NEVER HAVE I EVER OBEYED THE CLARION CALL

A scattered recollection of events and thoughts.

A Picture You Can Smell: A Dream. 

A picture etched in memory.

A replay of twenty-one days of my life.

A moving body of whites, you could almost get dizzy watching. 

A cacophony of sweet and musky scents and stink.  

An uncoordinated movement of people wearing the stench of the day before and people who have washed it off after a long queue in the bathroom. 

The rooms smell like sweat and vanilla. Oud and wet clothes. Urine and detergent. The character of this place is flawed, unassuming, and cannot be shaken off. 

Here, the khaki is supreme. 

Welcome Address: How to be Grateful for the Little Things of Life 

“Is water running in the bathroom?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God.”

How have we been conditioned to expect so little? Am I complainer or I just expect too much?

Welcome to Nigeria. Anything can happen here. Planning surprises is bad business. The president is a master strategist. He pulls surprises all the time.  

Welcome to Nigeria. Water does not run in the bathrooms. When they do, it is a privilege. 

Now take a seat. A woman with red lipstick will attend to you soon. You will need twenty-three copies of this, fifty-five copies of that, eighty-eight passport photographs. A file will be provided for you. Arrange them all neatly. You know how systems sometimes crash and malfunction, and paper never burns.  

Welcome to Nigeria. There is a heat wave. Here is a solution —Let’s keep printing all that is already stored on the internet. We might do something about the climate change. Do you want to join the SDGs group, fight poverty while poor? Now print that form and attach another passport photograph to it. Make sure you make photocopies. 

Welcome to Nigeria. Your file is arranged? Now proceed to that tent, and join the queue. You will be assigned your uniforms at random. But….. The sizes you picked on the internet don’t matter. We prefer the anyhowness of random distribution. The seams might be falling apart, but it is normal. Even Nigeria is falling apart.

Welcome to Nigeria. The minister is visiting soon. Please take your clothes off the line. They might offend his senses. Also, be prepared. You will be dancing on his arrival. 

Welcome to Nigeria. Bed and breakfast has been provided. Here is some salt. You can sprinkle some on your way out. 

Welcome to Nigeria. Shame is a foreign idea. The ability to adapt, our biggest flaw. 

At what point did you figure out what exactly all this is about?

Do you still say Up Nepa? A Preamble 

One of the first things you learn to scream as a Nigerian child is “up NEPA". It is your first introduction to the dysfunction that is the Nigerian society. With those words, you learn how to exist in spite of trauma, to find joy amidst a kind of chaos that exists nowhere else. You learn to let go of the anger that you should rightly feel. You learn to live with little inconveniences.

You grow up to become a teenager. If you fall within a certain socio-economic class, you learn to live with bigger inconveniences. You learn to walk without falling into poverty’s trap. To aspire to a life you can only aspire to. 

You go to university. You learn to live with weaponised incompetence. Now, this is where your training solidifies itself. Where your cynicism calcifies, and you learn to stop hoping. This is where you learn to live for thyself. It is where you learn that self-development is the antonym of national development. 

In the university, civic education is no longer taught, and you forget that the eagle means strength because you are tired all the time. The crowned crane is an endangered species, being hunted for meat. The horses have fallen from hunger. The black shield takes on a whole new meaning; it is the darkened blood of all your fallen comrades. It is fertile soil manured by bodies butchered by AK47-wielding herdsmen. You find it hard to distinguish between costus spectabilis and the evil cactus that cuts till you bleed. The flag remains splattered with the blood of those who stayed in their houses and still twisted their necks. You brave the hurdle that higher education is. And then your country comes to make its demand. Now Your Suffering Continues……. 

What exactly is left to serve?

Part 2: The Last Bar of Patriotism (This One is About Me) 

Patriotism /ˈpeɪtrɪətɪz(ə)m/

the quality of being patriotic; devotion to and vigorous support for one's country.

I used to deceive myself into thinking I was a very patriotic Nigerian. You cannot blame me. I am very protective of all things Nigerian. While I am cynical and detached about most things, Nigeria is the one thing I could never be indifferent about. My ability to exist as part of something means so much to me that I almost always forget to stop and acknowledge how broken this thing really is. 

