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ARABA LET'S SEPARATE
The Story of the Nigerian Civil War
By Ayuba Mshelia
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Ayuba Mshelia
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-2427-7
Chapter One
The Prophetic Dream
Now that we have been introduced to this cast of immanent members of the Monte Sophia discussion group, who will help us navigate the catastrophic events that took place in our country, Nigeria almost half a century ago, with the ultimate consequence of a bloody and brutal civil war we shall next proceed to report, and in some instances try to analyze, the discussions and seminars they conducted and left us, as a record, now housed in the University Political Historical Archives, located in the Federal National Archives at Abuja. The narrations here presented, including the war reports and the battle preparations and dispositions, are, in most instances, verbatim, as it happened amongst them, or, as they say, "as it is".
It was very early in the morning on that fateful day in January 15, 1966 that Professor Balarabe Musa Yousef, because he could no longer sleep, came out to his front porch to bathe in the early-morning sun and enjoy the cool morning breeze that streamed through the clear-blue tropical sky. He was out unusually early this Saturday morning because he had had a dream which had kept him petrified and sleepless all night. When he awoke he grabbed a pen and swiftly jotted it down before the details vanished from his memory. It was only later that he settled down looking over his notes and wrote it up in full. Both the initial draft and the actual manuscript of the dream account are currently kept in the basement of the city's archives - for posterity, and also for all who might be interested in, and attach some metaphysical importance to, dreams to go and peruse. "This is what I remembered", he calmly states:
"At about 3:00 a.m after my nafila prayer (a prayer of commitment to Allah), I was still pacing my room up and down because I couldn't sleep (Mariayamu, my wife, has her own room on the upper level of the duplex). After pacing like this for several hours, I finally sank down on the burgundy sofa in the middle of my room and nodded off, exhausted. When I slept I had a dream. Like most dreams, mine was related of course to my immediate circumstances that is, my concern with living and retirement. Nevertheless, this dream disturbed me. It made so great an impact on me that I have documented it now for posterity. Here is my recall of the substance of that dream:
I am in the country/village, a vast and barren landscape where there seems to be neither day nor night. Everything is blurred and indiscriminate.
I am walking along with my childhood brother who died many years ago, when I was just a small child. I never thought I would ever dream about him, indeed I'd almost forgotten about him. We're talking and people are passing us by in utter silence and with seemingly no substance, as if they were just mere silhouettes of themselves. We were, I think, discussing some acquaintance of ours, either a man or a woman obviously remembering when they were living in the old neighborhood, how they were always leaving their windows wide open, regardless of the season, or whatever it was that they happened to be doing.
There were no trees or grass to be seen. Then, suddenly, a man appears, who was butt-naked and the color of ashes, pallid and gaunt, and the animal I couldn't tell if it was a horse or donkey, maybe a mule? He was riding was dun-colored, the color of the earth. The man was hairless and we could see his bare elongated skull, and even the criss-crossed veins on his jutting out curiously prominent forehead. In his hand was what appeared to be a magic wand, which seemed too heavy a burden for him to bear, but he did, and he passed us by in absolute silence.
Then my brother suggests we go in the direction of a sunken road to the left. The road is bare and everything around it reflecting, the colors of the earth— brown, gray, green. When I make some passing comments with regard to the now-dried fadama (wetland) expecting my brother to say something or respond, nobody answers, so I turn look around, and realize he's disappeared, like a phantom, just as he came.
I continue on my lone, scary, sojourn and come to a town whose streets are completely deserted. I head on then to the next town with the same result. However, right at the meeting-point of the two streets there is a man who is standing, holding in his right hand what looked like some kind of weapon. He has his back facing the town and he faces the vast expanse of the wetland farm fields. "What is this place? Where am I?" I ask him, but he doesn't answer or show any sign that he understands my question. Then, suddenly, as if by some spell or apparition, I see a house, which I swiftly enter because the door has been left open.
Once inside the house I see what looks to me like a small garden in the courtyard, but I'm not sure. However I enter in. It is as silent as a graveyard, and there is no sign of life, but then a man in his early thirties, malnourished and as bald as eagle appears behind one of the leafless trees and I approach him and ask him; "What kind of garden is this?" He doesn't answer. "Where am I?" Still he doesn't answer. I tried to open my eyes to see if I was dreaming, but could not.
The next thing I know I am walking through a village, which, to my utter amazement, was completely deserted as well, all the doors of the houses open but no human soul outmoving or walking in the open spaces or deserted gardens, no signs of life, except for a horde of vultures flying low overhead in splendidly sinister formation.
