As the Sun Sets

By Jerri Jheto

This is about a personal experience of the musical explosion that transformed Nigeria after the Biafran war to which I was a part of. The musical groups from the Eastern part of the border that helped to ease the pain of a race that was deliberately attacked and forced into an unprepared war. The freedom from colonial rule to the war that crippled the nation. The army rule for over thirty five years, the oppression and depression that followed. A personal experience of politics and religion mixed with tribal sentiments. The will of one over the other. A personal experience of one conscripted but escaped. Recaptured and jailed, escaped again. A refugee seeking safety. What a human deluge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669821373

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Jerri Jheto.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/22/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

828719

AS THE SUN SETS,

WE AWAIT THE BREAK OF DAWN.

WHEN THE DAY BROKE,

AWAY WE FLEW.

To everyone and everybody I’ve met along this complicated journey called life, Who has influenced me, good or bad, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Knowing that there could be bad in good as it is good in bad, I have learned to be indifferent as both serve the same purpose. Human progress and growth. Through every step have I learned how to circumvent the corners. It is a task to mention you all by name, but you know who you are and the role you played. I thank my homeland, OBIBI-EZENA in OWERRI, IMO STATE for the love they embedded into me. Has been the only weapon, that guided me through challenging times.

My Family, all love.

Thank You,

Jerri Jheto.

Please help me to help myself. I want to help you too, so you can help the helpless upcoming generation, who will eventually need your help. Help like in helping them understand a little bit of what has been going on all this while. Help them, if you can, in getting a grip as to why it is so. Help them in understanding how the world around them revolves. Tell them how and why things got so out of hand that you, the elder, could not get a grip on it. Tell them about the politics that has played itself out in all areas of life. Help them understand how politics has permeated the church, school, government, and every aspect of living. Help the youth to see your mistakes, and recommend to them how to protect against the repeat of the mistakes that had been made before now.

Help can come in different forms, shapes, and sizes. Helping the homeless, the sick among us. Like the extraordinarily rich among us helping in building schools and sports gyms, awarding scholarships to eligible candidates, and giving out stipends to the elders of the village, widows, and destitute. All forms of educating the grown and upcoming youngsters who are hungry for knowledge.

Another form is by telling them stories or relating history to them that they might not necessarily have known or heard about. Stories that could take them on a personalized experience. Stories of a time before now, when things were quite different from what it presently portrays. Back in time when stories of love and affection were expressed on a piece of paper. Most of the out of sight relationships depended on telling the other half the level of commitment and affection through the mail, which took weeks to get back to the recipient. Nothing was instant. Families communicated through the same medium, whereby the parents waited for weeks on end to receive a letter from their kids in the city, and vice versa. It was beautiful but different. More humanly and truly highly informative. The mind could wander and help in solving most problems, be it mathematical, scientific, or just seeking a meaning to a word that is fresh in a vocabulary. When used positively, will enhance relationships on all levels. It is at this point that our communication becomes cordial. Our relationship with one another will experience respect and love that made the slogan love your neighbor as yourself meaningful.

In those days, communication was slow in every area of operation. Be it postal, transportation, or security. It will take a while to get the mail. It will take a while to get from one point to the other. It took a while to see a doctor in times of medical emergencies. It took another minute longer to get the police to come investigate a crime scene, report any incident that has occurred in the neighborhood. The negative moments happen when the deed has been done and the rest becomes a story. During these times, the police officer becomes the judge and jury. They use these slow moments to milk the cow. When there is a fight between two angry, warring neighbors and mediation is out of sight, the police officers’ involvement will commit the warring factions to pay their fair share to be right. When both sides are right, the rest is a runaround, and stories in between. Your visits to the police station with a drop of envelope will soon get you wise, and the stop will come when each warring faction realize that they have been feeding the wrong cow. It is a case where both sides are victims. The victims decide the continuation or stoppage of the case. The lack of communication helped domestic abuse flourish, and governmental involvement was minimal. It was out of the question as the culture celebrated marriage as a part of property owning. The cultural attribute that stipulated dowry made it undeniably so, as the payer would always feel or demand respect in that regard.

