by Anayo Dioha
Here, you hardly distinguish the hangman
from his victim. It’s like having red Roses
and Ranunculuses thrive in the same garden;
both capable of smothering life, one much
renowned, the other, unknown, as potent,
as lethal. How the conversation always
metamorphosed from a failed public
process and a couple of dashed personal
hopes to who’s from where? has always
been the bone which these unscrupulous
termites continue to wittingly crunch.
For a courageous truth, there stands in
repel, a garrison of a hundred thousand
armed-to-the-brain blindfolded Tribal
Security Watch. The wool of patriotism
has grown so lean it can’t warm off the
blizzards of ethnocentricism, and a
country’s heart beats rapidly from a
race towards an ever-hungry grave.
Author’s Note: Nigeria is a country which has hugely fragmented, over the years, across certain sentimental lines among which is ethnicity. There are over three hundred and fifty (350) ethnic groups in Nigeria, although the most prominent are Hausa/Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba. It has become a norm that serious issues of national importance often lose their grit in the cloud of such societal sentiments as tribalism or ethnicity. And this is what is witnessed in the responses following the 2023 presidential election in the country, which has been widely criticized by observers as heavily flawed with electoral malpractices. The major candidates at that election are Atiku Abubakar (Hausa/Fulani) of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Obi (Igbo) of the Labour Party (LP) and Bola Tinubu (Yoruba) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the declared winner. However, most Nigerians believe Obi won at the polls. Chimamanda Adichie (Igbo) wrote in The Atlantic with respect to the perception felt about the process of the election in general and not necessarily because of the candidacy of Obi. But this soon spiraled into a squabble about the tribes, as Wole Soyinka (Yoruba) also granted an interview where he gave his candid opinions regarding the process and conducts of the key players. Things degenerated with some figures in Lagos—a city in western Nigeria dominated by the Yorubas—declaring, with threats of violence—some of which were actually mated—that Igbo residents in the city should go back to their home towns mostly in the south-eastern part of the country. The use of “obidiots” by the responder in the tweet headlining this poem is an incendiary reference to the self-styled supporters of the Peter Obi presidential campaign, the Obi-dients.
Anayo Dioha is a Nigerian Igbo-born writer and lawyer whose work is forthcoming in Queens Quarterly. He is currently a PhD researcher at the Odumegwu Ojukwu University. He spends most mornings counting squirrels and reveling in the tunes of waxbills.