But, you know what? On closer inspection at every street corner and behind every door beside these dry trees, a lean man in his forties with shining bare skull was standing at attention, with sword in his hand, but as silent as a door-bell or a nail. There was never more than one man at what seemed like a designated post, and they were all watching me with stern implacable faces as I passed along in fear and solitude. There were dogs all over the place too I remember that well but none barked or moved. They too were as silent as a graveyard.
In the dream about an hour later I left the village and walked back through the now-dried wetlands. After some time has elapsed, roughly about fifteen minutes, I saw a crowd pursuing me from behind. I recognized at once that it was all the men and dogs that I'd seen in the village threatening. They were on my trails.
Without saying a word or seeming to be in any hurry, they caught up with me and encircled me. They were all the color of the earth, including even the dogs. Then the first man that I'd seen when I had first entered the town (I recognized the open veins pulsing on his bald skull), opened his mouth and spoke to me: "Where are you going? Don't you know that you've been dead for a very long time?"
Again I tried to open my mouth to say something or answer him, but I found that no words would come out. When, eventually, I opened my eyes, I discovered that the mirage had disappeared and I was all alone, in my bed, soaking-wet, drenched in a cold sweat. I was scared to death.
After the Professor awoke from this strange and disturbing, scary dream, he looked through his window and noticed that it was still dark out but there were glimpses of light and life showing through the veneer of the thin harmattan dust. He surmised that it must be somewhere around five o'clock, and decided to check his prayer-kettle to make sure that he had sufficient water before he performed his Subhi/fajr sallah (asuba sallah in Hausaearly Morning prayer). After his subhi he began to reminiscent on the dream he had that night. "That wasn't a dream. No I swear it wasn't a dream!" He declared," It all happened!" He ran out onto the porch through his bed room on the second floor of the duplex building; where we now find him meditating, calmly counting his prayer beads. "No, that was not a dream", he said quietly to himself.
The question that you, my readers, are doubtless pondering at the moment is whether this was precognition, and that Professor Balarabe foresaw the death of the Sardauna on the eve of January 14th and the early hours of January 15th? Or is it just the random apparitions of an old mind struggling to make some sense in his remaining days? I'll leave it to you to work out the probabilities of the imagination of such a scenario, of the appearance of such a dream right at the very moment when the Sardauna was being attacked and murdered in cold blood, when all around him was dark and silent. There are some who see dreams as the transcendence of the mind to a different plane of consciousness, one where the ego thinks, acts and fleetingly remembers, independently events and has a temporary, sporadic illusive existence. The planes of consciousness and the dream state, of course differ in their portrayal of objective and subjective realities, perhaps calling into question the very definition of such reality. Certainly to those who have some sympathy towards the more abstruse metaphysical beliefs, the more esoteric appearances phenomena the apparitions of the mind, the answer to the question posed above will very likely be a slam-dunk positive. Yes! (But isn't also true that, not withstanding highly suggestive evidence and an obvious desire for conviction, that nothing is ever a slam-dunk as long as it remains a mystery?)
The Prof. has come out onto his porch to ponder and to turn the dream over in his head when, all of a sudden, he remembered a second dream that he'd had that night, although be it a shorter one. That dream was blurred now, but he remembered seeing his father holding onto a scrap of white cloth, and beckoning him to come. In normal waking life Balarabe didn't have a particularly good image of his father, because he'd passed away when Balarabe was still young. Consequently, most of his memory of him had come from his mother, who had told him everything she could about him. Prof. Balarabe clasped his hands and raised them to the heavens in praise and offered a silent meditative prayer to Allah, then sitting down, silently reviewed his life and considered what forces were at work here and what the two dreams might portend. Professor Balarabe always prayed whenever things did not seem clear to him, and today was one of those days.
"Allahu Akbar (God is great), innalallahi wa inna illaihirraji un (from Allah we are and we shall return to him).
"He's dead!" shouted Bashir Musa Katam in the Professor's ears.
"Whom are you referring to", Balarabe inquired, in brusque, intense but nevertheless subdued and controlled voice.
"Why, you didn't hear? They've killed him!"
"Killed whom?" He asked agitated
"The Sardauna", Bashir responded, wiping his tear-soaked face.
"Bashir, it's too early in the morning for such expensive and unfunny sick jokes", the Prof. enjoined, with fear spreading over his increasingly sullen frightened face.
"It's all over the radio, why, you didn't listen to the news this morning before you came out?
This was one of the exceptional days that the Professor hadn't turned on his short-wave radio to listen to the BBC or the Voice of America before coming out to enjoy the sunny Saturday week-end morning.
