MUSING OF
A YUNG NIGERIAN
Guennivere Marcus
No, I'm not Yoruba!” It's a rehearsed line
I say just after I tell my name to a person from the West.
Most of the time it works; I say it just in time to stop
them from calling me the Yoruba version of
my name that means “Open eye.
Some other times, it doesn't work that
way; I get into endless debates about
whether or not the Itsekiris are also
Yoruba. On rare occasions, the person
recognizes my name as itsekiri before I
say the rehearsed line. And on such
occasions, I get the billion naira
question: “Do you speak your
language?” Ding-dong! The bell goes off
in my head. And my limited vocabulary
of the name of God, greetings and my
sisters' names flash before my eyes,
and then the 'no' rolls off my tongue. I
brace myself for the judgmental look
that follows; the voice of reprimand that
tells me I'm a born throwaway.
I've stopped arguing with them,
because to a large extent, they are
right. The twenty something year old me
of 2013 is of a different DNA than the
average Nigerian born a century ago.
On the brink of amalgamation, he clung
to his tribe. And when 1914 came, he
lost some of his relatives to a different
country and was forced to become one
nation with different tribes he had
nothing in common with. In the 1950s
he must have joined hands with these
strangers to fight for independence from
a common enemy. He could have been
proud to wave the Nigerian flag in 1960,
SPARK
30
but disillusioned when he realized that
green-white-green wasn't enough to
glue together over 200 diverse ethnic
groups. When the British left, it become
more obvious that there was more
space at the centre than there was
unity. A civil war finally proved that to
him, scars that took long to heal drove
him farther into his region, his own
language, his own people, his own
food.
Things are a bit different now. Time
changes things; different cultures
diverge from an independent whole to a
unique blend. The twenty something
year old Nigerian is simply that-Nigerian.
His mum is from Kwara and his father is
from Anambra, but he was born in
Lagos, but grew up in Delta, went to
school in Benin and did NYSC in
Bauchi. He most likely speaks more
than one Nigerian Language, or none at
all, but is quite fluent in pidgin English,
and well.. Nigerian English. If she's a
girl, her cooking skills range from
edikainkong to ewedu, tuwoshinkafa to
Okazi, or simply rice and spaghetti.
She's most likely more familiar with
songs by D'banj than the odes to her
ancestors; and can relate more with the
face of Genevieve Nnaji than the folk
tales in the village.
A citizen of the global village, the
Nigerian youth is a sophisticated,
complex whole; he tweets and
comments, likes and dislikes, uploads
and downloads. One may be more
traditional than the other, another more
educated, one more enterprising,
another less open to change. He
embraces the truth of his roots, but
looks forward to a more promising
future-being Nigerian.
SPARK
1