighten them by yourself.” I answered matter-of-factly.

Although Kohol seemed slightly disappointed that I declined his proposal, I was not in the least perturbed. I had passed the message along. Maintaining an inscrutable countenance, I subtly steered us into another topic of discussion.

 

 With these and many other such barbaric, bestial acts perpetrated by the rest Nigerians against Easterners, particularly the Igbo, it is indisputable that ethnic cleansing was and still remains Nigeria’s motive behind the unending genocidal massacres of the Igbo in Nigeria. The ethnic hate crimes being perpetrated against the Igbo, have always been brazenly state-sponsored. It was so much so that Nigerian soldiers in Markurdi and other parts of Northern Nigeria, while the 1966 Igbo massacres were going on openly, without the faintest feeling of remorse or prick of conscience, kept announcing to whomsoever cared to listen, that they were doing… the world a great favour by eliminating the Igbo. 

Copyright Chike Nwaka