About a week ago I took a walk along my street and my eyes fell upon a dreadful scene. I saw a young man with a dagger threatening a family. The young man look much like an Hausa boy, the type we fondly referred to as Mallam. He was holding the knife menacingly, while shouting at the top of his voice at the family head. A woman and a young girl, apparently, his wife and daughter were horrified as they cringed behind the man. The seemingly Hausa Mallam threaten advance towards the family, while the man screamed with a dual recreation of fear and anger.
“Get out, don’t come any closer to my family, you bastard.” The man bellowed.
“I carry am for sixty naira and the place far, far,” a weird young man was shouting at the top of his voice, “you must give am for one hundred naira.” He continued bouncing up and down with a threatening dagger.
“Take your sixty naira and get out, you know even know road, you dey do okada,” replied the man.
A little crowd was gathering now dozens of young men and women were everywhere.
“me, I go kill you, tell your wife to give am for N100.” the young angry looking man with the dagger hollered.
“Hausa man again?” ask someone in the crowd.
“Mallam, watin happen,” another asked, trying to approach the man with the dagger.
“e no be Hausa oh,” someone else shouted from the crowd, “this guy na from Cotonu.”
There was uproar from the crowd. Some boys in the crowd ordered him to shied his digger and get out here or else they threatened to beat him up.
Some girls in the crowd were screaming, “you fit do this kind thing for your country?”
Another man offered to give him the N100 he asked for so he can leave.
The atmosphere was charged, you can literarily feel anger boiling, temper was ranging, I could smell violent in the air.
Within a few minute, it was something else. While the boy around were trying to disarm him, some other seemingly Hausa boys, probably from Mali too, tried to stop them.
The atmosphere of impeding violence was suffocating, I choose right then to walk away. As I walked away, the words of the angry crowd came back to play in my subconscious. How angry they were about the recurrent violence that has been the handiwork of these same Hausa workmen. How they are becoming bolder by the day in the City of Benin. How much love violence and how a young man was alleged stabbed to death the other day in New Benin by the same violent strangers. And I couldn’t help but think of the popular Rwanda Massacre. I thought what I read of how it all began, and it sacred the hell out of me to think that such a hugely thing is play its trick in the City of Benin like it did in the city of Kigali few years back.
As I walked away, I couldn’t stop asking myself who those boys were; if they were really from Mali or if they were Hausas? I couldn’t just think about what could make them as bold, even as strangers in Benin City. Then I realised that they were almost in control of the Benin of City. Young people like them are everywhere, I don’t know where they are from, whether from Mali or Northern part of Nigeria; all I know is that everybody call them Mallams and they all look alike. They have literarily taken over the City; they are the majority among the commercial motorcyclists, popularly known as Okada (they have dominated the business); they are in the market, selling and pushing trucks; they are the gatemen in almost every house in the City; they are housekeeper or gardeners as well as kiosk owners in the City. They are everywhere. Many streets in the City have been taken over by them, including Government Reservation Area (GRA) and Ugbor quarters, in which they occupy every uncompleted building available. Their population indeed is their yardstick for such arrogance and boldness.
My mind couldn’t stop relating the City of Benin to that of Kigali in Rwanda before the massacre. It is a shred picture of the power and dominance struggle that degenerated into a bloody conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda before the massacre or Genocide as others will choose to call it. It could be recalled that the Tutsi people which were the much few people dominated the ruling class in the City of Kigali, while the Hutus, the much larger group serve as their washmen, cabdrivers, gatemen, shop owners etc. encouraged by their population and motivated by their poor state or disadvantage position, the Hutus launched a bloody attack on the Tutsis. The Kigali case started just like it is today in the City of Benin. The Hutus kept going back to the rural areas to bring their brothers to the City of Kigali to help do the dirty jobs and in no time, their population in the City became overwhelming. Encouraged by their population, they started gaining grounds and getting bolder and vicious just as it is today in the City of Benin.
A closer look at the City of Benin will frighten anyone with a knack for security. On several occasions these violent strangers have attacked innocent citizens with little or no provocation. Almost everyone in this City who often employs the services of the commercial motorcyclists have one or two unprovoked reactions or attacks from these set of individuals who are getting bolder and vicious by the day. It is time to have a closer look at the activities of these people. Poverty coupled with population bond by tribe is the greatest motivation for bloody revolutions. If any Jihad extremist could catch on this already degenerated opportunity in the City of Benin, it will turn red-day nightmare. All that is needed to trigger off bloody crisis in the City of Benin is a close-minded leader who has what it takes to provoke it.
Austin Imoru
Author; The Woman and Her Sexuality
www.sistershouseofesteem.org
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