These unintentional slow movements in mental and activity platforms allowed mischief to strive in little pockets across cities and villages. During all of these, humanity was fully engaged in a struggle to find their feet planted in the ground to which they belong. It was clear currently that all parts of Nigeria were undergoing these slow movement times. These times that were not understood in the first place ushered in a slogan that all Africans had been clamoring for: independence. All the African nations lined together in their little communities to look for freedom. It must have been an exciting time for our fathers, who would do anything to leave with their children a free and fair world, better than their experience.

Nigeria was among the first to secure this freedom from the colonial master. I would have imagined the happiness among our leaders from various regions of the country. We had the western region, eastern region, and the northern region. The first problem came with ethnic differences coupled with religion, which was different in all the regions. The ones from the east were mostly Christians, and the ones from the west were really a mixture of Christians and Muslims. The ones from the north were collectively a staunch Islam-believing group of people. The languages were far apart from each other. Between three main languages there were two hundred or more connected dialects.

Looking at this scene from the top shows a challenging time ahead. Times that will try humanity and our ability to adapt to changes. I will, in my little thinking, contribute to the fact that the first leaders had little or no dialogue among themselves to figure out what was at stake. They should have known that freedom was not going to be free. They should have known that it is a two-way street. Our tribal differences as a new nation were not of any importance to the leaders. The fact that it will give us the freedom to rule among ourselves and elect our leaders was paramount for the leaders to be concerned about ethnic differences. Each wanted to lead, and there was infighting among them.

Looking back into African cultures, the elders played a significant role in the affairs of our communities. The leaders of this time ignored that philosophy and grasped the European system they were not competent in. Some of these leaders had been to the outside world, but they were strangers in another man’s land. They could not have gotten the fullest understanding of this new system that befell them. It has a name, and it is called democracy. Has anyone of them practiced this new system before? No. It needed to be understood at the very least. It should have been studied and a little of that understanding planted into the masses, who will be the recipients of the benefits or curses.

The early ones who had the opportunity to lead did truly little to unify the nation first. Over all, Nigeria got her independence and was like her communication: slow in understanding the responsibility of being free. Frankly speaking, she did not think that she was enslaved and needed freedom. She had always been free. Most of what it was for her was the signing of paperwork. She did not see that most nations had shed their blood to be free from their oppressors or colonial masters. I do not think they knew anything about Che Guevara from Central America or Fidel Castro of Cuba. These men organized and fought for what they considered theirs.

When it is free, somebody is paying for it. It took a while to get a glimpse of what we were toiling with, that freedom cannot be free. It was confusing and extremely hard to understand that freedom can never be free. Were we fooled? We in general just could not get it. It resulted in a bad, dreadful dream that crippled a nation and brought her to her knees. Had the taste of a sour grape from yesterday. Reality was stepping in gradually, and nobody had a clue as to what was next. We played it by ear. A nation without a vision on a perilous journey to nowhere.

It was becoming clear that something sinister was going to happen in a noticeably short while. There was no centralized leadership, even though it seemed so. Everything at this point was tribalistic and infested with religion, and the understanding or the room for dialogue got lost in the shuffle of who was right and who was wrong. It would have been righteous to pay with our blood and secure freedom than to be free and have to pay later.

That’s the real story here. Nigeria paid for her independence many years after the paper signing in 1960. The one who paid for our freedom was in charge. During these few years, the vision was taken out of our freedom and replaced with fear and rumors of war. A people died not knowing they were dead. The vision faded like a castle built on sand. Tribes started to fend for and protect themselves against other tribes. The differences in tongue became an issue. It boiled down to ethnicity, which trickled down to accents in speaking. How you spoke a language will decide your place or position in the circle.

The colonial heads saw it clearly from the beginning that Nigeria could be manipulated. They saw that it would be beneficial eventually to have the northerners control the country. They had a religion that was centralized and had a formidable leader. The east and the west were a liberated set of people who have been around the world in many roles. That was a threat to a British government that was trying to hand over the once colonized nation to the rightful owners of the land. They wanted a piece of the land no matter how small, and the northerners were in a better position to give them their wants. The west and east were filled with educated men and women who would be unwilling to sell out.

Looking back at it, you could see a chess game being played with people’s lives as the chips. It was clear that the people’s interests were far from the goal of the one carrying the torch. Nepotism came in as soon as the leaders had a grip on leadership. Hell broke loose, and the bottom of the basket dropped off. People uneducated in governance were picked to rule and run the affairs of the nation. The whole episode started as soon as we had an election. It was fraudulent from the beginning. A number of tribes found it necessary to lord it over the others, and a rift was created. A situation that was ideal for the accomplishment of the first idea of dominance.