Unfortunately, in the last month or so, I have learned to admit that I already used up or currently using my last bar of patriotism, and what I feel mostly, is anger. Anger at dysfunction and anyhowness. Anger at the game that is “the game”. Anger Intense jealousy at nepotism. Anger at privileges that are not earned. Anger at the disintegration of a society that spits in the face of meritocracy. Now, the question I need to answer is: Can my anger get as much done as patriotism? Is my anger even useful to anyone, myself included?

A week before I was called to serve my fatherland, I read a thread on Twitter written by a senior colleague who was beaten and tortured by immigration officers for daring to film the harassment and battering of a mentally unstable woman. I remember reading that thread and immediately feeling fear that I might do something in camp that would get me beaten by soldiers. 

Now, soldiers are not allowed to go corporal on corp members. Yet, I was scared I would get beaten up by someone in uniform. There were no immediate reasons to nurse that fear, but I had it anyway. That fear is a fundamental issue that I cannot shake. An identity that I cannot rid myself of. I am Nigerian. Anything can happen here. Even if I choose to become more demure and agreeable than I already am in this lifetime, I will still always fear a man in uniform.   

Camp is supposed to inspire some sense of pride and patriotism in you, Yet I felt nothing. How could I feel nothing when everything stops for the flag to be lowered at exactly 6 pm every day? How could I not watch in awe as soldiers who have sworn to die for this country at any moment’s notice carried on with life as though their lives belonged to them? How could I stand at attention every day and pledge my devotion to…..nothing? How can I swear to die for this country when my five year plan already includes an escape plan….just in case? Why am I only begrudgingly just adjusting to the idea of a year of community service and devotion to the only place on earth I can lay claim to?

I watch daily as men who have moved their lives at short notice over and over again to accommodate whatever the country needs and expect no tangible reward in return happily perform the rituals of patriotism. Watch as they enforce the rules of external attachment to the entity called Nigeria. At ease! Attention! But we all know that soldier goes, soldier comes. Has it ever paid off? 

What is Patriotism really? It is an aberration of our collective existence as a people, an accusation of futility on our democracy.  It is ……… something I try really hard to summon. I hope it hears my call.

People Watching and Professional Eavesdropping: The Most Exhausting Sport I Ever Played

All I went to do in camp was people-watching. If this was a movie, I would have had some binoculars and be eating food from cardboard while I watched other people. I had no binoculars, so I guess I didn’t see too far.

I didn’t socialise a lot but I watched people socialise a lot. Mostly because I was often too tired to socialise, but also because I wanted to take notes and come back here to tell you how Nigerian youths are behaving outside. Note that my status as an observer was threatened after about two weeks. It is very hard to stay unnoticed if you are pretty and have purple hair. Something about the Bọ́ládalẹ́ genes keeps the bees swarming. Where was I? Yes! The things I observed..

I observed many things, but these stood out for me: 

1. Many Nigerians have no idea how the justice system works

2. Nigerian married women have bad behaviour (this is purely a bad belle thing)

3. Many Nigerian men still view women as products with diminishing value

4. Girls have a weird relationship with Mami market

5. We are a people obsessed with the idea of class

I listened in on a conversation a group of corp members were having with some Man ‘O War official. I don’t know who appointed the Man O’ War official as the authority on legal affairs but somehow, everybody else was listening to him and he was saying some rubbish and very confidently at that. After listening for about thirty minutes, I began to question everything I learned in Professor Adedeji’s Law of Evidence class. Did I learn this thing well? 

And that was when it clocked, most of this man’s authority came from the popular TV series Suits. He watched all the episodes of Suits and deemed himself a legal juggernaut, and in the manner of most Nigerians (insert men), he forgot to look for context and just assumed that Suits was a perfect representation of what goes on in the courtroom.

Someone really needs to make a Suits for Nigerians. No, it can’t be me. Forget what I said earlier, I did not learn a lot in my Law of Evidence class. My lecturer was too busy showing off his versatility and knowledge of cars and guns to teach me the principles properly.

