On the toxic atmosphere

It is a pity that we have normalised branding people the moment they criticise the APC government. That bad habit of hurling insults rather than addressing the points raised will stay with us for another two generations at the minimum.

I’ll tell a little story, rehash the history many of us know…

On 8 February 2015, I made the decision to vote for Muhammadu Buhari, and I published a piece about it the next day. A few days later, I was a part of the campaign trail, and I ended up addressing the APC Youth Summit in Abuja on 21 March 2015, a week before the election.

One thing I have always done, until recently that is, is wear my heart on my sleeve, and so it was with the Buhari campaign. I went all in. Another thing I have always done is to be critical of the government in power, thus it was that my voting record since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999 is Obasanajo, Gani, (not in the country in 2007), Ribadu, Buhari. This year, the nature of my work meant that I was not in Lagos for the election, else I’d have voted Atiku. I consider it nothing personal, Buhari has been a bad President and has no business having a second term.

My very first criticism of Buhari as Nigeria’s President came even before he was sworn in. A full month to be precise, when on 27 April 2015, Garba Shehu announced a ban on AIT for a bad documentary that they did before the election. I and Gbenga Sesan, who had both campaigned for Buhari a month before, criticised the decision, saying that there was a due process that ought to have been followed.

What shocked me was that as soon as that criticism was made, about the same time, a group of APC supporters on social media, while simultaneously trying to explain why the decision was the correct one to Gbenga, dismissed my statements as those of a bigot, which were borne out of hatred for the person of Buhari. This was a month after I had been their comrade in the campaign, and a month before he was sworn in.

Forward the hands of the clock seven months, and with no cabinet in place, I voiced criticism, and again was called an ethnic bigot and hater, and this time, for the first time in my life, a Biafran separatist. A month after that when the IPOB leader was arrested, and I criticised the nature of the arrest, I was again called a Biafran, and other choice names.

There is no need rehashing all of the ethnically motivated insults I received, but in the Igbo language, my name, Cheta means “remember” and trust me, I remember each one of them. One thing became quickly clear to me that the word “bigot” for these people, was reserved for people of Igbo origin, including those who had been friendly with them in the past but then dared to be critical. I made this observation publicly in 2017 as gradually many of those from the lower Niger, who had supported Buhari in 2015 (or at least did not support GEJ), began to call out his misrule, as is our right.

This is where it gets scary…

The same set of people have now normalised the use of insults in all arguments. This normalisation is a gradual process of othering, of painting people from a particular ethnic group, my ethnic group, as others. It has crept into real life, witness the threats being made against Igbos multiple times over the last four years, not one has been dealt with. Witness the circulation of an image which tried to claim that INEC staff and civil society actors of Igbo origin were trying to sabotage the 2019 elections because “they all have Biafran sympathies.”

This was analysed well by Chidi Odinkalu and Nana Nwachukwu, I recommend you read it.

In my view, and I think this is a fact, all of this Igbo baiting, or Igbo slurring, is a strategy to deflect from the woeful performance of this government. It’s a tested and trusted tactic throughout history, that when a government is doing badly, pick the other, and make the conversation about them so that people can (temporarily) forget their woes and look for that other to punish.

The people I pity the most really, are those people of Igbo stock who think that by trying very hard to appear “detribalised”, or “pan Nigerian” or whatever else it is, that when the whistle blows, you’ll be safe.

My name is Cheta kwa na Chukwu nomu nso. It means something in the Igbo language. It is also a marker. I have four identities — Anioma, Igbo, Nigerian, African. Of these four, there are two which will follow me anywhere I go — Igbo and African. The other two, depending on political and even personal realities, could be exchanged for something else.

I’ll leave this with what Ilemona Onoja said at the first edition of the Nigeria Satire Festival to a friend of Anioma Igbo stock — “Bro, one thing I can promise that Nigeria will not fail at, is that one day, it will tell you who you are.”