The Yoruba had a set tradition in that they have the Oba and the Alaafin, and they had Oduduwa and Islamic influences in some of their neighborhoods. The Igbos were travelers and traders, and lived a truly democratic lifestyle in that they paid no allegiance to one king. They respected their elders while the other races paid allegiance to Oba and emirs. The differences created a lot of dissension among the people against one another. A terrifying experience for the young ones, who had to go through these misunderstandings between the protectors of liberty and justice.

We did go somewhere with it. We hated each other with passion. We separated each other from the other and tried to mingle with others to despise others. This tribalistic education and knowledge was crippling the minds of the people and making a zombie out of them. Wrong was becoming right, and the people were beginning to follow what’s been told them on the news and on the daily papers. Journalism was becoming a threat, and the government was going to crack down on bad journalism. My mentor, Dele Giwa, paid with his blood splattered all over the place. A wicked society.

It is getting to the point where I am going to have to tell it as it was at the beginning of my time. More importantly and truthfully, how much of it I can remember and recollect. I am going to take a minute and share my times and experiences with some of the great Nigerian and international stars, artists I have met, talked with, shared a piece of bread with in my journey as an artist and a musician, and most of all, a human being. I will talk a little bit about my time in Lagos, Biafra, and back in Lagos, and the struggle for liberation from myself.

Looking at it in hindsight, it is extraordinarily true that it was a struggle against oneself. If it was not so, what would you call it? It is a struggle of life that has made me who I am and who I continue to be. A life that has put me in a place I never thought possible, conceivable, or achievable. When I seriously think about it, how else could I have been where I am now if I did not take this road. I call it a musical journey. It was a road that beckoned unto me to not resist her call. It was quite an experience from one step to the other. It was a road that had a lot of street signs that elevated the soul and helped to ease the pains that came with the struggle.

Every step in the fight for equality and fairness developed a struggle to counter its pains. The space between the steps was much more challenging in that it is the negatives of the trade marinating in the space we all called fun time. It is in these fun times that most of us get lost in the shuffle. We disregard the struggle for emancipation and get caught up with vanity. The responsibility gets misplaced and creativity starts to elude the mind she was created for. These faulty steps will lead us straight forward or two steps backward.

Naturally, I took a couple of these bad steps and ended up where I had to examine myself and the paths I was leading. Some of these bad steps led to drunkenness, dependence on substances, womanizing, and the like, especially in my line of calling that had little or no rule but your commitment and efficiency. Your ability to play by the rules and regulations that binds the participant and the trade. It is like every other trade that demands a level of civility and respect coupled with effort and production expectations. It is true that bands have had to break up in dealing with these missteps. Late coming and not showing up at all for the night was prevalent among the musicians, who in fact had to deal with all the aspects, trials of living in Lagos as a professional musician.

Transportation in Lagos then was slow and particularly challenging, especially for us musicians, who were naturally night crawlers. The transport system closed before it was night out. Taxis and private cars parading as an available way of transportation for the night were the only possible means of movement that started from the island and ended up on the mainland. A lot of clubs were springing up, starting from Lagos Island to Mushin, which was truly all that was Lagos.

I am happy that I got the responsibility to go through this road that had rough and tough curves. The ability to tell it like it was experienced is exciting. It is an interesting story that suggests I start from the beginning. I thought it was a great idea to start from when I could remember and to tell it again, like I said earlier, truthfully, as much as I can remember. Taking the story from the beginning reminded me of a song I wrote and recorded in my third album, titled Illegal Alien.

In the Beginning

In the beginning, JAH said let there be light

In the beginning, he said let there be firmament

Come cover the earth

In the beginning, he said let there be worship

Come glorify his name

In the beginning, he said let us make man

In our own very likeness,

Let us make man in our own very likeness

Darkness will disappear when a dot of light appears. Jah spoke about light as early as he started. He knew that light would bring knowledge, understanding to humanity, and will help him to understand and see and know Him as the father to all that live. There is love in light. Jah is love, and the first thing He gave of himself was light. What a Mighty One.

