By Abdulyassar Abdulhamid
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”
Dalai Lama
This year’s Eid-el Adha celebrations are unique. Unlike those years when I was carefree to celebrate such a festive period amidst friends, brothers, sisters and relatives, this year there is no holiday for me. I just imagined how the merriments would have felt like. But I only have memories of those days, when men were boys.
This year I spent the jolly period at the place of my work – flanked by colleagues confronting endless tasks – being shuttled from one place to another. It is true journalists have no holiday, not even sallah break. When the rest of Nigerians are spending time with their families and relatives, journalists are outside there digging for pieces of stories or covering major events of the period to break it to the world.
These days my work is taking the largest part of my life. Yet I am truly satisfied with it. I have sacrificed a lot to arrive here. I consider it one of the greatest works on this earth.
When I was young, I would go to the Eid ground clad in white and holding my late father’s hand. Then I was the baby of the family. I got all I wanted, sweets, chocolate, biscuits, dates, etc. I felt all the world for myself.
Some years later, as I got older, I proudly attended Eid ground in the company of my elder brothers and sisters. I imitated the grown-ups. I would always try walking the way they did with glasses over my nose and I would pretend keeping time by constantly looking at my wristwatch. I felt rich with some coins in my pocket. It was children’s world. Anything is possible.
Hours later, we toured neighbours’ houses to greet them and take sallah food and meat to them. We ate there, too, and we were given a token sallah gifts. This had always been our sallah day routine. At the end of the day, we collected the entire amount gathered and shared among ourselves. This would be followed by group photographs. Then people were compassionate and Nigeria was peaceful. There was no cause for alarm. Children were allowed to move freely. We walked to our grannies’ home to greet them, stayed there for many hours, sometimes napped and came back late in the afternoon.
I remember, too, the gap between the poor and the rich was very narrow then. Almost everyone had food to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over his head. Households adopted almajiris and privilege was never a yardstick to determine who belonged to the household and who did not. Rich men made sure their neighbours ate before they went to bed. Neighbours enrolled their neighbours’ children in school and financed their circumcision.
Social change has come with great turbulences. Youth were filial and respectful to their elders. The society was truthful and compassionate, but with changing circumstances, our society has undergone profound changes; it seems everything is no longer the same.
The compassion in us is giving way to indifference and cruelty. It has been reduced to a bare minimum. People no longer feel for others in their wallet as there is no more feeling of empathy. Abject poverty adjoins excessive richness. The rich are stone-hearted and the poor ungrateful.
Flash-forward, when plying some streets in Kano State on Sunday May 11, 2019, the sallah day, I noticed two camps: the first is excessively joyous. From the looks of its inhabitants and their countenances, the camp has almost everything.
The second camp has but little. Its inhabitants looked hungry and reserved. They were poorly dressed. The old who held the young ones’ hands were speechless. I did not know if they had eaten before they arrived at the Eid ground; but it seemed so. Anyway, the children’s faces looked gloomy.
At 2pm of that day, I noticed another camp. It was strikingly uninviting. Besides, it is another world on its own right systematically demarcated from the rest of the ancient city of Kano; the Kano Central Prison, Kurmawa, was said to been built in 1910. Even the frontal barricades and the number of prison wardens manning the checkpoint ushering one into the prison are telling.
After screening, I passed through two gates and three doors to the main ball. At the gate was a handful of visitors under a shade waiting to meet their relatives.
Hundreds of young and old inmates serving various prison terms live in the high-walled prison. Some were still lively, but others – it was written on their faces – have resigned to their fates. They had been thrown into the dustbin of forgetfulness. They have no one to visit them or follow up their cases. Some are on waiting trial for many years.
While the programme that offered me the opportunity to be there was going on, I observed another thing. Some figures were peeping through tiny holes on large mounds some meters away from where I stood. For the clothes they were in, not even their eyeballs could be sighted. Only the movements could be sensed. I was told the duty roster was not in their favour that day. Aren’t they going to lose their eyesight? Was the question I asked myself.
For the first time in my life I saw condemned men. They have been condemned to death. Few of them were serving life imprisonment. An old man I saw, I was told on authority, was clocking his fortieth years in prison. Another, he said it himself, is clocking eighteenth. As he spoke, I was beside myself diving deep into the ocean of my thoughts.
It is true that many will die there because successive governments have refused to reform our prisons or terms of imprisonment and relatives have yanked away the pages of the inmates from their family dictionary. Why should not they be sandwiched into the mounds used as cells?
An hour later, I was at the VVF Centre, Kwalli. Indeed that was my first visit ever. Even the road leading to the centre is a cul-de-sac and the area is somehow quiet. As we walk into the centre, it was apparent there was no sign of life. The design of the building is old yet beautiful, and the floor is spotlessly clean.
Abandoned by their husbands and, perhaps family, there live vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) victims. The continuous involuntary discharge of urine into the vaginal vault was evident by the rubber bowls in front of them.
A short dirge they sang to lament the inhuman treatment they experienced from their husbands nearly reduced everyone present to tears. They had but a hazy memory of the sallah festivities, since they have more serious troubles before them.
The following day, although it was raining hard, Governor Ganduje’s convoy arrived at Aminu Kano International Airport few minutes to 10am to receive the President of the Republic of Guinea, Professor Alpha Conde. I watched as the Nigerian army staged a befitting parade in the rain to welcome him. At once my mind travelled as far as all the battlefields in the northeast. While many Nigerians are in a festive mood, our soldiers are on the frontlines to defend this nation. Let us remember them in our prayers. This is the least we can do. Happy sallah to all the faithful and other compatriots.
Abdulhamid wrote via abdullahiyassar2013@gmail.com
08145901322
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Sky Daily
