FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR FELLOW NIGERIANS

FROM BELLO SALEH, PhD, X BLOG.

Yesterday, I took a short 20 minutes drive on an untarred and ungraded road from Sokoto to our village to visit my maternal relations who live and farm on the Fadama wetlands on the eastern banks of River Sokoto, as I have done almost every time I visit Sokoto from wherever. I have made that pilgrimage ever since I was an infant strapped on my mother’s back.

As I had not visited since the Covid-19 lockdown, it was great to see my uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews. We arrived in the late afternoon as the men-folks were returning from their farms.

Not much has changed, the village seems frozen in time – apart from the loss of some really old great-uncles and great-aunts that have departed; and may Allah (SWT) forgive their shortcomings. Some cousins and uncles, too, have chosen not to return home for this dry-season farming but remain in the various towns and cities they presently are to continue their petty trade and menial labour.

The kids still are still unkempt – with bare-feet caked red with week-old layers of laterite dust; the roofs on the mud huts are still thatched; the local primary school still has its roof blown off as it has been for the past ten years. The two classes of the school have not seen a single pupil for decade.

But more importantly, the people are neither demanding nor in want of anything material. The only thing requested of me during the visit was to provide two oof-the-shelf solar lights for the local qur’anic school.

ALL the hands I shook are still cracked and calloused from working the land – as they have been the last time I shook them five years ago. The toothy smiles revealed teeth that are coloured or missing and, save for a few young nephews in knock-off jeans and over-designed T-shirts, everyone was wearing their dirty browned-out farm clothes.

Not one person has an email address or heard of social media. Not one finger there has ever caressed a keyboard. Trump, Tinubu and Starmer are as alien to them as Rapunzel is to us. And APC, PDP and ANPP are all but remnants of a faded out poster hammered on the wall of someone’s mud hut.

But, despite having little money to go around, no one in the village is hungry.

If they have nothing, they have food. Lots of it. Enough to give away to, apparently well-fed and rotund, relations visiting from the city. Despite my protestations, my relations, generous as ever, – stuffed the car boot with carrots, peppers, onions and other produce from their seasonal irrigation efforts. Every uncle and nephew had a small bag of something for me to take back home to madam.

As I drove away, my car silhouetted by the setting sun and leaving behind a trail of reddish laterite dust-cloud, I reflected on this; my small village, a walking distance from Sokoto city centre, is no different from the thousands of villages like scattered all over Nigeria, and Africa. These are hardworking folks whose lives and needs are simple in the true meaning of the word, but whose labour fed and will continue to feed the nation. They are mostly hidden from the mainstream until they are displaced to the towns and cities by insecurity. They hardly venture out except on market days when they go into the nearby cities, towns or bigger villages to sell their produce and replenish their supplies. They are contented with their lot and make no demands of the authorities, save to be left alone to live out their existence, as almost every interaction they have with authority or the elite-class is a one-way exploitative transaction that leaves them worse off.

These are the people we, the educated elites, the politicians, the intellectuals, governments of every level and stripe, are failing. These are the multitudes that make up over 70% of #Arewa. We must be all delusional to think the north will get anywhere if these many are stuck in the state they are in.

These are the people from whom the so-called electoral power of the north stem from – these are the people that have seen no gain (but pain) of that power.

These communities, in spite of all their contributions to the country over the years, are under-resourced and only visited when politicians are after their votes. – sometimes even that is not necessary as the ‘votes can be cast for them’ remotely. The same politicians that, when in government, won’t find the will or inclination to provide them with security, healthcare, education and any support they may need to enhance their productivity.

This is #Arewa, This is #Nigeria, This is #Africa.

There has to be another way.