Taking it from the beginning will help shed some light into this experience of mine that amazes me every time I think about it. A story worth telling the youth for the sake of understanding some of the reasons why things are the way they are. From a child’s mind, in general, love was not in existence but mischief was rampant, vigilantly exercised, and had become our second nature. The vigilance was in picking out this one from among the rest. It was easy in that the difference was remarkably noticeable. With that said, I will tell all as I remember it. I will be very truthful in my accounts, knowing that sometimes memories could play tricks on oneself. Knowing that what I see or experience might be different from that of someone standing next to me.

I will, in my ability as a musician who has an inherent gift of retaining and selecting memories, use these gifts to an advantage. The recount should not be that stressful or difficult. I am going to depend on, trust the spirit of our ancestors, the Highest, angels, or whoever it is that oversees this remembrance and my desires to tell it, exposing my experiences, to work with me. I am looking forward to a full-throttle ride into space in this attempt.

I will explain the retaining memory that every musician has or should have. When you play in an ensemble, a group, or band setup, you will be needed to score your part of the instrument in the song; e.g., bass lines in a song or guitar or trumpet riffs. You score these lines in a thirty- or forty-song playlist for the band. You must retain your lines and keep the groove of the band intact during performances. The selective memory comes when you must listen to your lines alone in a bunch of many lines in a single song. If you do not train your selective ear, you will be wondering what note that was in that section of the music. Your hearing could be deceitful, whereby you think it is this note while it is that. When your mates must help you score your lines, that cheapens your musicianship.

Every aspiring musician adds selective listening to their arsenal. Bear with me that most of us musicians were not trained in fundamentals or theory of music, especially in Lagos at that time. The ones who could read and write music were in the army regiments. They did not mingle with the practicing city musician as they had a nine-to-five routine. I will take that back. Biddy Wright did play with us musicians in the city, and he was the only one I knew.

We played by ear, and that was particularly challenging. The challenge became the fun part of the game. We did not have equipment of our own as practicing musicians. We depended on the instruments belonging to the bandleader, who will have a scheduled time for rehearsals and show times. It is left to the musician with a limited time on his instrument to make his or her mind worth all the time spent in the rehearsal room. Be on alert with your part of the game.

Here, the retaining memory comes into play. It is a requirement in the practice of this trade. I have not even heard anyone who does not talk about it. It is our currency. Money in the bank. Have you heard of the word before? Yes, Jerri. And where? I am reading a book. Is it me making it up? No. Whatever it is, though, is all good. I do not think anything could have been better than starting from the top. Top and beginning are two different words with the same meaning. When we play in a band, we start every song from the top or the beginning. The drummer counts the beat, and the band goes to work. Looking at it from the other side of the street, the top sounds like the begin of beginning, and sometimes like the first stage of beginning. Whatever it is, it is the top, and we ought to start from there. Can you imagine telling it backward? How would you want to tell it backward? That will be crazy though.

To start from the beginning will be tedious work. It will entail going back to where it all started. Going back to the top, times when men were men who ran the house with love and pure understanding. He was the head of the household. A time when all things seemed equal even though they were not. Going back to the beginning will bring back memories that have haunted me all through my little time here.

Memories become your only asset to good or troubled times. They become what money cannot buy, which sometimes makes you happy or sad, according to your acts and behaviors with your family, friends, acquaintances, and oneself. Memories are the greatest and most treasured assets, accumulations a man can own. They become pleasing to the heart and produce joy and happiness as you trod along this lonely road. When they are not pleasing or joyful to the heart, they haunt you and bring pains and sorrows, tears and suffering that are not visible but internalized. It is not possible to see the wounds created in your memories. Some of these memories have led to depression, anxiety, and irritability, drunkenness and dependence on substances to dampen the pain that goes on in one’s heart.

The inability to concentrate on a single goal becomes noticeably clear in the everyday lives of a man with unpleasant memories. They are like the mirror that sees you as you are whenever you pass by. Looking into the mirror and all you see are memories of times that you have contributed joy or pain. Sometimes you look at the mirror and ask yourself, Why did I do that? And there will be no one to give you an answer except yourself, wondering and wishing it never happened.

Memories will eat you up as you waddle through your little time here on earth. My grandparents emphasized the principle of good memories as a guideline to living a righteous and healthy life. The heart should be alien to negatives. A clean heart devoid of hate toward anyone. Living a conscientious life, meaning that you are aware of yourself and the environment, having people who are compatible with your ideals and ideas. This lifestyle can bring pure understanding to you, which you can, in turn, share with your family, friends, and your surroundings.