"Of all days; why must it be today?" He lamented ruefully and rushed in to hear the news for himself. "Could it be that I foresaw the Premier's death in my dream?"
"Mamu! Did you hear the news, did you hear what happened?" Balarabe shouted out the questions to his wife.
"Hear what?' she responded
"That the Sardauna is dead", he answered
"How is this possible?" She asked frenziedly and obviously rhetorically because she didn't expect her husband to have the answer.
"Well they have gone and done it!" He answered.
"Who are the "they" that have the nerve and the audacity to kill the Sardauna? Don't they know they cannot possibly get away with it? The spirit of our great leader and the symbol of hope and aspiration that he represents for the North will never permit them to get away with it. They will pay with their blood some day. Indeed, not only them, but those of their kin and kith. Allah will avenge this inhuman and barbarous act of cold-blooded massacre".
She broke down, sobbing.
The Professor and his wife were still listening to the radio when the newscaster paused momentarily and said in a sorrowful yet unwavering voice, that, the same fate had befallen the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in Lagos. As the news kept trickling in, it was also announced that Brigadier Maimalari (Brigade Commander- Lagos), Colonel Mohammed (Chief of Staff, Army Headquarters Lagos) Lieutenant Colonel Pam ('A' Branch-Army headquarters Lagos); Alhaji Shettima Kamsalem (Inspector General of the Police) and Lieutenant Colonel Largema (Commander 4 Battalion Army-Ibadan) had also all been killed. The cream of the North in Lagos had been wiped-out in a single night.
In the immediate days following, there were wild rumors flying around that the soldiers had not found themselves able to shoot Tafawa Balewa or Brigadier Maimalari, even as they stood in front of them. What they did, after their guns kept on misfiring, according to this account, was to try and murder them by twisting their necks, but that didn't work either; so they hung them on a tree on the Lagos-Ibadan road. The rumor was that they had had a tougher time with Maimalari because his head kept on turning around, as if it were a wheel. It was only when he, momentarily, took out something from his pocket and bit into it, that they were able to snap his neck. But what was especially shocking about the death of Brigadier Maimalari was that he was killed by one of the chief architects of the coup, Efejuna who had hitherto respected him and considered him as a mentor. Such betrayal is like modern-day Shakespeare - Caesar and Brutus. It must have made Shakespeare turn in his grave! In the Western Region the news came in that Chief Akintola had also been killed, but he too didn't go quietly. He wreaked havoc on those evil men who went to kill him, even after they were able to subdue his cadre of security guards. He killed several of his attackers, and, true to his words, he always said he would die fighting for his life, a life he had built up, from humble beginnings as a poor farmer's son, through sweat and hard work. He hadn't been born with a "silver spoon in his mouth" -unlike some of his contemporaries.
"What is happening to this country?" Both Alhaji Haliru and his wife Hassana asked in chorus on hearing the news.
"May Allah save us and grant them everlasting peace", Haliru declared, with a stoic solemnity, after gathering his inner strength.
"It would seem the only region that was left unscathed and safe was the East", Dr. Khan whispered to Veronica, who had come out of the kitchen to hear the news for herself.
"It's a weekend so the children don't have to go out", Veronica replied. Unconsciously or so it seemed, everyone in the neighborhood, indeed in the whole region, started speaking in whispers. The whole country was operating with hushed voices and discreet hand signals. My dear readers, this is hardly a normal way to function day to day, let alone to run a country. It was atangible manifestation of the fear and sign of the demonic slaughter to come. It was imperative that something needed be done, but first what? And by who?
Golu had travelled to the village to take medicine to his sick old mother who lived with her older son. On his way back he had stopped at the Shagalinku restaurant on Jos road to eat, but the place, which was normally bustling with people and music, was now solemn and deserted, as if the specter of death itself had recently visited it. He had a sense something terrible had occurred but he had no idea what it was and didn't have the presumption or nerve to ask anyone. He eventually gathered up his courage and asked one of the attendants, but the attendant just continued silently serving him, then retired to a corner and sat down, without uttering even a single word. Golu sputtered something to himself but that didn't help either. He observed the robotic behavior of the attendants and he hated it. Confused and frustrated, he rushed through his meal, paid the clerk at the counter and ambled out quietly, without saying anything more. "Why on earth are the attendants acting in this strange robotic manner?" He wondered, "Why won't they speak to me"? He sighed and exhaled as he madehis way back to his old 504 Peugeot car.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from ARABA LET'S SEPARATE by Ayuba Mshelia Copyright © 2012 by Ayuba Mshelia. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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