Now to the thing I really wanted to talk about, Nigerian married women. I feel the need to start this paragraph with a disclaimer that I am a supporter of women’s rights but I won’t. Afterall, I am a muslim woman who claims to be feminist. My hypocrisy is already a known fact. 

There seemed to be a scarcity of married women in camp and this was intentional. On the day I resumed camp, married women were told to complete their registrations and head back home. Officially, I do not know what the reason for this rule was. Unofficially, however, it was said that it was to prevent them from “messing up”(This is rumour, but we will address it like it is true because everyone seemed to take it as a reasonable excuse). Now let’s talk about the absurdity of this on multiple levels:

• Married men were not asked to go back home so they wouldn't “mess up”, even though statistically, married men are more likely to step out of their marriages. 

• Something about this policy also screams “your place is at home”. It was tantamount to saying to women “you have gone to school and graduated but you know what, we would still treat you like things without a true sense of self-regulation and agency”. 

  Also, who is going to cook for the man-child you have married if you are here? 

• The choice was taken away from these women as to whether they wanted to have the experience or not. There were married women who really wanted to be in camp, a questionable choice in my opinion, but who am I to decide for them and who is the institution to decide for them? Women who are married are suddenly placed on a moral pedestal that other women are not subjected to, reinforcing a form of superiority that only serves to weaponise marriage as an institution. 

Now, this is purely my bad mind speaking. But you should have seen some of these married women waltzing into camp. The air of superiority was as palpable as it was irritating. Is it the ones who start every sentence with “I am married, I cannot…..”. Or the ones that are looking for PPAs but cannot view opportunities that are not for them and just pass. Or the ones who wave their left hands to show their ring in response to “Aunty, you want passport”. Errrrrrhhhnnn pele oo iyawo pablo🤡. Nonsense and ingredients.

Let’s talk about patriarchy that is not institutionalised. About the many Nigerian men who still view women as products with diminishing value. 

Usually, during lectures, I sit where I can easily exit from, plug in my earbuds, and then try to train my mind to grasp both the way to hold a clipper to achieve a skin cut and the state of the world’s health. I always fail at both. Sleep wins most of the time. And then when I wake up, a cloud of clarity envelops me and I am able to listen in on multiple conversations at the same time. 

If you have ever been in a military barracks or a paramilitary setting, you would understand that pidgin English is the lingua franca. So you would understand why “I chop am” would be the choice of words for a man wanting to express that he has been able to kiss and touch a girl’s breasts. (As far as I observed, sex was off-limits). 

So this brother with questionable intelligence boasts to his friend 

“I chop am”

To which his fellow responded:

“The Babe wey I dey reason just dey do somehow. Babe wey they don chop chop chop. Make me I con dey buy am mami”

You mean for every time she has sexual intercourse, she somehow reduces? Wow. I need to keep a tab on my body count before it gets out of hand. 

On the one hand, while we must blame boys for seeing girls as a commodity with diminishing value, we also need to admit that there is an offer being made. This offer can take on different forms, but in Dogara’s custody it looks something like this: My company in this crazy place in exchange for lunch or dinner. Deal or no deal? 

A Class of Poor People.

Yes. I have an Iphone and I wear an Iwatch. But I cannot pay rent and I cannot feed myself. I am not the connection you are looking to make. Sorry bro. If you had asked the right questions, you would have figured it out. Good luck to you on your social climbing though.  

Epilogue: A Recharge on Patriotism

If you have been getting the vibe that I maybe did not like camp, you are right. 

Unreasonable vendors. Which one is an apple is 500 naira? Why is printing 250 naira per page? Why is gala 250naira?

Infantilisation of adults. Could you maybe say excuse me instead of screaming. The fact that I am here means I am an adult. Learn some manners maybe?

The facilities. Is it possible for buildings to get gangrene? 

The overcrowding. The air is still.

The annoying sense of accomplishment at providing the bare minimum…..Which one is we decided to be innovative and brought fan?

21 days later, they preached, we listened. Start a business. Do not japa. If you must, do not go on ships or through deserts. Now, take this #6400, your bicycles needs to be oiled. Report for your primary assignment immediately and yet another drama unfolds……….

Àlàkẹ́ Akọ̀wékọwúrà🍒