Bad memories are haunting. They are bad. It is like watching a movie with a wicked human-eating witch doctor and his gang of twelve hunting, capturing, killing, roasting, and eating their victims in real time. You form bad memories in kids when you take them through life at an early age experiencing abuses that stemmed from your inadequacies and lack of wisdom and understanding.

The abuse of the custodians of liberty of helpless children and mothers is truly clear. There is no statute that protects this set of helpless individuals. The greed to get the good things in life, which in turn leaves you with less empathy for humankind, is very prevalent. Your excuses will always revolve around the family and kids. You are trying to save for the family and the future. You do not want your children to suffer. You go to all lengths to achieve this goal. Whatever it takes is what it will take.

The run for gold leaves the sight blind until the reward is received in the form of payments and the like. Greed devalues the vision. When the vision is devalued, the spiritual side of you goes with it. When the spiritual side dies, you become a walking zombie. Confusion and misplacement of priorities would take hold, and vanity becomes golden. While the kids are left wondering what is next, the mother will look into her husband’s eyes and see emptiness. The kids will inherit a lot of fraudulent goods and money that will not and cannot be used fruitfully. It is like castles built on sand, which end up in the sea eventually. I did not say that. One of our great musicians called Jimi Hendrix did. Isn’t that so true though? The quest for riches leaves the mother and kids looking at the door wondering when daddy’s coming home.

The spiritual side of the kid gets left out. Rarely is there any parental guidance on a committed scale because time will become a factor. The dad is not home on a regular basis that the kid needs, but there is plenty of money for the family to spend, with no spiritual guidance. The mother is left with no leadership and love and care. It is not in her place to lead the family. In all these undertakings, it will be difficult to see reason, especially if economics plays a part. She can be convinced that the absence of the head will produce the financial freedom that the family needs to join in the shuffle. She is the bearer, mother, and caretaker. Her place is to teach love and understanding to the young ones. Leaving her solely responsible for the running of the household is unreasonable.

The rush for gold will make a man change his policy and sell his dignity for a plate of rice If money can be made, how and who are the shareholders? The gang of men in power who have vowed to keep everyone in servitude. It is unbelievably true that a man will sell his integrity for a fee. Makes me wonder though, why? I, in my mind as a child, thought that these factors created the reasons why the country had no clue as to what independence should be. They might have gotten an idea about freedom and the wanting to be free from colonial heads, but they did not know what to do with this freedom in any form.

You can figure it out that the leaders were not in agreement as to the goals of the country from then onward. The misunderstanding was quickly laid out in the open within a couple of years after independence. The space that held the independence we had was left open to enemies who were assigned to tear the country down. The trouble started with our first electoral commission that did not know what democracy was. Tribal differences were clear in our first election, when there were protestors out on the streets in the west shouting Operation Wet Them. This operation was my first glimpse into what my memory will always live with.

The story that was told to us was that the election in the west was problematic and fraudulent. They said it started when Awolowo, who was the premier of the western region, ran for the presidency on a federal ticket. When he was running for this position, he had his deputy Samuel Akintola replace him as the premier. The election had Tafawa Balewa as the winner from the north. When Awolowo did not win on the federal level, he wanted his post as the premier of the western region back. Akintola would not relinquish the post. This misunderstanding in the west created a lot of tension and uncertainty across the nation. It was said that Akintola went to the northern leaders and looked for help in dealing with the opposing faction. It has been said that Akintola selling out to the north left the Yoruba nation indebted to the northern oligarchy. The followers of each faction took to the streets, and there was a lot of destruction to people and places. Within a space of a time, it became entangled with the Igbos. It came like a tsunami, and the whole place broke loose. It was told to us that Akintola’s agreement with the northern oligarchs came with a demand to oust the Igbos from the west as the north was getting ready to do the same to the Igbos in the north. There was no intention to avert the catastrophe that was befalling the country and its people. To have peace, the west demanded the ouster of the Igbo race. Before long, Operation Wet Them—which was a protest that took the region by storm, with burning and looting all around Lagos and the western region—escalated to having the Igbos in harm’s way.

There was burning and looting, there was killing of Igbo families across Lagos and beyond. It was bad as they became a target for the touts and rascals and thieves. You would see humans burning on the streets as if there was a fire festival. Igbos were slashed with machetes in various parts of the body and left to suffer and die, while people gathered around and cheered. Some Yoruba indigenes were singled out and dealt with according to the directives.

