Copped Camp and  the South-North Perspectives

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piccasso20@yahoo.com

Amongst art terms I find “perspective” being the most intriguing. Perspective. I first came across the word in 1994 during a brief spell in the Fine Arts class, a spell long enough to convince me that if I had any talents, it was not in the visual arts. Mr Longe, I remember him well, had put it succinctly for us 13 year olds and said it was the rules for seeing things on paper and then gone into the two types of perspective; linear and aerial. Oxfords Concise gives perspective to be “the art of drawing solid objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of relative positions, size, etc”. The reason why I found perspective fascinating then and still do even now is that it is first a definitive concept or theory and then secondly, underlying that, it is an illusion which has currency. It is in the first respect that perspective applies in societies; in the second, its importance is muted. Since all societies are held together by centralizing forces when they have an upper hand over disintegrating forces, social definitions, and thus perspective is very important. This is the bedrock of nationalism and even the possibility of true Nigerian nationalism is achievable only if the citizens have a largely common perspective viz their country.

The spark for this little essay came from reading Ms Halima Mahmuds’ brilliant article { http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/} about the COPPED Youth Camp held in Jos which I also attended. The Camp went just as she said in her article and for most of us arrived at the same or at least similar conclusions as she has. With Jos, a city of which I consider myself a native, as our template, the Camp became a melting point of young people and a foundry of ideas and an exemplum of national attitudes. At the end of the three day Camp, we all came out more enlightened, knowledgeable and I daresay we came out of it more Nigerian than when we arrived. What interests me now however is something perhaps or not unintended by the organizers; the Camp was also a template upon which two dominant perspectives came to play out. Coinciding with geography, when we arrived, there was a Northern group comprising mostly of students of ABU Zaria and including Ms Mahmud as well as a Southern group comprising an assortment of Unilag, UI, UniBen and students from Southern Universities. This is consistent with the two dominant locales of Nigerian discourse, North and South. Some say it has been so since Lugard, down to the 1st Republic and proof of it still being so is the very recent “power rotation” issue. The fruit of these dominant perspectives is the creation of stereotypes and over time, since there is little or no interaction or exchange between the North and the Southerner, these stereotypes acquire a political flavor and become iron clad prejudices. I consider myself a Northerner, geographically and culturally speaking as well as in the matter of worldview and I am one of those Northerners who feel that the North has been most improperly misrepresented in the South. To illustrate, and perhaps to illumine this feeling, I wish to recall a conversation I had in a bus around Lokoja, on my way to Zaria. In the Bus there was this loquacious Yoruba man who had formed something of a salon at the back seat and inevitably I joined in their palaver on national and international issues; then at a point, he said “Once you cross the River Niger, there are only cows there”. One may be forgiven for thinking he meant the first thing that comes to mind, but no, he meant the second. Another case to point; my erstwhile chairman of the Creative Writers Club in Zaria, a chap from the South-South, once exclaimed “I never knew you guys could write such great poetry, I never know Northerners could write at all!”. In both cases, I was mortified and it was only after getting over that that I enjoyed their consternation when I said “I am a Northerner; those are my poems”. The attitude that makes the saying of both statements possible is typical of the Southerner and one sees it all over the place in writings from the South; they are exemplums of the South-North perspective. This afore stated perspective is grafted on certain stems and an examination of those stems ought to show the validity of the specie. For want of someone to hold accountable and yet for the need to stay politic, I shall apportion responsibility for this perspective, at least to a large part, to the Lagos-Ibadan media axis, who are chiefly responsible for the socialization of the Southerner. The first of these roots is that Northerners are all Muslims. They are also all Hausa, or “Awusa’s” as is most commonly pronounced. In another same breath; we have been ruling Nigeria since independence, we are uneducated and don’t go to school, indeed do not have schools, and that we hamper the progress and development of the entire country. The attitude formed by this perspective came up during the COPPED youth Camp and thus it was a place for the questioning of stereotypes and I am pleased to note that by the time we left, after just three days, I saw the prejudice of my Southern friends collapse beneath the force of the real. Politics is the arena for a people’s expression and on our arrival, the politicking began. Of course, we had expected it and much as there was an expected agenda from the Southerners, there was also on ground a then yet vaguely defined Northern agenda. There was a girl who right from our arrival was all so nice to us, I am sure because we were human beings and even more so, and she it was who was the arrow of the South; her mark being the office of Camp Chairman. The mentality which I and most of my Zaria colleagues discerned was that she and her backers did not feel there was much work to be done; just smile, be nice to them and they will vote you, they have no knowledge or interest in politics. It was this perceived mentality that led to the consolidation of the Zaria Bloc, essentially a reaction to the seeming prejudice. In the wake of that consolidation, we rallied our forces, picked up some of the Southern votes and eventually my roommate, a chap from KD won the Chairmanship and in the elected Council of Seven, five of us were from the Zaria Bloc, including Ms. Mahmud who served as PRO. From that point on, I saw it in the eyes of the Southerners; I saw that their perspective was being questioned. The Northern Bloc went on to capture the Speakership of the COPPED Parliament, the Majority and Minority leadership and we gave a good account of ourselves in the debate which Ms Mahmud mentioned so enthusiastically. I look back now and in the reconciled aftermath I remember the heated debates between FiG’s ideology and Muzzamil’s own spin on Marx, I wonder now if before that FiG had ever met a Marxist from the North before? Did he know, had he ever heard or read, of Y. B Usman or of Bala Mohhammed? Well, now going back to the stems of these prejudices, I wish to examine them and determine the health of its fruits. There is really no such things as “Hausa people” especially in the sense of an ethnic blanket which can be used as a basis of mass typification.

