Tunde Odesola
The Amadi Amuda family house was a little hut built on poverty. That was the period when poverty was the oxygen available to the family with a runny nose and a prostrate kwashiorkor belly rising and falling, and rising and falling like a billow obeying the dexterity of the ironsmith. But time, life’s most precious resource, had chained down the family’s abject poverty, providing for their lack and feeding their needs. In the absence of money, poverty, however, resurrects quickly. Today, the family’s poverty is resurging, threatening to break loose because the fund used to keep it at bay is ceasing. The fund comes from their son, Emma, who lives in South Africa.
It was a sad Amadi that called unto his wife, Eni, and their lastborn, Ami, from where he sat in their uncarpeted living room. Both Eni and Ami came to the sitting room from the backyard, where they were enjoying the evening breeze – the heat inside the house was much for there had been no electricity supply for 13 weeks running.
“Sit down,” Amadi waved his wife to the threadbare seat by his right side. He also told Ami, their 22-year-old son, to sit on a wooden stool opposite him. “I want us to write an urgent letter to Emma in South Africa as a result of the xenophobic attack…” His wife cuts in: “Letter!? Hia!! When is the letter going to leave Nigeria, let alone get to South Africa? Abeg, let’s call him! “Call him?” Amadi asked, adding, “Where’s the money we’re going to use to call him?” Eni untied the knotted tip of her wrapper, fetching some crumpled rand and naira notes. Amadi sighed, “I thought you didn’t have any money.” “Did you ask?” his wife shot back as she gave Ami some money to go and buy telephone recharge card.
Amadi: But I was complaining of needing some change to go out with my friend, John, who came visiting in the afternoon. You know the police haven’t paid my pension since…
Eni: So that he can take you out to those small girls or your ‘tombo’ joint, abi? Or you think I didn’t hear when he whispered to you that Ugo is back from Lagos?
Amadi: Whispered to me? Is Ugo not a man’s name?
Eni: It’s also a girl’s name and I know the girl!
Ami comes in with the recharge card, so the couple stopped their question-and-answer session. Amadi clears his throat; secretly thankful for the respite the recharge card brought and he wears his authoritative air again. “Load the card,” he told Ami, giving him his phone. Ami loads the card and asks his father if he should call Emma. “Call him and put him on speaker,” Amadi said.
“Hello, dad,” Emma said from the other end, breathing heavily.
Amadi: Ha! Why are you breathing like this? Are they pursuing you?
Emma: “They’re not pursuing me right now. I’m only running up the walkway to my apartment. I need to get my certificates, pack my valuables and disappear until this madness subsides…
Eni: (Cuts in) But you said your area is relatively safe. Is it no longer safe? Please, return home to Nigeria if your life is in danger o.
Emma: Yes, it’s safe but…
Amadi: But what? What’s happening, Emma?
Emma: The violence is spreading! One cannot tell!
Eni: Haa! Upon all what Nigeria and the rest of Africa did to pull South Africa out from the furnace of apartheid? These people are ungrateful o…
Ami cuts in: “Broda, find a safe place to hide till the attack subsides, don’t come back o. Xenophobia in South Africa is occasional, massesphobia in Nigeria is a state policy sustained by government insensitivity, non-creativity and corruption.
Emma: You mean I shouldn’t come back home, Ami?
Ami: Broda, what are you coming home to?
Emma: You tell me, you’re the one in Nigeria.
Ami: Well, the circumstances that made you flee through land borders to South Africa via Cameroon to Gabon, Angola, Namibia, then to Cape Town have worsened.
Emma: But President Muhammadu Buhari has promised to evacuate and possibly resettle those willing to return to Nigeria. He even vowed that Nigeria will defend her citizens.
Ami: Resettle? That would be after they resettle Fulani cows across Nigeria. It’s turn by turn; this government is meticulous. I think they’ll build resettlement camps for you evacuees, too, like they built for internally displaced persons. Yours would be called externally displaced persons’ camp.
Emma: I don’t need their camp. I need a job.
Amadi: Job? You mean Job in the Bible? It’s easier to overcome the tribulations of Job than to get a job in Nigeria o, my son.
Emma: What if I raise some money and come back to run a transport outfit or a small water-producing factory or a school?
Eni: Emma, my son, you know I’ll tell you the truth. Except you have a generator that runs on air, don’t contemplate coming to establish anything that would depend on government electricity, even Azo Rock runs on generators. Except the vehicles you’re bringing in for transportation won’t run on land, perish the transportation business thought. You must have heard that Shoprite was attacked in Lagos to protest the xenophobic attack; do you know that all the goods in Shoprite were looted except the books? Reading is dead in Nigeria. Education is doomed.
Emma: Has Nigeria become that terrible?
Eni: It’s yahoo and junk music that most Nigerian youths do to make money now, but unfortunately, you took your father’s crooked voice, and I won’t have my son do internet fraud.
Amadi: What do you mean? He took my magnetic brain along with the voice, not your suspicious brain.
Emma: Dad, are you and mom ever going to stop bickering? Seriously, I think the attack on Shoprite was misplaced. Nigerians should attack government officials who’ve made living in Nigeria a hell. If the country was good, Nigerians won’t have to risk their lives swimming the Mediterranean and trekking the desert, only to take up demeaning jobs abroad. The buildings, vehicles, jets and companies corrupt government officials acquire should be burnt by the masses.
Amadi: I agree with you, son. No amount of diplomatic huffing by the Nigerian government will stop another xenophobic attack because the callous phenomenon is borne out of economic reasons. When foreigners in a country outcompete indigenes for dwindling resources, there’s bound to be envy and tension; it’s natural. Nigeria chased Ghanaians away in 1983. America is doing it against immigrants today.
Ami: But the protesting South Africans didn’t attack white foreigners who control a larger percentage of their economy than the negligible percentage black foreigners control.
Emma: Well, the world sees the way Nigeria treats her own citizens. Do we have electricity, hospitals, schools, water, food; roads, jobs, security, housing and social welfare? How many Nigerians were killed in the xenophobic attack; how many Nigerians die daily in the hands of Boko Haram, herdsmen, robbers, kidnappers, police and soldiers? How many die on our bad roads? How many die in our hospitals? Can South Africa do this to Nigeria at their independence in 1990?
Amadi: South Africans won’t attack white foreigners because they know the repercussion that would have on their economy. If Nigeria wasn’t a failed state, her citizens won’t be fleeing and be ridiculed worldwide. The Nigerian passport attracts global scorn because a leadership that doesn’t inspire and awe, cannot command global respect. If South Africans attack Nigerians again tomorrow, what can Nigeria do? Nothing! Absolutely, nothing! That’s the truth. We’ve lost our fear factor because our nation isn’t working. The day we turn from a consumer nation to a producer nation, Nigerians will stay back at home and the best of our land won’t flee. Then, we’ll earn respect, not odium, not pity.
Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
[Punch]