It all was centered on economics and who was in line for the benefits. Political? Yes, the fight to prove who was right among them was burning like wildfire, with a certain race as the victimized with no voice. Political? Yes, the relationship of the north and west was solidified on the ill treatment of the Igbos by the rest of the country. It got so bad in Lagos that my mother and junior brother had to leave to the east. Political? Yes. My father was in jail for speaking his mind. My father was visionary. He was spiritually gifted, and he could tell the future in his visions and dreams. He was an senior apostle in the Cherubim and Seraphim Church. He cured the sick and lame with fasting and prayers. He saw the whole trouble coming in his visions, and he told his congregation in his church. He was commanded in his vision to alert the authorities about the doom that was befalling the country. He went to Alak-Ara police station to report his findings but did not come back home. They had him locked up and demanded to know how he knew what he was telling them.

It was unbelievable and scary though. I had to go live with my uncle, Sgt. Adolphus Amadi, who was an orderly to the federal financial minister Chief Okotie-Boh at the Obalende Police Barracks. We waited for my father to come back home. Days turned into weeks and was getting to a month when they let him go and demanded that he left his native land.

Before long, hell broke loose, and fire was burning all through the nation. I had an eye injury from someone throwing the fireworks into the crowd while we were watching Samson and Delilah at Odeon, a cinema house in Ebute-Metta. I got the short end of the stick in that I was the one that got hurt. I ended up in the general hospital in Lagos. I do not remember how many days I was there for, but one morning army men with guns and well-fortified for battle stormed into the hospital and everyone was frightened to the bones. Within a space of a second, we heard that there was a coup and the army had taken over the government of Nigeria. It was unbelievable as we have not been in this position before. The music playing on the public radio in the hospital was military music all night into the day. It was the saddest music ever recorded.

I had a hospital mate who had eye problems too, and his name was Phillip. He was a lot older than me, and he did not know what a coup was. I know because I asked him, What’s a coup? Along the same story, we heard that a lot of the ministers, including Tafawa Balewa, were killed. I heard that Okotie Eboh was killed in the melee also. I cried with the pain and the thick bandage wrapped over my right eye. My uncle, as I said before, was an orderly of the minister of finance, who was Chief Okotie Eboh. From that moment on, we found out that the army was really running the affairs of the nation. State governors were appointed to each state, and they were all military men. The country was left speechless, confused, and totally in awe as these men carried out their authority with impunity.

Roadblocks were installed in every five-minute ride. Hardship and confusion engulfed and mesmerized everyone to inertia. Every able-thinking man or woman was relegated to quietness or you paid with the little freedom you thought you had. You will be relegated to nothingness in the presence of your children and wives. Within the wink of an eye, it was rumored that the northerners had descended on the Igbos with a lot of hate and greed. It was such that the defenseless Igbos were massacred in many, many thousands. The ones who were able to escape the massacre were chopped with cutlass and some beaten to a pulp. The massive deportation of the Igbos back to their ancestral homes was wicked and mischievous. It was a deliberate act of injustice against a hated people. It was a holocaust.

This act against the Igbos was a continuation of the disruptions that happened in Yoruba land, where the Igbos were singled out for a kill. The west had a slogan for it, but the north had a better plan to deal with the situation. It was going to be a mass eradication of this said tribe. The military that was in power stood by while the mayhem was going on. The return of the Igbos was like a human deluge, and that was what it appeared to be and was. It was cruelty in the highest form, and it belittled humanity in general.

The military got the chance to run the country’s economy. Large sums of money were distributed to the battalion heads to do as they pleased. They had the freedom never seen in our experience as Nigerians. I will think that this power, which was absolute, corrupted every one of them absolutely. It was not long before it became clear. Greed, corruption, and nepotism, coupled with coups and coups, empowered the military men and their supporters to engage a part of the country in a forced confused state that led to the rumors of war. A war that was shoved down the throat of the oppressed. A playbook of how the mischief that engulfed man from time immemorial was repeating itself in real time. An imposition of one opinion over the other. An imposition of one religion over another. An imposition after the persecution and massacre of a helpless people.

