Hey! Ride with me to Maiduguri the beautiful. A land that was once dubbed Home of Peace and Tranquility. Home for the Kanuris and a diversity of tribes. A commercial centre which borders other countries such as Chad, Niger and Cameroon. Maiduguri – a land that has drawn the attention from many angles for the callous rave of the violent Boko Haram sect, which almost numbed the city.
The insurgency has now gained wide unpopularity among right-thinking Nigerians at home and in the diaspora as Fox News reported that the sect has driven some three million people from their homes. According to the Nigerian Social Violence Dataset, Boko Haram-related violence is the most lethal conflict that the Nigerian state has ever confronted for decades.
Data available also revealed that since 1998, at least 29,600 Nigerians have been killed in more than 2,300 incidents, reflecting a wide range of ethnic, religious, political and economic tensions across large portions of the country. Since 2009, when the Boko Haram insurgency escalated, at least 11,100 have died on all sides of the conflict. This accounts for almost 40 per cent of total deaths, more than any other source of social violence.
As we keep counting the losses, a new dataset compiled at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies that tracks social conflict in Nigeria, offers perspectives that the insurgency by the Boko Haram sect is extremely deadly. And in the mix of these, a reverend father, Stephen Davies, accused former Chief of Army Staff, Azubike Ihejirika, of being a co-sponsor of the deadly sect.
However, right in the midst of all these, people still live, work, eat, marry and school in Maiduguri. In other words, life pattern has not really been altered in the city except that one has to go to bed early. Well, this could be for a person who has been in the city for years and is inured to the conflict.
What about students in the University of Maiduguri? I mean the ones who travelled in from other states and have never experienced the tension and pressure like that in Maiduguri. Honestly, the pressure starts right from home – (prospective) students are told tales of horror that the roads leading are deadlier than the city itself; that the insurgents will possible waylay them on the way and butcher them; that they will possible end up spending the night in some forest away from any town. Such are the kind of things people out there say.
Now, the child is brave enough to board a vehicle and the journey begins. Frankly, many a student will want to turn back because of the many checkpoints with long queues which one may have to wait for hours before one passes. Jeez! So, tiring. Nevertheless, it’s worth the stress. But, the student also knows that if the driver cannot make it into Maiduguri by 6pm, story go change.
Congrats Johnny! You just arrived UNIMAID and you yourself a place to lay your tired head. You should expect some calmness – oh! You do expect some calmness. At least, finally, you made it; you arrived. And just before you swallow your third morsel of eba and egusi at Mama Aisha Restaurant – Boom! Doom! What was that man? Let’s be frank, you can’t swallow that morsel again, just pay the bill, go pack your things in case you have to run. And these kind of things keep happening – it becomes a routine.
By day, friends spread dangerous rumors of Boko Haram activities and how much they have threatened to attack the school. Now you live in total fear and cannot concentrate. Surprisingly, lecturers are indifferent and the standard of questioning and assessment does not change. You have not studied well and now, right in the exam hall … there it goes again Boooooommmm. Chai!
Well, reader, that’s a fragment of the big picture of the life of a student of the University of Maiduguri. Have you ever been caught between the devil and the deep blue sea? You don’t want to picture yourself studying under such conditions. Insecurity plus university education equals pressure cooking, not schooling at all.
Even Yagana Mohammed, a second year student of the Department of English Language who lives off-campus said coping with insecurity is painstaking due to lack of trust from everyone and harassment these includes both drivers and passengers because no one knows who the suicide bomber might be also when coming in to school we are subjected to thorough searching even from male securities and we are not allowed to go into school with our bags and cars thereby making us carry heavy textbooks in our hands around school which is very tedious.
Sana Mohammed, a Part 3 student of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, living on campus said: “I don’t go out to study in class any longer because I am tired of running back to the hostel bare-footed. Seriously it’s not funny oh; when I hear sounds of grenades, machine guns, armoured tanks and rocket launchers, it’s just like am at a scene of action movie, kai!”
And now, I sing along with Abubakar Othman’s “Yerwa the Bubbling Metropolis of Peace”:
Kilewa sile earth bound by common humanity,
Salaam, shalom, now a necropolis of restless dead,
A blood soaked city of corpses,
The welcoming beauty of yerwa wushe kendiro,
Now assumes a diabolical ugliness –
Charred and blackened skeletons of vehicles and trees adorn the city streets,
Derelict houses stand despondent in tall grasses and
Thorns bullet-riddled stores and
Shops stand yawing with emptiness,
Burnt mosques, churches and schools crouched,
Astounding in ashes waking up slumbering memories,
Of what was once a bubbling city of peace, commerce and scholarship ilmum tunoto.
It’s time for the government to realize that without life nothing can be done. It is true that the Nigerian Army is making a head way with the insurgency but I hope this is not backed by politics. I just hope things will not roll back to their original positions after the elections. I hope the relative peace enjoyed so far will be permanent.
This is not an attempt to vilify anyone – just trying to let the government know that the fate which befell the Chibok girls does not have to befall us over here too. Because, as it is, we are all still scared over here and we need lasting peace and some stern assurances.
Also, reopening the international airport in Maiduguri will be one of the most loft ideas in many months (all things being equal). Seriously, this is more than we bargained for. This is not schooling; it is pressure cooking.
Hope Chizoba Nwankwo is a 300 level student of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri.