© Numero Unoma
Blood. That many faceted concept. That symbol of life. Of family. Of passion. Indeed of death. It is also a symbol of ritual, and of power.
My life has been a timeline of blood mixing, blood sacrifice and bloodshed.
Okay, first the mixing. As kids, we would each prick a forefinger to draw blood, and then by pressing them against each other, we would bind our friendship with blood. It was stuff we had read about in books, and we were impressionable youngsters. Childish antics aside though, I am biracial, and though there were mixed race Nigerians long before me, they were mostly fathered by itinerant sailors in ports like Lagos, Warri and Port Harcourt. Sometimes they were also fathered by missionaries and colonialists, but then at some point came a generation of Nigerians who went to study abroad, more than ever before, on their own terms. They went to some of the world’s best universities, all the way up to doctorate level. We are talking about institutions like Heidelberg University, Oxbridge, MIT, and Cornell, to mention but a few. Several of them fell in love with fellow students, married them and brought them home to build a life. Nigeria was a different place back then, and I have mixed race friends who grew up in places like Benin City, Kaduna, Ile-Ife and even Aba. Today’s lack of electricity, water, roads and security just would not allow for that.
Not only have Nigerians been mixing blood with Caucasians and Asians for several decades now, we have also been doing it with other Africans, and most significantly, we have been mixing blood inter-ethnically. I have an uncle named John Yahaya Osammor. For the few who do not know it, Yahaya means John. He is now an elder, born to a Fulani mother and an Igbo father, many years before Nigeria gained independence. Marriage between the different ethnic groups of our nation is now commonplace, and I worry for such families in the event of a carving up of the country.
As for bloodletting, Christians and Muslims alike know the old testament story of Abraham and Isaac, don’t we? Subsequently, according to Christian doctrine, Jesus Christ offered Himself as the unblemished human sacrifice who put an end for all time, to the need for any further blood sacrifice. With every respect to Christianity though, to me, the death of my 26-year-old mother was the ultimate blood sacrifice one could demand of any family. If there is anything spiritual to be profited from bloodletting as a means to appease God or any god, then the road still owes my siblings and me today, for snatching our mother away from us so suddenly and so darned soon. None of us was yet 3 years of age, and she took our unborn youngest with her on that famished road. Yes, blood sacrifice is what Ben Okri was referencing in the title of his 1991 Booker Prize winning novel ‘The Famished Road’.
Incidentally, I am the daughter of an Oxford DPhil professor of haematology, which is the study of the physiology of blood. My father’s Inaugural Lecture was curiously titled “The blood is the life!”, which is a quote from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula”. Fun fact: in medical care, blood transfusion has neither alternative nor equivalent. Anyway, quite apart from the many slides of blood I viewed through my father’s microscope, I have been witness, directly or indirectly, to far too much bloodshed on the African continent. Mozambique, Angola, Rhodesia, Eritrea, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, the list is endless. All of these and more occurred during my lifetime, though some stand out more for me than others. Bloodshed in Biafra, bloodshed in Libya. Those hurt more than others for very personal reasons. But I’ll swerve around the rabbit holes.
Now most recently, this latest current iteration of bloodshed in Nigeria defies comprehension. How does an elder and a statesman create the sort of situation we see in the country today? (Do we agree that a man of Prez Buhari’s life narrative SHOULD be seen as such?) Okay okay, before you say I am accusing him of creating it, let’s go with the hypothesis that he has had nothing whatsoever to do with creating it…how could he, and how does he condone it?! The difference between the foot soldier and the officer is that the officer (supposedly) has a trained brain and one which he also is duty-bound to use.
Is he not a retired officer of the Nigerian army, is he not GCFR? Is he not an elder, not just through sheer age, but most particularly in the context of what a youthful nation Nigeria has become on his many watches? Does he not care at all for his people, his mainly young people, of which more than half are under the age of 19? Does he, as a father and grandfather, not wince and cringe at the bloodstained earth over which he watches, in his current role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces?
I refer not only to the civilians killed by various armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, on the grounds of political differences, but also to the abuse of authority by SARS, and the command given to the police to shoot down unarmed youths who were rightfully and peacefully protesting the same. I refer to the blatant and rampant murder squads invading the ancestral lands of others with impunity. I refer also to the massive and macabre quantum leap in the number of ritual killings across the country, which can only be put down to a tragic desperation born of a lack of adequate literacy or opportunity. A ramification of the lethal cocktail of incompetence and indifference on the part of those in power.
You see, these days, one would have hoped that we were past the need to make animal or human sacrifices. Should we not be over all that primitive stuff by now? Should human sacrifice not now mean something entirely different? I’m talking about the sort of sacrifices parents make for their children. Or the sort of sacrifices leaders make for their country. And the sort of sacrifices citizens make for their future.
Unfortunately, it is the stone-heartedness of those in charge of the country that has trickled down and hardened a disenfranchised youth who have been robbed of their innocence by every captain of industry who takes much more from the country than he or she needs, or than he or she ever gives back. They bloat and swell from excesses, and their children are given stupendous privilege at the cost of millions of their lean and hungry young peers and contemporaries, and they simply couldn’t care less.
Verily verily I say unto you, it is possible to get blood out of a stone. In fact that is all you will get out of these hearts of stone. Clearly you will not get justice…or education…or healthcare…or roads. Without compunction, they mete out their skewed and bloody version of justice themselves. They leave ASUU adrift at sea while they proudly beam into the camera lens, at the photo-ops of the graduation ceremonies of their own children at top institutions around the world. They are quintessential medical tourists, and they sure as heck do not get into accidents or kidnappings on the roads or rail, because they take private jets ‘upandan’ the place.
I broke down when I saw the video of hostages from the Abuja-Kaduna train attack. There on my phone screen was Sister Gladys Emore, my senior at FGGC Benin, right before my eyes. It was day 62 of their captivity, and she was pleading directly to none other than Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, with whom she had attended law school back in the day, to come to their aid. She wanted, she needed to be reunited with her son who is a sickler. It more than broke my heart. OVER TWO MONTHS and the government had not been able to secure the hostages. Apparently, since then some have been rescued, but please, how does the government explain its monumental impotence? Incapacity would be only a temporary reason if they simply CARED enough to do what it takes to resolve the situation. I am praying fervently that there are some on the team whose hearts have not yet turned to stone, and through whom we can hope for the safe return to their families of Sister Gladys and the other victims.
I pray for all those whose lives are put at risk by our stone-hearted politicians and elite. I pray as a woman who has poured many sacred monthly libations of blood, interrupted only by the sacrosanctity of motherhood, my other blood sacrifice to the universe.
Dear Prof Yemi Osinbajo, if indeed your heart pumps blood through those veins of yours, please help us to see our most special Sister Gladys Emore again soon, she has always been the warm and caring person who nurtured us little ones at FGGC back in the day. I am friends with the family, and I share their anguish.
Of everyone else out there, I ask that you pray, and please that you also give any other support you can give towards the freeing of the Abuja-Kaduna train hostages. Financial support, lobbying, phone calls to the right quarters, all will be gratefully received.
And as an aside, I also ask that everyone who can, goes out to donate blood for WHO World Blood Donor Day, June 14, as a gesture of goodwill. It’s not too late to do so, and your blood will save lives. That is the sort of blood sacrifice we can use in modern-day Nigeria.