Why We All Need To Get Some Cool Shades

We all have an opinion about the different tribes in Nigeria based on the people we have encountered from those ethnic groups and the stories we have been told. When we travel to different states, WE RAISE OUR INVISIBLE ANTENNAE, READY TO RECEIVE THE NEGATIVE SIGNALS WE WERE EARLIER TOLD. As we interact with the people we meet there starting from the taxi man at the airport to hotel staff to the people we do business transactions with, we expect that we will see all the stereotypes that we heard about the people of the state. For most of us, our perceptions of an ethnic group is based on the jokes comedians have told so that when we meet anyone from Warri, we immediately imagine
“a sharp guy” who wants to rip us off, or when we meet an Ibo man, we imagine someone who is so business-minded that he can cheat you and not feel guilty.   
I have always wanted the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to be scrapped. If prayers were the only weapon needed to kill NYSC, I would have prayed NYSC to death because I was so scared of being sent to a village in the North. I guess sometimes life presents us opportunities to see the world through a different lens and that is what NYSC did for me. It’s not what you are thinking, i wasn’t sent to the North o, I served in Lagos as an executive corper and the beauty of being at the orientation camp was that I got to meet people from different states and ethnic groups.

Since the boko Haram saga, I have never been up and close with a Muslim from the North. Every time I lost friends or saw my people who lost everything they had, it took all the Christian in me not to wish for Nigeria to break up so we can have peace. And then one beautiful morning while I was having breakfast I met and became friends with a group I like to call my Muslim community in Lagos. Meeting them reset my perception of Northerners and the Boko Haram story. There was Bash, the cool, calm and collected one, Abba the diplomatic one and Aminu, the jolly good fellow. They had some serious swag that altered my idea of a Muslim man being a young man that is always in a flowing gown. Then I met Harafs who is such a darling. She’s a smart Fulani girl I met at my Place of Primary Assignment (that is what you call where you work as a corper). From her I learnt a lot about her culture that altered the picture I had in my head of a Fulani girl wearing a small top that exposed her belly button and sold milk from the calabash on her head. 

If you ask me to define a Muslim, I will define Muslims based on my experience with my friends, if you ask me to define Yorubas, I will define them based on all the Yoruba friends I have had who are so amazing. If our judgement of an ethnic group or a geo political zone is based on the bad experiences we have had from the people from those places, then we need to reset our judgement. Don’t you think we judge wrongly when we say Yoruba people are dirty and always open their mouth wide when they want to react to issues? Why do we define everyone from the North through the eyes of the mallam on our street and define Igbos as traders who can’t string a correct sentence in English? I am always amused when people are surprised I was born and raised in Onitsha because their perception of Onitsha starts and ends at Upper Iweka.

Enough with the stereotypes guys. Let’s get cool shades and stop judging an entire tribe from the few people we have met.

"The consequence of a single story is this: it robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different instead of how we are similar" – Chimamanda Adichie

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