‘Yesterday I took a walk, just across the estate gate where I live in Lagos, and for the first time in my life, the consciousness of my tribal identity hit me, an Igbo man walking on a “Yoruba street”
GOING for a walk is something I love to do, when I first moved to my current neighbourhood my wife and I would take very long walks exploring and getting to know our new home. We prided ourselves that we knew our neighbourhood.
Yesterday I took a walk, just across the estate gate where I live in Lagos, and for the first time in my life, the consciousness of my tribal identity hit me, an Igbo man walking on a “Yoruba street”.
I walked with caution, though I have spent over fifty years of my existence on earth here, a strange feeling that someone will one day say that I did not belong hit me
Ola Rotimi is right, “Until the rotten tooth is pulled out, the mouth must chew with caution.” So, I chew with caution
In my days in the theatre group, Kakaaki, led by Ben Tomoloju, we all had a comradeship that grew into a brotherhood. It was me, Jahman Anikulapo, and Antar Laniyan. I still remember severally spending the night at Jahman’s family house and him coming over to eat my mother’s egusi soap, never once did the difference in the tribe or family religion matter.
But the events of the last few weeks have suddenly made me begin to think of these brothers of mine differently. Not to distrust them, no. But to appreciate and cherish what we have, living above tribal and religious differences
We all have the power to write our history, to tell our children not to dance to the ignorance of dividers of our unity, we can’t blame the British anymore, that ship sailed a long time ago. That soup is stale now.
We can’t even blame the politician, we can’t sit and do nothing. We cannot blame religion, we cannot blame the gods
Who determines who your brother is? You determine that not religious differences, not tribe, that’s a lie from the politicians, no one, not even the gods.p
So Indeed, the gods are not to blame.
*Chiadika, a Theatre, Television and Film Director, writes from Lagos