This mischief created a deep urgency in the camp of the oppressed. The attempt to protect the children, women, and everything that hath breath produced a strategy for defense. This strategy for defense was hurriedly put together, and that diminished its value. It was so much devalued that kids were considered for battle. It was such that a kid had to enroll for the war that was coming to his neighborhood very soon. It was made worse when one Katsina promised to run through the eastern part of Nigeria in two days. The able-bodied men had been maimed and left for failure. The only logical thing to do was to enlist the younger generation, regardless of their age. Are you a man? Let us go. Conscription became a motto everyone lived by. The army trucks would ride through the villages and pick up able-bodied young kids playing in the yard.

My grandmother almost lost her life when army men came to the village to recruit. She was relentless and truly was ready to give her life to protect all the youth in the village. She did not think any of us were old enough for combat. Heaven came down when the military men trying to take my senior brother with them confronted a grandmother who was ready to die for her children. The lieutenant who led the military men decided to leave out of respect to my grandmother.

Taking a kid through war and making him a child soldier is criminal in all understanding. It devalues the quality of a man. It replaces love with hate. Hate, which will be more accessible, guarantees the survival of the fittest at all cost. It was a dog-devour-dog formula that enriched the privileged regardless of their capabilities. This method diminishes progress when the youth fight for a reason unknown to them. It degraded the quality of life and turned its citizens into fraudsters, criminals, and an unemployment-infested government that could not pay her workers. Tribalism, nepotism, and all the like became our leaders’ second nature. What made it more interesting and fun for the head was that there were a people to experiment the mischief on. All of these put together made the kid inspired and ready to defend his motherland, mother, sisters, and everything around the village.

Remember, these are individual experiences and encounters that might be different from yours. They are, to the best of my knowledge, the full-length version of a song that will never end. A country with less love for her people and no respect for common, everyday necessities. A country with fifty-plus years of independence but less than twenty years of a democratic rule. What happened in between? The military saw the need to rule the people without the knowledge of being rulers. They had guns, and that was power. The power must be exercised and experimented with. It is a place that requires no permission or elections to rule. Sometimes the ranks ran over themselves for the attention to rule. It did not matter, for who has the guns pays the piper.

That was when Nigeria got raped and sodomized, left in the rain to dry. A set of people with guns and ammunition terrorized and bullied the people to submission. They had their boots planted on everyone’s throat forcefully. Looted the treasury, and the people were forced to pay the head with loyalty, obedience, and a plate of trust for the rescue of one race from the other. Some of them retired from the gun and were now using the money stolen from the treasury to run in a democratic setting. There was no rule laid out against such practice.

The atrocities they committed were not considered in any setting. It was as if it never happened. It never really did happen as some of the perpetrators and commanders of these atrocities were still very visible in the everyday affairs of the nation, even after all these years of atrocities, in all areas of human endeavor. They are winning the elections too. The people are still scared, or the loot is buying their integrity and mocking their women and strength. The man sold himself, not for the benefit of anyone, but to be seen in the middle of the congregation. When he is in the middle, it will be very scary to hold on to an idea that is not on the platform. He is scared to challenge authority. Everything evil or mischievous activities against the people will go unchallenged. The systemic tribalism and inherent nepotism made it even harder to imagine. It would be unfair to place the woman in this same category with the man, who is the head of the household. The woman follows his lead, and the family was always her primary goal. The safety of the children, the roof over their heads, and a plate of food on their side of the bed.

Looking at things in hindsight, it seems like the scar is still fresh and nobody wants to repeat the wounds. It is skin-deep and painful to the bone. Speaking out is suicidal. The system is set. It is oligarchic in practice, democratic on paper, mingled with tribalism and nepotism, shoved down the people’s throats as an equal-opportunity system where one is favored over order, even in the federal government and state-level appointments and assignments.

A particular race of people has been named and marked to pay a price for the sins of their fathers. Sometimes you wonder what must have created the hate and distention that a set of people has been relegated to bear. Looking deeper, it seemed like this set of people was created to serve, and there could be no way out of this slavery.

The first republic stood on a stand. She was able to strive without the economic boom. There were wise men who sought independence for the nation at their preliminary stages in life. They were delegates, and each of them had the needs and love of their people in their agenda. Some of them introduced free education to their states. It was progressive, with flaws that could have been corrected with time. The fight for independence was a great idea, but it lacked a common goal for the nation. Each of the leaders looked for benefits for their race but lacked the collective-bargaining agenda. I think that each of the representatives went out seeking independence for their region. It was clear that the free education that was needed across the country was only practiced in the western region. There was no collective