Hausa, like Yoruba, is a language and the term “kasar Hausa” which has been severally and wrongly interpreted to mean “the land of Hausa people” actually means “land of the Hausa speakers”. And then, even if we spoke in terms of geography, kasar Hausa has never been coterminous with the North, or the erstwhile Northern Nigeria. The North comprises a diverse people including Katafawa, Igala, Kanuri, Margi as well as Sakkwatawa, Bazazzegi, Kannawa, Gobirawa and tens of others and though Hausa language is common to them, they are not Hausa people. Hausa as it is now spoken is a creation of Gaskiya Corporation Zaria and is based on the Kano tongue, i.e. the way Kannawa speak[Kannanci] and Kannanci was not priorly understandable to a man from Gabir, much less to an Igala man. Allied to this, we are not all Muslims; the states of Plateau, Kwara, Gombe, Bauchi, Kogi, and Benue are all parts of the North and they all have sizable if not majority populations who are Christian. Now, when we speak in terms of human beings, is it rational to say the North is Muslim when a projected 40% of the population is not? In terms of people? Perhaps it will come as a shock that in the North, there are Pagans, even in Kano, the Maghuzawa who number in tens of thousands and who have never been Muslim? And then, my mountain forts of Jos and the Mambilla where the Fodio horsemen never reached, surely they cannot be blanketed as Muslim. The North is much more cosmopolitan and diverse than Southern prejudice, based on an incorrect perspective, allows.

In my shortest paragraph, I shall critique the remaining roots. The North, or a candidate from the North, has held the presidency of this country only for ten years, I mean the period 1960-1966 and 1979-1984. A military intervention, by its nature is the product of a Junta and its constituency is that Junta and its auxiliaries; that is why intellectuals and emirs have never had a vote on who becomes a Military head of state. To the root of pervadent ignorance, I simply and proudly indicate Ms Halima Mahmud and I say “She is not the only one in the North, she is not alone”. There is also this stereotype that the North holds the country back from hastening towards “progress” and “development” and this is indeed a very serious one. I consider it as serious because the ideal of us all, Nigerians, is the continued advancement and progress of the nation; if a section of the population does not share this drive then it is possible, and I daresay imperative, that that sections’ claim to being Nigerian ought to be looked into very carefully. Progress and development I believe is tied up to worldview and awareness of trends and, especially from the 80’s on, global trends. If this is true then I say that this root of prejudice, like all the others, is rotten. Let me illustrate; I met a girl in the Camp who felt all sophisticated and chic and considered herself, I am sure, as a progress oriented person viz the goro-stained toothed “Awusa’s” she imagined she would meet in Jos. Yet, she asked me when it would snow in Jos and if Sani Abacha was a civilian or a Soldier: my amusement was complete when she told me later on that she had never been out of Lagos prior to that Jos trip. Progress? I know men who have never been out of their villages, who sit to palaver with my father in Hausa, men with kola-stained teeth to be sure, who know everything that goes on in Nigeria and out courtesy of their ubiquitous transistor radios.

When the days work is done at the farm, they sit with my father and discuss intelligently the North Korean Crisis as comfortably as they do “govumentin Obasanjo” in Abuja. Indicative of this is another illustration; the Kennedy Library and Kashim Ibrahim Library in Zaria as most others in the North stock up these dailies; Thisday. Guardian, Vanguard and though less often, Punch and thus we are aware of what the Lagos-Ibadan press says each day and that side by side with our Kaduna-Abuja papers. Two girls, one from UI and the other from UniLag told me they had never seen a copy of Daily Trust, New Nigerian or even Leadership. It would seem that the unprogressive North is more aware of the South and indeed the world than the South does vice versa. Let me haste to add, we are Conservative. But far from Conservative being a synonym of stuffy and antiquated, it is a synonym of balance; we are unwilling to progress without an idea of what we are progressing into, progress is and must remain a deliberated process and not an unthought out plunge. It is not fin de siecle, it is not art for arts sake, nations cannot afford that. Shall I say simply that to borrow from the U. S, while the North is firmly entrenched in the Republican party favoring the family, Religion and the State, we are not always, and especially the new post 1970 generation North, not right wing; mostly, the North is ideologically left of center conservative. Returning to the COPPED youth Camp, I wish to round up my brief essay. If we are to make any true progress, if we desire “nation building”, then we must question the stereotypes be they South-North or even North-South which seek to insulate us into separate, combative and competitive Camps. Especially to my post 1980 generation, I say; our parents and elders have sometimes politicked with our future for their own ends but as that future is ours, we need to come together and examine and dismantle those stereotypes.

Just as was done during the shocking and memorable 1991 episode in Berlin. Organizations like COPPED need to be encouraged, Southern students should inquire about and visit the North and see for themselves with their own eyes. The popular students movement would benefit from the ideas of the Northern youth much as we would benefit from your experiences; all these towards the end of a united avant garde which we can demand our future. If we can increase the exchange between North and South, as the COPPED Organizers have succeeded in doing, then I see clearly, the possibility in the near future that we all will emerge as truly and distinctly Nigerian. Fittingly, I shall end with perspective. Perspective must remain suspect so long as it remains of a two dimensional form so I shall borrow {and doctor} a quote from Sam R Watkins’s American Civil War retrospective, “Co. Aythch”.

. . . {someone} took up a strange notion that the compass pointed North and South. Now, everybody knew at that time that it was but the idiosyncrasy of an unbalanced mind, and that Nigeria has no North, no South, no West and no East. . Nigeria has no cardinal points.

To that day we can realize that, I say amen. Richard Ali is Editor of Sardauna Magazine and a Law Student in A.B.U; his interests are politics, people and writing poetry